WEBVTT

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"That the science of cartography
is limited and not simply

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by the fact that this
shading of forest cannot show

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the fragrance of balsam,
the gloom of cypresses,

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is what I wish to prove.

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When you and I
were first in love,

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we drove to the
borders of Connacht

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and entered a wood there.

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Look down, you said.

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That was once a famine road.

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I looked down at ivy and the
scutch grass rough-cast stone

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had disappeared
into, as you told me

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in the second winter
of their ordeal,

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in 1847, when the
crop had failed twice,

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relief committees gave the
starving Irish such roads

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to build.

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Where they died, there the
road ended and ends still.

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And when I take down the map
of this island, it is never so.

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I can say here is the
masterful, the apt rendering

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of the spherical as flat,
nor an ingenious design which

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persuades a curve into a
plane, but to tell myself again

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that the line which says
woodland, and cries hunger

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gives out among sweet
pine and cypress,

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and finds no horizon
will not be there."

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And if anything really
brings back up for me

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that the extraordinary rift
between past and history,

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it is this incident for which
I wrote the poem "Quarantine".

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The famine was hardly
recorded in the documents

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and chronicles at
the time, and you

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have to look for one of
the smallest references

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to one of the
biggest events of it

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but also one of the most hidden
events, just the death of a man

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and woman among the
millions who died.

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In a book that was
published called

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Mo Sgéal Féin, which was
published in 1901

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by a man called
Peadar Ua Laoghaire,

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who was a priest by
that time-- he got back

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on himself as a very young
man and in fact a child

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in the little village of
[INAUDIBLE] in West Cork.

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And it's a two
sentence reminiscence

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of a young man and
woman whose children

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had died in the workhouse.

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And who left the workhouse in
the bitter cold of the night

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to walk back to the
cabin where they had

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some semblance of happiness.

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And they died in the
bitter cold that night,

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and morning that they
were found her feet

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were held against
his chest to try,

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he had tried to warm
them as he died.

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And to me that stands
for that place of shadows

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where something extraordinary
happens that might not

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be recorded but it
is part of everything

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we have become in Ireland.

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Quote-- "in the worst hour of
the worst season of the worst

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year of a whole people, a man
set out from the workhouse

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with his wife.

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He was walking.

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They were both walking north.

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She was sick with famine
fever and could not keep up.

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He lifted her and
put her on his back.

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He walked like
that west and west

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and north until at nightfall
under freezing stars

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they arrived.

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In the morning, they were both
found dead of cold, of hunger,

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of the toxins of
a whole history.

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But her feet were held
against his breastbone.

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The last heat of his flesh
was his last gift to her.

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Let no love poem ever
come to this threshold.

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There is no place here
for the inexact praise

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of the easy rises and
sensuality of the body.

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There is only time for
this merciless inventory--

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their death together
in the winter of 1847.

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Also what they
suffered, how they did,

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and what there is
between a man and woman,

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and in which darkness
it can best be proved."

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I wanted to talk a little bit
about being an Irish poet.

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It's extremely hard to
describe the differences.

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I have loved and
admired American poetry

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since I was a child,
and it's very hard

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to identify the differences.

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So once I happened to be judging
something for the Irish Times,

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and the editor of
the Irish Times,

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who was obviously exasperated
with Irish poetry,

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which flows in a very steady
stream into that newspaper--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--introduced the
occasion by saying

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that they at the Irish
Times had finally

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done the definitive statistics
on poetry in Ireland.

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And they have found
that, although only 10%

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of the Irish people read
poetry, 45% had wrote it.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it's a statistic
that all of us

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who live there has some weight
and then has some truth.

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But I have seen
also the wonderful--

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I suppose the very
charming sides of this.

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And every time I
tell this story,

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I think I won't tell it
again, but I'll tell you one

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last time.

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Ireland has a
relationship with poetry

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that is almost impossible to
quantify and certainly not

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something you'd want to
think about too much.

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But I do remember leaving the
house once to come to Stanford

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and getting a phone call from
the national airline, which

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is called Aer Lingus.

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And very nice woman at the
end of the phone, and she

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said to me "Ms. Boland, we
just had a board meeting

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and we're changing
our corporate image".

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And she said "we've
decided to take

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the work of 14 Irish
writers, eight of them dead,

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and weave them into the
seats of the airline".

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I didn't say too much.

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[LAUGHTER]

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She said to me, "so,
would you fax us

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over four lines of your poetry?"

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[LAUGHTER]

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And then she said--
there was a pause

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and she said, "but nothing with
the word 'crash' in it, dear".

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[LAUGHTER]

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And that's a true story.

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If you fly Aer Lingus,
you will see it

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in the seats in front of you.

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So there you go, these are the
differences in Irish poetry.

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But, so one of the jobs which
I'm most honored to have,

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of course I did teach
at Stanford University.

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Jason Brown here,
great graduate of that

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program, and there are
many, many wonderful things

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about Stanford.

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But it is, I would think, one
of the very favorite jobs I ever

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had.

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But I thought of
perhaps more than

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that, it's that in 1994
the National Maternity

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Hospital, where my
grandmother died,

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asked me to be its
poet in residence

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for its centenary year.

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The National Maternity
Hospital is in fact

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the hospital in
Ulysses by James Joyce.

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For those of you who
wish to look it up,

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it is the "Oxen of
the Sun" chapter.

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There is very little
evidence that the hospital

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wishes to be remembered
as part of that chapter.

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It's not very complimentary,
but the hospital

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asked me to be their
poet in residence,

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and I was delighted to
be that for the year,

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and people in Dublin
were interested.

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People would say
to me, you know,

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what are you doing in the
National Maternity Hospital?

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And they would say
to me, well, do you

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work with the new
mothers and babies?

