WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.760 align:middle line:90%


00:00:07.760 --> 00:00:13.370 align:middle line:84%
One other way to play with these
same notions about something

00:00:13.370 --> 00:00:16.070 align:middle line:84%
linear and moving
through time, the way

00:00:16.070 --> 00:00:19.640 align:middle line:84%
a narrative does as opposed
to a lyric poem that

00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:24.050 align:middle line:84%
stops time and stands at a
single moment of feeling,

00:00:24.050 --> 00:00:26.180 align:middle line:90%
is through a sequence.

00:00:26.180 --> 00:00:29.750 align:middle line:84%
Particularly, if you make a
sequence out of lyric poems,

00:00:29.750 --> 00:00:33.410 align:middle line:84%
and then arrange them in some
way that suggests a story

00:00:33.410 --> 00:00:35.720 align:middle line:90%
or suggest a narrative.

00:00:35.720 --> 00:00:40.460 align:middle line:84%
And that's what I did in this
book of sonnets called Kyrie.

00:00:40.460 --> 00:00:43.700 align:middle line:84%
The presumption for
all of the sonnets,

00:00:43.700 --> 00:00:46.880 align:middle line:84%
is that these are
imagined speakers

00:00:46.880 --> 00:00:54.627 align:middle line:84%
who could have survived the
1918, 1919 influenza epidemic.

00:00:54.627 --> 00:00:56.210 align:middle line:84%
You probably know
something about that

00:00:56.210 --> 00:01:01.230 align:middle line:84%
now because, there have been a
lot of reports in the newspaper

00:01:01.230 --> 00:01:05.900 align:middle line:84%
and in the popular
journalism about the fact

00:01:05.900 --> 00:01:08.870 align:middle line:84%
that the scientists have
uncovered a piece of the DNA,

00:01:08.870 --> 00:01:12.390 align:middle line:84%
they dug up some bodies
out of the permafrost.

00:01:12.390 --> 00:01:16.910 align:middle line:84%
So, they now have a sample
of it which, one doesn't

00:01:16.910 --> 00:01:18.527 align:middle line:90%
know quite how to feel about that.

00:01:18.527 --> 00:01:21.830 align:middle line:90%


00:01:21.830 --> 00:01:24.230 align:middle line:84%
The epidemic was
called the Spanish flu,

00:01:24.230 --> 00:01:28.610 align:middle line:84%
and they mark the figures from
March 1918, when she was first

00:01:28.610 --> 00:01:31.910 align:middle line:84%
diagnosed by army
surgeons, that was

00:01:31.910 --> 00:01:34.310 align:middle line:84%
right toward the
end of World War I.

00:01:34.310 --> 00:01:38.180 align:middle line:84%
So, there are all these young
men who were gathered together,

00:01:38.180 --> 00:01:40.400 align:middle line:84%
in training camps,
and army camps,

00:01:40.400 --> 00:01:43.550 align:middle line:84%
and they started dying at
a rate of about 90 a day,

00:01:43.550 --> 00:01:45.090 align:middle line:90%
in Fort Devens Massachusetts.

00:01:45.090 --> 00:01:48.270 align:middle line:84%
And, this was very bad
for the war effort.

00:01:48.270 --> 00:01:50.030 align:middle line:84%
So that was when it
first was diagnosed,

00:01:50.030 --> 00:01:52.940 align:middle line:84%
and over the course
of one year, it

00:01:52.940 --> 00:01:56.360 align:middle line:84%
killed upwards of 30 million
people, which is more

00:01:56.360 --> 00:02:00.480 align:middle line:84%
than any other thing has ever
killed in the same time period,

00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:05.720 align:middle line:84%
more than any war, any
plague, any famine,

00:02:05.720 --> 00:02:08.030 align:middle line:84%
and it particularly
liked its victims

00:02:08.030 --> 00:02:12.020 align:middle line:84%
between the ages of 18
and 40, like most of you.

00:02:12.020 --> 00:02:15.470 align:middle line:90%


00:02:15.470 --> 00:02:19.130 align:middle line:90%
And, happened very fast.

00:02:19.130 --> 00:02:21.560 align:middle line:84%
And this was before
the antibiotics,

00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:24.980 align:middle line:84%
in fact, antibiotics were
developed as an effort

00:02:24.980 --> 00:02:28.410 align:middle line:84%
to try to find something
that would treat the flu,

00:02:28.410 --> 00:02:30.540 align:middle line:90%
should it come back.

00:02:30.540 --> 00:02:32.660 align:middle line:84%
So that's the start of
the general circumstance

00:02:32.660 --> 00:02:34.918 align:middle line:90%
and the war is going on.

