WEBVTT

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OK.

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I'll read one more poem.

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I knew there are a lot of
writers sitting out there.

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So this is a poem that
sort of centers around

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how hard it is to do this thing.

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Life doesn't want
us to make art.

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Life wants us to make more life.

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So it gets in the way
sort all of the time.

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This poem is set
in Aix-en-Provence.

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And there's a
reference to thyme.

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And that's the one with the Y,
which grows wild on the ground

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there.

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There's a reference
to the sanglier.

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Those are those cute little
wild pigs that run around,

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not the scary ones
with the big tusks,

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about that high, that run
around in the wild thyme.

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And they're available.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And there's a reference, at
the end, to the Bald Mountain.

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And that's Mont Saint-Victoire,
which, as you probably know,

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Cézanne painted over and over
and over and over from every

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possible angle.

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The poem is called "Largesse."

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"Banging the blue shutters--

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night-rain.

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And a deep gash
opened in the yard.

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By noon, the usual
unstinting sun but also wind.

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The olive trees gone silver
inside out, and the slender

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cypresses like women in fringed
shawls, hugging themselves.

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And over the rosemary
hedge, the pocked

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fig giving its purple
scroll to the ground.

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What was it had made me sad?

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At the market, stall after a
noisy stall, melons, olives,

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more fresh herbs
than I could name,

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tomatoes still stitched to the
cut vine, the soft transparent

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squid shelled on ice.

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Also, hanging there
beside the garlic braids,

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meek as the sausages,
plucked fowl with feet.

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Under a goose-wing, I
had a violent dream.

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I was carrying a baby and
was blind or blinded on

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and off, the ledge I walked,
blanking out long minutes

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at a time.

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He'd flung a confident
arm around my neck.

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A spidery crack traversed
his china skull.

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Then it was not a ledge but
a bridge, like a tongue.

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From the window over my
desk, I could look down

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at the rain-ruined
nest, the sanglier

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had scrabbled in
the thyme, or up,

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to the bald mountain
and all the paintings.

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I looked up.

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That's where one looks
in the grip of a dream."

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Thanks for coming.

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[APPLAUSE]

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