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And I never went near the
new mothers and babies,

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because my children were born
in the National Maternity

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Hospital, and the
last thing I would

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like to see when they were
born was the poet in residence.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But I did write some
poems that year,

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and so I do think
[INAUDIBLE] often

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and I do look back at as one of
those wonderful Irish anomalies

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being there.

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But I wrote a poem in that
year called "Pomegranate,"

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and it was really to
note for myself that --

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occasion the birth
of my first daughter.

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And the "Pomegranate" is
built on the great legend

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of Ceres and Persephone.

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Persephone is kidnapped and
taken to the underworld,

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and her mother goes
to get her back

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and gets her back
for half the year of,

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which becomes the
summer and the spring.

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But the child stays down
there that half the year,

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which is the winter
and the autumn.

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It's really a beautiful myth
of the start of the seasons,

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but the child could
have come back entirely

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if they hadn't eaten anything,
but they ate a pomegranate.

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And this was really
just to note my surprise

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by having a child who
turned into a teenager,

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so "Pomegranate."

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[LAUGHTER]

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"The only legend
I have ever loved

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is the story of a
daughter lost in hell

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and found and rescued there.

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Love and blackmail
are the gist of it.

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Ceres and Persephone, the
names, and the best thing

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about the legend is I
can enter it anywhere.

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And have.

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As a child in exile in a city
of fogs and strange consonants,

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I read it first, and at
first I was an exiled child

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in the crackling dusk of the
underworld, the stars blighted.

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Later I walked out in a
summer twilight searching

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for my daughter at that time.

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When she came running, I was
ready to make any bargain

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to keep her.

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I carried her back past
white beams and wasps

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and honey-scented buddleias.

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But I was Ceres then,
and I knew winter

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was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.

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Was inescapable for
each one we passed.

00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:23.430 align:middle line:90%
And for me.

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It is winter, and
the stars are hidden.

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I climb the stairs
and stand where

00:10:28.110 --> 00:10:32.440 align:middle line:84%
I can see my child asleep
beside her teen magazines,

00:10:32.440 --> 00:10:36.110 align:middle line:84%
her can of Coke, her
plate of uncut fruit.

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The pomegranate!

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How did I forget it?

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She could have come home
and been safe and ended

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the story and all our
heartbroken searching.

00:10:45.810 --> 00:10:48.450 align:middle line:84%
But she reached out a hand
and plucked a pomegranate.

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She put out her hand and pulled
down the French sound for apple

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and the noise of
stone and the proof

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that even in the place of
death, at the heart of legend,

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in the midst of rocks full
of unshed tears ready to be

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diamonds by the time
the story was told,

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a child can be hungry.

00:11:09.420 --> 00:11:10.560 align:middle line:90%
I could warn her.

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There is still a chance.

00:11:12.450 --> 00:11:14.220 align:middle line:90%
The rain is cold.

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The road is flint-covered.

00:11:16.620 --> 00:11:19.980 align:middle line:84%
The suburb has cars
and cable television.

00:11:19.980 --> 00:11:23.190 align:middle line:84%
The veiled stars
are above ground.

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It is another world.

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But what else can a
mother give her daughter

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but such beautiful
rifts in time?

00:11:31.320 --> 00:11:34.410 align:middle line:84%
If I defer the grief, I
will diminish the gift.

00:11:34.410 --> 00:11:36.900 align:middle line:84%
The legend will be
hers as well as mine.

00:11:36.900 --> 00:11:38.100 align:middle line:90%
She will enter it.

00:11:38.100 --> 00:11:39.360 align:middle line:90%
As I have.

00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:40.620 align:middle line:90%
She will wake up.

00:11:40.620 --> 00:11:44.130 align:middle line:84%
She will hold the papery
flushed skin and her hand.

00:11:44.130 --> 00:11:45.780 align:middle line:90%
And to her lips.

00:11:45.780 --> 00:11:48.870 align:middle line:90%
And I will say nothing."

00:11:48.870 --> 00:11:56.120 align:middle line:84%
I wanted to also say that
particular poem, that thread,

00:11:56.120 --> 00:11:59.010 align:middle line:84%
if you like, of the
argument of life and house,

00:11:59.010 --> 00:12:02.660 align:middle line:84%
is in this other poem,
which Gail was kind enough

00:12:02.660 --> 00:12:04.910 align:middle line:84%
to mention, called
"Thanked be Fortune."

00:12:04.910 --> 00:12:08.690 align:middle line:84%
And it is a poem for my
husband, and as indeed he

00:12:08.690 --> 00:12:12.950 align:middle line:84%
is a presence in this book,
been married 35 years.

00:12:12.950 --> 00:12:18.290 align:middle line:84%
And my husband is a
great book collector,

00:12:18.290 --> 00:12:22.700 align:middle line:84%
and those books began to
creep from room to room

00:12:22.700 --> 00:12:24.380 align:middle line:84%
no matter what
agreements we made.

00:12:24.380 --> 00:12:27.420 align:middle line:84%
Somehow the books silted
into the next room,

00:12:27.420 --> 00:12:31.250 align:middle line:84%
and finally sort of
silted up the stairs.

00:12:31.250 --> 00:12:34.475 align:middle line:84%
And I remember looking
one evening of --

00:12:34.475 --> 00:12:38.990 align:middle line:84%
when our first baby was
born looking at these books,

00:12:38.990 --> 00:12:43.340 align:middle line:84%
and they all seemed to be
about disastrous life affairs.

00:12:43.340 --> 00:12:44.700 align:middle line:90%
I can't remember them all.

00:12:44.700 --> 00:12:46.290 align:middle line:84%
But I remember
thinking about it.

00:12:46.290 --> 00:12:49.610 align:middle line:84%
And so somehow, the
contrast of that.

00:12:49.610 --> 00:12:51.650 align:middle line:84%
"Thanked Be Fortune"
is a wonderful line.