00:02:34.918 --> 00:02:36.710 align:middle line:84%
I'm just going to read
you a little sample,

00:02:36.710 --> 00:02:40.070 align:middle line:84%
I'm going to read you
10 of these sonnets.

00:02:40.070 --> 00:02:43.940 align:middle line:84%
They're quite loose sonnets,
some of them are straight

00:02:43.940 --> 00:02:46.250 align:middle line:84%
and have 14 lines, and
have iambic pentameter,

00:02:46.250 --> 00:02:48.500 align:middle line:84%
and have rhyme, and
some of them don't.

00:02:48.500 --> 00:02:50.990 align:middle line:84%
They all have the structure
of a sonnet, which

00:02:50.990 --> 00:02:53.150 align:middle line:84%
is to say they make
a turn somewhere

00:02:53.150 --> 00:02:56.845 align:middle line:90%
in the course of the piece.

00:02:56.845 --> 00:02:58.970 align:middle line:84%
And I think the best way
for you to listen to this,

00:02:58.970 --> 00:03:02.090 align:middle line:84%
is just to imagine that
each one of these speakers

00:03:02.090 --> 00:03:04.640 align:middle line:84%
is a different person
that will be a recurring

00:03:04.640 --> 00:03:07.250 align:middle line:84%
character, that you'll
recognize pretty soon.

00:03:07.250 --> 00:03:11.400 align:middle line:90%


00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:14.520 align:middle line:90%
"When does a childhood end?

00:03:14.520 --> 00:03:18.030 align:middle line:84%
Mothers sew a piece of
money inside a sock, fathers

00:03:18.030 --> 00:03:21.520 align:middle line:84%
unfold a map of the world,
and boys go off to war.

00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:24.750 align:middle line:84%
That's an end, whether they
come back wrapped in the flag

00:03:24.750 --> 00:03:26.490 align:middle line:90%
or waving it.

00:03:26.490 --> 00:03:29.730 align:middle line:84%
Sister and I, were what
they kissed goodbye,

00:03:29.730 --> 00:03:33.510 align:middle line:84%
complicit is in the
long dream left behind.

00:03:33.510 --> 00:03:37.890 align:middle line:84%
On one page willful
innocence, on the next,

00:03:37.890 --> 00:03:41.100 align:middle line:84%
an army captain riding from
the ward with few details

00:03:41.100 --> 00:03:45.750 align:middle line:84%
and much regret, a kindness she
wouldn't forgive and wouldn't

00:03:45.750 --> 00:03:50.100 align:middle line:84%
be reconciled to her soldier
lost, or me in my luck

00:03:50.100 --> 00:03:52.470 align:middle line:84%
or the petals
strewn on the grass,

00:03:52.470 --> 00:03:56.010 align:middle line:84%
while the boys still on
the playground routing

00:03:56.010 --> 00:03:57.840 align:middle line:90%
evil with their little sticks.

00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:11.050 align:middle line:90%


00:04:11.050 --> 00:04:15.880 align:middle line:84%
To be brought from the bright
schoolyard into the house,

00:04:15.880 --> 00:04:20.769 align:middle line:84%
to stand by her bed like an
animal stunned in the pen,

00:04:20.769 --> 00:04:23.770 align:middle line:84%
against the grid of
the quilt, her hand

00:04:23.770 --> 00:04:28.270 align:middle line:84%
seems stitched to the
cuff of its sleeve.

00:04:28.270 --> 00:04:32.560 align:middle line:84%
Although he wants most urgently,
the hand to stroke his head,

00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:35.050 align:middle line:84%
although he thinks
he could kneel down,

00:04:35.050 --> 00:04:38.590 align:middle line:84%
that it would need to
travel only inches to brush

00:04:38.590 --> 00:04:43.840 align:middle line:84%
like a breath his flushed
cheek, he doesn't stir.

00:04:43.840 --> 00:04:48.370 align:middle line:84%
All his resolve, all his
resources, go to watching her,

00:04:48.370 --> 00:04:53.350 align:middle line:84%
her mouth, her hair, a
pillow of blackened ferns,

00:04:53.350 --> 00:04:58.840 align:middle line:84%
he means to match her
stillness bone for bone.

00:04:58.840 --> 00:05:01.780 align:middle line:84%
Nearby he hears the
younger children cry,

00:05:01.780 --> 00:05:06.190 align:middle line:84%
and his aunts, like careless
thieves out in the kitchen.

