WEBVTT

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And one more for this
book where there's

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sort of that narrative structure
or a thing happening in time

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gets extremely tenuous
as you will hear.

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And actually, nothing
happens at all in this poem.

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But it's a way of sort
of moving through space.

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So there's linear quality
that I found useful.

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There's a reference
here to a child.

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The child is Robert
Collier, who is

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the son of a graduate of
the University of Arizona.

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The poem is called
"Effort at Speech,"

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which is a phrase that I take
from William Meredith, who

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wrote a poem for Muriel
Rukeyser, a fantastic American

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poet, who had written a poem
called "Effort at Speech."

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And after her stroke,
Meredith wrote a poem

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for her called
"Effort at Speech."

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So this is my poem
for Mr. Meredith

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after his stroke called
"Effort at Speech."

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And the location of the
poem is the aquarium

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in Baltimore, Maryland.

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"Nothing was as we'd
thought, the sea

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anemones not plants
but animals, flounder

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languishing on the sand like
infants waiting to be turned.

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From the bottom, we followed
the spiral ramp around and up,

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circling the tank.

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Robert, barely out
of the crib, rode

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his father's shoulders,
uttering words or parts of words

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and pointing ceaselessly
toward the water,

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toward some one of the many
shapes in the water, what

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he could not name,
could not describe.

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Starfish, monkfish-- not fish--

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catfish, sea hare, sea horse.

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We studied the plaques for
something to prompt him with.

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But he tucked his
head as if shamed.

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So I left them at the
school of the quick

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yellow-with-black-stripes
conventional,

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passed the armored centenary
turtle going down as I went up.

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Seaweed, eels, elongate
gone-gray suede bodies

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of the prehistoric sharks
transverse the reef,

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and headed to the top,
thinking to look down

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through the multiple layers.

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When it first came at me, it
seemed more creature of the air

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than of the sea.

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Huge, delta-winged, m head
subsumed in the spread

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pectorals--

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unless it was all head--

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a kite gliding to the wall
between us, veering up,

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over, exposing its
light belly, "face"

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made by gill-slits opening,
the tail's long whip and poison

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spine.

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Eagle Ray, cordata,
like the eagle,

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it skated along the glass.

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Eagle scanning the
sheer canyon wall,

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bat trapped inside the cave, no,
like a mind at work, at play,

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I felt I was seeing through
the skull and then away."

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