00:12:51.650 --> 00:12:55.492 align:middle line:84%
It comes bright, negatively,
fortunately [INAUDIBLE].

00:12:55.492 --> 00:12:58.260 align:middle line:90%


00:12:58.260 --> 00:13:01.440 align:middle line:90%
"Did we live a double life?

00:13:01.440 --> 00:13:05.310 align:middle line:84%
I would have said we
never envied the epic

00:13:05.310 --> 00:13:08.100 align:middle line:90%
glory of the star-crossed.

00:13:08.100 --> 00:13:11.700 align:middle line:84%
I would have said
we learned by heart

00:13:11.700 --> 00:13:16.290 align:middle line:84%
the code marriage makes of
passion, duty, dailyness,

00:13:16.290 --> 00:13:18.270 align:middle line:90%
routine.

00:13:18.270 --> 00:13:21.810 align:middle line:84%
But after dark,
when we went to bed

00:13:21.810 --> 00:13:25.920 align:middle line:84%
under the bitter fire of
constellations, orderly,

00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:29.850 align:middle line:84%
uninterested, and cold,
at least in our case,

00:13:29.850 --> 00:13:33.450 align:middle line:84%
and the bookshelves
just above our heads,

00:13:33.450 --> 00:13:35.910 align:middle line:84%
all through the
hours of darkness,

00:13:35.910 --> 00:13:40.470 align:middle line:84%
men and women wept, cursed,
kept and broke faith,

00:13:40.470 --> 00:13:42.690 align:middle line:90%
and killed themselves for love.

00:13:42.690 --> 00:13:44.490 align:middle line:90%
Then it was dawn again.

00:13:44.490 --> 00:13:48.420 align:middle line:84%
Restored to ourselves, we
woke early and lay together,

00:13:48.420 --> 00:13:50.820 align:middle line:84%
listening to our
child crying, as if

00:13:50.820 --> 00:13:55.600 align:middle line:84%
to birdsong, with ice on the
windowsills and the grass

00:13:55.600 --> 00:14:00.150 align:middle line:84%
eking out the last
crooked hour of starlight."

00:14:00.150 --> 00:14:03.510 align:middle line:84%
Now I would find it hard to
say how influenced I was really

00:14:03.510 --> 00:14:06.630 align:middle line:84%
by the idea of that
difference between the past,

00:14:06.630 --> 00:14:09.690 align:middle line:84%
and its lack of record,
and the history of which

00:14:09.690 --> 00:14:11.100 align:middle line:90%
is there in front of you.

00:14:11.100 --> 00:14:14.700 align:middle line:84%
And to me, so much of that
was embodied in, really,

00:14:14.700 --> 00:14:17.490 align:middle line:84%
the great friend of my
life, who was my own mother.

00:14:17.490 --> 00:14:22.600 align:middle line:84%
My mother was an orphan and came
from the middle of the country.

00:14:22.600 --> 00:14:25.590 align:middle line:84%
Her mother died in the
national maternity hospital.

00:14:25.590 --> 00:14:28.215 align:middle line:84%
She was the youngest,
the last child.

00:14:28.215 --> 00:14:29.970 align:middle line:90%
Her mother died in childbirth.

00:14:29.970 --> 00:14:32.250 align:middle line:84%
And her father drowned
in the Bay of Biscay.

00:14:32.250 --> 00:14:35.250 align:middle line:84%
And so there was a
tremendous amount of inertia.

00:14:35.250 --> 00:14:39.462 align:middle line:84%
And there was no evidence
of her childhood.

00:14:39.462 --> 00:14:40.920 align:middle line:84%
And when my own
children were born,

00:14:40.920 --> 00:14:44.790 align:middle line:84%
my mother never, ever,
ever spoke about the past.

00:14:44.790 --> 00:14:49.410 align:middle line:84%
And she paid no heed to
my inquiries or anything

00:14:49.410 --> 00:14:51.190 align:middle line:90%
like that.

00:14:51.190 --> 00:14:53.307 align:middle line:84%
And then one evening,
she looked very near me.

00:14:53.307 --> 00:14:55.140 align:middle line:84%
And I went down to talk
to her when leaving.

00:14:55.140 --> 00:14:56.790 align:middle line:90%
She was about 10 minutes away.

00:14:56.790 --> 00:14:59.580 align:middle line:84%
And I said, so you must know--
you have to know something.

00:14:59.580 --> 00:15:02.180 align:middle line:90%
There has to be something.

00:15:02.180 --> 00:15:07.820 align:middle line:84%
And all of a sudden, she
told me a story so peculiar,

00:15:07.820 --> 00:15:11.540 align:middle line:84%
out of nowhere, that
I was so surprised.

00:15:11.540 --> 00:15:16.160 align:middle line:84%
And I said to her-- a family
story about her grandfather.

00:15:16.160 --> 00:15:20.470 align:middle line:90%
And I said to her, is that true?

00:15:20.470 --> 00:15:22.360 align:middle line:90%
And she said, I don't know.

00:15:22.360 --> 00:15:23.990 align:middle line:90%
So about six months later--

00:15:23.990 --> 00:15:25.860 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:15:25.860 --> 00:15:28.500 align:middle line:84%
--I said, tell me
the story again

00:15:28.500 --> 00:15:34.670 align:middle line:84%
And so she said to me-- she
told me this story, [INAUDIBLE]

00:15:34.670 --> 00:15:37.110 align:middle line:90%
the same as it was.

00:15:37.110 --> 00:15:39.590 align:middle line:84%
And I said to her, do
you think it's true?

00:15:39.590 --> 00:15:41.390 align:middle line:90%
She said to me, does it matter?

00:15:41.390 --> 00:15:44.660 align:middle line:84%
And the third time, when I went
down a month later, she said,

00:15:44.660 --> 00:15:46.075 align:middle line:90%
I already told you that story.