00:05:06.190 --> 00:05:11.860 align:middle line:90%


00:05:11.860 --> 00:05:13.330 align:middle line:84%
This is the double
bed where she'd

00:05:13.330 --> 00:05:17.830 align:middle line:84%
been born, bed of her
mother's marriage and decline,

00:05:17.830 --> 00:05:21.370 align:middle line:84%
bed her sisters
also ripened in, bed

00:05:21.370 --> 00:05:25.570 align:middle line:84%
that drew her husband to her
side, bed of her one child lost

00:05:25.570 --> 00:05:29.770 align:middle line:84%
and five delivered, bed
indifferent to the many bodies,

00:05:29.770 --> 00:05:32.590 align:middle line:84%
bed around which all
of them were gathered,

00:05:32.590 --> 00:05:35.260 align:middle line:84%
watery shapes in the
shadows of the room,

00:05:35.260 --> 00:05:38.470 align:middle line:84%
and the bed frail abroad
the violent ocean,

00:05:38.470 --> 00:05:43.150 align:middle line:84%
the frightened beasts so
clumsy and pathetic heaving,

00:05:43.150 --> 00:05:45.310 align:middle line:84%
their wet breath
against her neck,

00:05:45.310 --> 00:05:49.510 align:middle line:84%
she threw off the pile of
quilts white face like a moon,

00:05:49.510 --> 00:05:52.075 align:middle line:84%
and then entered straight
away into heaven.

00:05:52.075 --> 00:06:03.930 align:middle line:90%


00:06:03.930 --> 00:06:06.550 align:middle line:84%
When it was time to
move, he didn't move,

00:06:06.550 --> 00:06:09.090 align:middle line:90%
he lay off his mother.

00:06:09.090 --> 00:06:12.660 align:middle line:84%
She pushed and pushed,
she'd had a stone before,

00:06:12.660 --> 00:06:15.180 align:middle line:90%
she wanted a child.

00:06:15.180 --> 00:06:18.390 align:middle line:84%
Reaching in, I turned
him like a cat.

00:06:18.390 --> 00:06:22.260 align:middle line:84%
Rob gave her a piece of kindling
wood, she bit right through.

00:06:22.260 --> 00:06:24.930 align:middle line:90%
I turned him twice.

00:06:24.930 --> 00:06:28.080 align:middle line:84%
Her sisters were all in the
house, her brother home again

00:06:28.080 --> 00:06:31.200 align:middle line:84%
on leave, in the months to
come, in the cities that

00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:35.130 align:middle line:84%
would be families, reported
their terminals and fled,

00:06:35.130 --> 00:06:39.570 align:middle line:84%
volunteers would have to
hunt the dying door to door.

00:06:39.570 --> 00:06:43.950 align:middle line:84%
It started here, with too
many breech and stillborn.

00:06:43.950 --> 00:06:47.430 align:middle line:90%
Women who looked 50 not 32.

00:06:47.430 --> 00:06:50.430 align:middle line:84%
I marked it childbed
fever in my log.

00:06:50.430 --> 00:07:00.050 align:middle line:90%


00:07:00.050 --> 00:07:03.410 align:middle line:84%
Dear Manny, Pug says,
even a year of camp

00:07:03.410 --> 00:07:06.590 align:middle line:84%
would not help most
of us, so why not now?

00:07:06.590 --> 00:07:09.410 align:middle line:84%
Tomorrow we take a train to
New York City, board of freight

00:07:09.410 --> 00:07:10.490 align:middle line:90%
are there.

00:07:10.490 --> 00:07:12.710 align:middle line:84%
You know how the
logs are flushed

00:07:12.710 --> 00:07:15.200 align:middle line:84%
through the long flume
at Hodnetts' Mill,

00:07:15.200 --> 00:07:17.390 align:middle line:84%
the stream flooding
the sluice, the cut

00:07:17.390 --> 00:07:20.300 align:middle line:84%
pine crowding and
pushing and rushing,

00:07:20.300 --> 00:07:23.600 align:middle line:84%
and then the narrow chute
opens onto the pond.

00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:28.100 align:middle line:84%
I feel like that once we are
out to sea and seeing the world.

00:07:28.100 --> 00:07:31.070 align:middle line:84%
I need to say, I've saved
a bit, and you should also

00:07:31.070 --> 00:07:32.840 align:middle line:90%
have my grandpa's watch.

00:07:32.840 --> 00:07:35.600 align:middle line:90%
Tell Fan that I said so.

00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:39.320 align:middle line:84%
Keep busy, pray for
me, go on with life,

00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:42.760 align:middle line:84%
and put your mind to a
wedding in the yard."

00:07:42.760 --> 00:07:46.000 align:middle line:90%