00:15:46.075 --> 00:15:47.450 align:middle line:84%
So that was the
end of the story.

00:15:47.450 --> 00:15:47.950 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:15:47.950 --> 00:15:51.020 align:middle line:84%
So here is the
story she told me.

00:15:51.020 --> 00:15:56.810 align:middle line:84%
And you will hear it
pretty well as I heard it.

00:15:56.810 --> 00:16:00.650 align:middle line:84%
"I know nothing about my
grandmother's childhood.

00:16:00.650 --> 00:16:01.970 align:middle line:90%
I know that she died young.

00:16:01.970 --> 00:16:04.170 align:middle line:84%
I know nothing about her
when she was a child.

00:16:04.170 --> 00:16:06.560 align:middle line:84%
There are no photographs
and no letters.

00:16:06.560 --> 00:16:09.920 align:middle line:84%
Nobody ever recalled her
to me as living memory.

00:16:09.920 --> 00:16:12.740 align:middle line:90%
It's another erasure.

00:16:12.740 --> 00:16:14.660 align:middle line:84%
And yet, something
does survive."

00:16:14.660 --> 00:16:17.660 align:middle line:84%
I should say first that this
is a piece from the prose book.

00:16:17.660 --> 00:16:22.310 align:middle line:84%
"Something does survive, a story
so odd and so strange that it

00:16:22.310 --> 00:16:26.300 align:middle line:84%
has the power to
upstage all those icons

00:16:26.300 --> 00:16:29.600 align:middle line:84%
and arrangements that
survived the reported charges

00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:33.080 align:middle line:84%
of official family histories,
even for me, even now.

00:16:33.080 --> 00:16:37.610 align:middle line:84%
It's a story I heard twice and
then no more, and so improbable

00:16:37.610 --> 00:16:41.420 align:middle line:84%
that each time I thought
of it as one of those signs

00:16:41.420 --> 00:16:43.700 align:middle line:84%
the past makes when
it has transferred

00:16:43.700 --> 00:16:48.680 align:middle line:84%
its available resources
from memory to allegory.

00:16:48.680 --> 00:16:51.260 align:middle line:84%
My grandmother came from
a family of millers.

00:16:51.260 --> 00:16:55.520 align:middle line:84%
Sometime after the famine, they
left the small fishing town

00:16:55.520 --> 00:16:57.530 align:middle line:90%
of Milford in Donegal.

00:16:57.530 --> 00:16:59.420 align:middle line:84%
Hard-pressed as they
were, they still

00:16:59.420 --> 00:17:01.310 align:middle line:84%
must have missed
the idiosyncrasy

00:17:01.310 --> 00:17:02.600 align:middle line:90%
of their own place.

00:17:02.600 --> 00:17:04.730 align:middle line:84%
The sight of Mulroy
Bay in February light

00:17:04.730 --> 00:17:06.560 align:middle line:84%
in the main street
with its steep

00:17:06.560 --> 00:17:08.599 align:middle line:90%
climb up the side of the hill.

00:17:08.599 --> 00:17:11.599 align:middle line:84%
They moved east and south
to the town of Dundalk.

00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:12.770 align:middle line:90%
Another business failed.

00:17:12.770 --> 00:17:16.010 align:middle line:84%
And they moved again to Leitrim,
where my grandmother's father

00:17:16.010 --> 00:17:19.730 align:middle line:84%
was born and was, to
him, that legend clung.

00:17:19.730 --> 00:17:22.069 align:middle line:84%
And the way I build that
legend now is the way

00:17:22.069 --> 00:17:27.440 align:middle line:84%
I heard it, out of rumor,
fossil, fact, and 1/2 memories.

00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:30.530 align:middle line:84%
He was a small man,
compact and saturnine

00:17:30.530 --> 00:17:33.110 align:middle line:84%
in the way of many
Western people.

00:17:33.110 --> 00:17:35.930 align:middle line:84%
If he was anything like a
son who I met for a few hours

00:17:35.930 --> 00:17:38.780 align:middle line:84%
many years ago, he had
eloquent and strained features,

00:17:38.780 --> 00:17:42.290 align:middle line:84%
a fine profile, close-set
and obstinate eyes.

00:17:42.290 --> 00:17:44.660 align:middle line:84%
There was something strained
and pinched about it all,

00:17:44.660 --> 00:17:46.760 align:middle line:84%
that kept him well
away from beauty.

00:17:46.760 --> 00:17:49.790 align:middle line:84%
He grew up in Leitrim, one of
the hardest of the counties.

00:17:49.790 --> 00:17:52.640 align:middle line:84%
And sometime in
his early manhood,

00:17:52.640 --> 00:17:57.590 align:middle line:84%
I imagine the early 1870s, he
fell in love with a local girl.

00:17:57.590 --> 00:17:59.840 align:middle line:84%
I know so little
about them that I

00:17:59.840 --> 00:18:02.875 align:middle line:84%
have to recount the fictional
interventionist here and say

00:18:02.875 --> 00:18:04.250 align:middle line:84%
that she was, of
course, winning,

00:18:04.250 --> 00:18:06.740 align:middle line:84%
and expressive, and true to
him, and that he loved her

00:18:06.740 --> 00:18:07.670 align:middle line:90%
stubbornly.

00:18:07.670 --> 00:18:10.250 align:middle line:90%
But there was an obstacle.

00:18:10.250 --> 00:18:11.750 align:middle line:90%
She was a younger sister.

00:18:11.750 --> 00:18:14.690 align:middle line:84%
In the manner of fairy
tales, her oldest sister

00:18:14.690 --> 00:18:17.390 align:middle line:84%
was plain and deserving
and on no account,

00:18:17.390 --> 00:18:20.510 align:middle line:84%
as was the custom, to be
slighted by having the younger

00:18:20.510 --> 00:18:22.490 align:middle line:90%
girl marry first.

00:18:22.490 --> 00:18:23.630 align:middle line:90%
And so it went wrong.

00:18:23.630 --> 00:18:27.590 align:middle line:84%
The parents insisted he would
offer his suit to the older

00:18:27.590 --> 00:18:28.700 align:middle line:90%
sister.

00:18:28.700 --> 00:18:30.530 align:middle line:84%
They may have offered
him inducements.

00:18:30.530 --> 00:18:32.060 align:middle line:90%
But I doubt it.

00:18:32.060 --> 00:18:33.800 align:middle line:84%
The inducement
can only have been

00:18:33.800 --> 00:18:36.950 align:middle line:90%
local custom and iron decorum.

00:18:36.950 --> 00:18:38.120 align:middle line:90%
There were no dowries.

00:18:38.120 --> 00:18:41.780 align:middle line:84%
These were poor people
reduced in circumstance

00:18:41.780 --> 00:18:44.300 align:middle line:84%
by a difficult
century and utterly

00:18:44.300 --> 00:18:47.600 align:middle line:84%
vulnerable to the sickness of
a heifer or a farthing's change

00:18:47.600 --> 00:18:49.490 align:middle line:90%
in the price of feed.

00:18:49.490 --> 00:18:51.770 align:middle line:84%
They would have brought to
bear on him the influence

00:18:51.770 --> 00:18:54.110 align:middle line:90%
of local opinion and approval.

00:18:54.110 --> 00:18:56.120 align:middle line:90%
He must marry the older girl.

00:18:56.120 --> 00:18:57.470 align:middle line:90%
And that was that.

00:18:57.470 --> 00:18:59.420 align:middle line:90%
And he was implacable.

00:18:59.420 --> 00:19:01.820 align:middle line:84%
It would be the younger
one, that was all.

00:19:01.820 --> 00:19:05.390 align:middle line:84%
The younger girl retained her
love for him and he for her.

00:19:05.390 --> 00:19:07.910 align:middle line:84%
And finally, and
now the narrative

00:19:07.910 --> 00:19:10.940 align:middle line:84%
quickens, and gets on steady,
and fills with unknown passages

00:19:10.940 --> 00:19:12.200 align:middle line:90%
of time lament.

00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:14.690 align:middle line:84%
The impasse yielded,
love triumphed,

00:19:14.690 --> 00:19:16.910 align:middle line:90%
and the wedding day was set.

00:19:16.910 --> 00:19:19.040 align:middle line:84%
I have no documents
and no certificate.

00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:22.790 align:middle line:84%
I have my grandmother's marriage
certificate, but not this one.

00:19:22.790 --> 00:19:26.240 align:middle line:84%
In any case, the cold
signatures of the witnesses

00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:30.560 align:middle line:84%
in the sacristan could do
no justice to the event.

00:19:30.560 --> 00:19:32.240 align:middle line:90%
The wedding day came.

00:19:32.240 --> 00:19:35.360 align:middle line:84%
It seems safe to
imagine a small granite

00:19:35.360 --> 00:19:37.970 align:middle line:84%
church in the middle
of a town land

00:19:37.970 --> 00:19:41.630 align:middle line:84%
and the weather, more than
likely, gray and overcast.

00:19:41.630 --> 00:19:43.730 align:middle line:84%
Perhaps the turnout
was a bit more

00:19:43.730 --> 00:19:48.230 align:middle line:84%
than usual because of the
notoriety of the whole thing,

00:19:48.230 --> 00:19:52.080 align:middle line:84%
the struggle of wills, and
all the gossip and curiosity

00:19:52.080 --> 00:19:54.470 align:middle line:90%
incurred on that account.

00:19:54.470 --> 00:19:57.830 align:middle line:84%
The bride came dressed in
white and heavily veiled.

00:19:57.830 --> 00:20:00.110 align:middle line:84%
The vows were
taken and repeated,

00:20:00.110 --> 00:20:02.660 align:middle line:84%
and said by the
bride and the groom.

00:20:02.660 --> 00:20:05.450 align:middle line:84%
The priest pronounced
them man and wife.

00:20:05.450 --> 00:20:08.510 align:middle line:84%
For a single moment, it
must have seemed to him

00:20:08.510 --> 00:20:12.830 align:middle line:84%
that some wound of ill luck and
misadventure in his own life

00:20:12.830 --> 00:20:16.490 align:middle line:90%
had undergone a miraculous heal.

00:20:16.490 --> 00:20:18.590 align:middle line:90%
Then he lifted the veil.

00:20:18.590 --> 00:20:21.830 align:middle line:90%
It was not the face he loved.

00:20:21.830 --> 00:20:23.930 align:middle line:90%
Convention had prevailed.

00:20:23.930 --> 00:20:28.220 align:middle line:84%
The family had smuggled in
the older and plainer girl

00:20:28.220 --> 00:20:32.870 align:middle line:84%
and he was bound to her by
iron convention and legality

00:20:32.870 --> 00:20:35.950 align:middle line:90%
the rest of his life."

00:20:35.950 --> 00:20:38.088 align:middle line:90%
But they had 13 children.

00:20:38.088 --> 00:20:41.230 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:20:41.230 --> 00:20:44.150 align:middle line:84%
So that sense, as I said,
are things in Ireland

00:20:44.150 --> 00:20:48.520 align:middle line:84%
that has always
fascinated me, that idea.

00:20:48.520 --> 00:20:52.510 align:middle line:84%
And of course, in many
ways, what has overridden

00:20:52.510 --> 00:20:55.630 align:middle line:84%
that has been the events
of the last 25 years,

00:20:55.630 --> 00:21:01.360 align:middle line:84%
where so much that was stored,
and passionate, and wonderful

00:21:01.360 --> 00:21:06.310 align:middle line:84%
in the country was overridden
by the violence and the injuries

00:21:06.310 --> 00:21:08.990 align:middle line:84%
done by Irish people
to Irish people.

00:21:08.990 --> 00:21:11.050 align:middle line:84%
And this is a poem
called "How We

00:21:11.050 --> 00:21:14.230 align:middle line:90%
Made a New Art on Old Ground."

00:21:14.230 --> 00:21:17.290 align:middle line:84%
It was written at the
time of the peace process.

00:21:17.290 --> 00:21:20.260 align:middle line:84%
And that peace process
began in Ireland

00:21:20.260 --> 00:21:26.020 align:middle line:84%
in the middle of the '90s to
come as an unbelievable relief

00:21:26.020 --> 00:21:27.700 align:middle line:90%
to those people.

00:21:27.700 --> 00:21:30.460 align:middle line:84%
Unbelievable
quantities of people

00:21:30.460 --> 00:21:33.430 align:middle line:84%
would not die, not be
mutilated, would not be injured,

00:21:33.430 --> 00:21:35.800 align:middle line:84%
would not hate each
other because of it.

00:21:35.800 --> 00:21:37.240 align:middle line:90%
And I happened to be--

00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:41.260 align:middle line:84%
I went one morning to the
old Valley of the Boyne,

00:21:41.260 --> 00:21:45.070 align:middle line:84%
where, in fact, my mother
was born, where, of course,

00:21:45.070 --> 00:21:46.930 align:middle line:84%
the great Battle of
the Boyne was fought,

00:21:46.930 --> 00:21:48.190 align:middle line:90%
which caused all the trouble.

00:21:48.190 --> 00:21:50.307 align:middle line:84%
I mean, you will
see on the sides

00:21:50.307 --> 00:21:51.890 align:middle line:84%
of the houses in the
north of Ireland,

00:21:51.890 --> 00:21:53.890 align:middle line:90%
him getting on his white horse.

00:21:53.890 --> 00:21:57.310 align:middle line:84%
The battle was fought
in 1689, but is

00:21:57.310 --> 00:21:59.050 align:middle line:90%
of recent memory to the Irish.

00:21:59.050 --> 00:22:03.550 align:middle line:84%
And it was King William and
King James, and their square,

00:22:03.550 --> 00:22:05.295 align:middle line:84%
in the beautiful
Boyne valley where

00:22:05.295 --> 00:22:07.900 align:middle line:84%
it was somehow-- and
somehow looking out

00:22:07.900 --> 00:22:10.892 align:middle line:84%
at the start of the peace
process at that valley,

00:22:10.892 --> 00:22:11.392 align:middle line:90%
touching it.

00:22:11.392 --> 00:22:13.847 align:middle line:90%
And this is the poem.

00:22:13.847 --> 00:22:17.610 align:middle line:84%
"A famous battle
happened in this valley.

00:22:17.610 --> 00:22:21.120 align:middle line:84%
You never understood the
nature poem till now,

00:22:21.120 --> 00:22:23.220 align:middle line:90%
till this morning.

00:22:23.220 --> 00:22:27.420 align:middle line:84%
If these statements seem
separate, unrelated,

00:22:27.420 --> 00:22:29.700 align:middle line:90%
follow this silence to its edge.

00:22:29.700 --> 00:22:34.290 align:middle line:84%
And you will hear the history
of air, the crispness of a fern

00:22:34.290 --> 00:22:38.670 align:middle line:84%
or the upward cut and
turnaround of a fieldfare

00:22:38.670 --> 00:22:41.490 align:middle line:90%
or thrush written on it.

00:22:41.490 --> 00:22:44.220 align:middle line:90%
The other history is silent.

00:22:44.220 --> 00:22:46.350 align:middle line:90%
The estuary is over there.

00:22:46.350 --> 00:22:49.350 align:middle line:90%
The issue was decided here.

00:22:49.350 --> 00:22:52.500 align:middle line:84%
Two kings prepared
to give no quarter.

00:22:52.500 --> 00:22:56.010 align:middle line:84%
Then one king and
one dead tradition.

00:22:56.010 --> 00:23:01.410 align:middle line:84%
Now the humid dusk, the old
wounds wait for language,

00:23:01.410 --> 00:23:03.630 align:middle line:90%
for a different truth.

00:23:03.630 --> 00:23:05.580 align:middle line:84%
And when you see the
silk of the willow

00:23:05.580 --> 00:23:07.890 align:middle line:84%
and the wider edge
of the river turn

00:23:07.890 --> 00:23:10.560 align:middle line:90%
and grow dark and then darker.

00:23:10.560 --> 00:23:12.930 align:middle line:84%
Then you will know that
the nature poem is not

00:23:12.930 --> 00:23:15.360 align:middle line:90%
the action nor its end.

00:23:15.360 --> 00:23:17.970 align:middle line:84%
It is this rust on the
gate beside the trees,

00:23:17.970 --> 00:23:21.030 align:middle line:84%
on the cattle grid
underneath our feet,

00:23:21.030 --> 00:23:23.460 align:middle line:90%
on the steering wheel shaft.

00:23:23.460 --> 00:23:28.660 align:middle line:84%
It is an aftermath, an overlay,
and even in its own modest way,

00:23:28.660 --> 00:23:31.720 align:middle line:90%
an art of peace.

00:23:31.720 --> 00:23:34.720 align:middle line:84%
I try the word distance and
it fills with sycamores,

00:23:34.720 --> 00:23:37.240 align:middle line:90%
a summer's worth of pollen.

00:23:37.240 --> 00:23:40.265 align:middle line:84%
And as I write valley
straw, metal blood, oaths,

00:23:40.265 --> 00:23:42.730 align:middle line:90%
armor are unwritten.

00:23:42.730 --> 00:23:46.750 align:middle line:84%
Silence spreads slowly from
these words to those ilex

00:23:46.750 --> 00:23:49.360 align:middle line:84%
trees, half in,
half out of shadows,

00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:51.730 align:middle line:84%
falling on the shallow
ford of the south bank

00:23:51.730 --> 00:23:53.710 align:middle line:90%
beside Yellow island.

00:23:53.710 --> 00:23:57.250 align:middle line:84%
As twilight shows how this
sweet corrosion begins

00:23:57.250 --> 00:24:00.010 align:middle line:84%
to be complete,
what we see is what

00:24:00.010 --> 00:24:03.580 align:middle line:84%
the poem says, evening coming,
cattle, cattle-shadows,

00:24:03.580 --> 00:24:05.980 align:middle line:84%
and whin bushes, and
a change of weather

00:24:05.980 --> 00:24:08.440 align:middle line:90%
about to change them all.

00:24:08.440 --> 00:24:13.180 align:middle line:84%
What we see is how the place
and the torment of the place

00:24:13.180 --> 00:24:16.795 align:middle line:84%
are, for this moment,
free of one another."

00:24:16.795 --> 00:24:23.680 align:middle line:84%
So the theme of Dorcas
has been something

00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:29.350 align:middle line:84%
that has always been at
the forefront of what

00:24:29.350 --> 00:24:30.790 align:middle line:90%
I want to write about.

00:24:30.790 --> 00:24:37.210 align:middle line:84%
And my second daughter is
now an investment banker,

00:24:37.210 --> 00:24:40.170 align:middle line:84%
but was once a
little redheaded girl

00:24:40.170 --> 00:24:43.190 align:middle line:84%
who used to come out
with me every single day

00:24:43.190 --> 00:24:45.590 align:middle line:84%
that there was a junk fair,
antique fair, whatever

00:24:45.590 --> 00:24:46.790 align:middle line:90%
it was in Ireland.

00:24:46.790 --> 00:24:48.560 align:middle line:84%
There are many, many
of them in the city

00:24:48.560 --> 00:24:51.860 align:middle line:84%
on the weekends, everything
from stamps, and glass,

00:24:51.860 --> 00:24:53.410 align:middle line:90%
and lace, and--

00:24:53.410 --> 00:24:54.370 align:middle line:90%
and whatever.

00:24:54.370 --> 00:24:56.020 align:middle line:90%
So she would come.

00:24:56.020 --> 00:24:58.210 align:middle line:84%
We would go through
all this together.

00:24:58.210 --> 00:25:04.110 align:middle line:84%
And she would collect a
few pennies or stamps,

00:25:04.110 --> 00:25:05.970 align:middle line:90%
come home and be delighted.

00:25:05.970 --> 00:25:10.110 align:middle line:84%
And then, of course,
came the inevitable day

00:25:10.110 --> 00:25:12.390 align:middle line:84%
when she said, "I
just don't want to go.

00:25:12.390 --> 00:25:13.750 align:middle line:90%
I have to meet somebody".

00:25:13.750 --> 00:25:15.060 align:middle line:90%
And so that was that.

00:25:15.060 --> 00:25:20.250 align:middle line:84%
And this is a poem called
"The Necessity for Irony."

00:25:20.250 --> 00:25:26.760 align:middle line:84%
"On Sundays, when the rain
held off, after lunch or later,

00:25:26.760 --> 00:25:29.760 align:middle line:84%
I would go with my
12-year-old daughter into town

00:25:29.760 --> 00:25:34.440 align:middle line:84%
and put down the time at
junk sales, antique fairs.

00:25:34.440 --> 00:25:37.815 align:middle line:84%
There I would lean over
tables, absorbed by lace,

00:25:37.815 --> 00:25:40.200 align:middle line:90%
wooden frames, and glass.

00:25:40.200 --> 00:25:43.860 align:middle line:84%
My daughter stood at the
other end of the room,

00:25:43.860 --> 00:25:48.420 align:middle line:84%
her flame-colored hair obvious
whenever, which was not often,

00:25:48.420 --> 00:25:49.890 align:middle line:90%
I turned around.

00:25:49.890 --> 00:25:53.040 align:middle line:84%
I turned around,
she was gone, grown,

00:25:53.040 --> 00:25:57.090 align:middle line:84%
no longer ready to come with me
whenever a dry Sunday held out

00:25:57.090 --> 00:26:01.200 align:middle line:84%
its promises of small
histories, endings.

00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:06.270 align:middle line:84%
When I was young, I studied
styles, their use and origin,

00:26:06.270 --> 00:26:10.560 align:middle line:84%
which age was known for which
ornament, and was always drawn

00:26:10.560 --> 00:26:14.160 align:middle line:84%
to a lurid speech
and a civil tone,

00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:17.190 align:middle line:84%
but never thought I would
have the need, as I do now,

00:26:17.190 --> 00:26:19.710 align:middle line:90%
for a darker one.

00:26:19.710 --> 00:26:24.990 align:middle line:84%
Spirit of irony, my caustic
author of the past, of memory,

00:26:24.990 --> 00:26:29.190 align:middle line:84%
and of its pain, which
returns hurts and stings.

00:26:29.190 --> 00:26:30.420 align:middle line:90%
Reproach me now.

00:26:30.420 --> 00:26:35.250 align:middle line:84%
Remind me, that I was in
those rooms with my child,

00:26:35.250 --> 00:26:38.325 align:middle line:84%
with my back turned
to her, searching, oh,

00:26:38.325 --> 00:26:42.350 align:middle line:90%
irony, for beautiful things."

00:26:42.350 --> 00:26:45.410 align:middle line:84%
And I would like
to, if I may, finish

00:26:45.410 --> 00:26:48.410 align:middle line:84%
and would be glad to-- but with
one comment, a longer comment,

00:26:48.410 --> 00:26:52.490 align:middle line:84%
it's a place where I think
of myself as having had

00:26:52.490 --> 00:26:54.920 align:middle line:84%
to be, for a moment,
in that crucible where

00:26:54.920 --> 00:26:57.110 align:middle line:90%
I think poets learn something.

00:26:57.110 --> 00:27:01.340 align:middle line:84%
That same wonderful
child came with us years

00:27:01.340 --> 00:27:03.410 align:middle line:84%
before that to the
international program,

00:27:03.410 --> 00:27:08.990 align:middle line:84%
as an 11 month old baby, to the
international program in Iowa.

00:27:08.990 --> 00:27:11.930 align:middle line:84%
And she was there
a couple of weeks

00:27:11.930 --> 00:27:13.770 align:middle line:90%
when she became deathly ill.

00:27:13.770 --> 00:27:16.190 align:middle line:84%
And we truly thought
she would die.

00:27:16.190 --> 00:27:19.820 align:middle line:84%
She had meningitis, and
was a very young child

00:27:19.820 --> 00:27:23.945 align:middle line:84%
to have that terrible disease,
and made a wonderful recovery

00:27:23.945 --> 00:27:26.780 align:middle line:84%
thanks to truly wonderful
American medicine.

00:27:26.780 --> 00:27:33.410 align:middle line:84%
But in that moment, when the
international poetry program

00:27:33.410 --> 00:27:35.150 align:middle line:84%
was one that I simply
couldn't go to,

00:27:35.150 --> 00:27:39.980 align:middle line:84%
I was in the hospital
with a child at the time.

00:27:39.980 --> 00:27:43.850 align:middle line:84%
My mind began to go forwards and
backwards about what we write

00:27:43.850 --> 00:27:46.010 align:middle line:90%
about when we write poetry.

00:27:46.010 --> 00:27:47.180 align:middle line:90%
Why do we write it?

00:27:47.180 --> 00:27:48.440 align:middle line:90%
What do we leave out?

00:27:48.440 --> 00:27:50.450 align:middle line:90%
And what do we put in?

00:27:50.450 --> 00:27:53.390 align:middle line:84%
And somehow, I was
so aware of what

00:27:53.390 --> 00:27:57.530 align:middle line:84%
we have been spared, of this
shadow that have passed us,

00:27:57.530 --> 00:28:00.020 align:middle line:84%
and that place we
didn't have to go to,

00:28:00.020 --> 00:28:06.620 align:middle line:84%
and all those other people
who do lose children.

00:28:06.620 --> 00:28:09.450 align:middle line:84%
And these poems are poems
that really document it.

00:28:09.450 --> 00:28:12.410 align:middle line:84%
The first is a poem
for my husband, Kevin,

00:28:12.410 --> 00:28:16.250 align:middle line:84%
when we met on the bridge,
truly at the moment

00:28:16.250 --> 00:28:20.300 align:middle line:84%
when I and he thought
the child might not live.

00:28:20.300 --> 00:28:23.540 align:middle line:84%
It was very, very small and
very ill in the first days.

00:28:23.540 --> 00:28:24.980 align:middle line:90%
And we met on the bridge.

00:28:24.980 --> 00:28:27.290 align:middle line:90%
And I was sitting in the snow.

00:28:27.290 --> 00:28:30.420 align:middle line:84%
And everything seemed
to be in doubt.

00:28:30.420 --> 00:28:33.740 align:middle line:84%
And I went back to Iowa
then to read it, actually,

00:28:33.740 --> 00:28:35.300 align:middle line:90%
many years later.

00:28:35.300 --> 00:28:36.680 align:middle line:90%
I went back to the bridge.

00:28:36.680 --> 00:28:39.410 align:middle line:84%
And I was just so
moved in my mind

00:28:39.410 --> 00:28:41.180 align:middle line:90%
seeing Kevin in front of me.

00:28:41.180 --> 00:28:43.850 align:middle line:84%
But of course, if
that is something

00:28:43.850 --> 00:28:47.780 align:middle line:84%
about the past and memory,
the figures our mind produces.

00:28:47.780 --> 00:28:48.620 align:middle line:90%
They're not real.

00:28:48.620 --> 00:28:50.540 align:middle line:90%
They are the ghosts of the past.

00:28:50.540 --> 00:28:52.350 align:middle line:90%
This is a poem of loving memory.

00:28:52.350 --> 00:28:54.860 align:middle line:84%
It looks back to
that time, and also

00:28:54.860 --> 00:28:57.710 align:middle line:84%
is built on a wonderful
sixth book of Aeneid,

00:28:57.710 --> 00:29:00.980 align:middle line:84%
where Aeneas crosses
into the underworld

00:29:00.980 --> 00:29:05.150 align:middle line:84%
crosses over the river
and his old adversaries

00:29:05.150 --> 00:29:06.730 align:middle line:90%
come out to shout at him.

00:29:06.730 --> 00:29:09.620 align:middle line:84%
But their voices
turn into whispers

00:29:09.620 --> 00:29:13.830 align:middle line:84%
because it is the underworld
and because their time is over.

00:29:13.830 --> 00:29:15.360 align:middle line:84%
And this is a poem
about a memory.

00:29:15.360 --> 00:29:18.130 align:middle line:90%
It's called "Love."

00:29:18.130 --> 00:29:22.420 align:middle line:84%
"Dark falls on this
Midwestern town, where we once

00:29:22.420 --> 00:29:25.870 align:middle line:90%
lived when myths collided.

00:29:25.870 --> 00:29:29.590 align:middle line:84%
Dusk has hidden the
bridge in the river, which

00:29:29.590 --> 00:29:33.670 align:middle line:84%
slides and deepens to become
the water the hero crossed

00:29:33.670 --> 00:29:36.790 align:middle line:90%
on his way to hell.

00:29:36.790 --> 00:29:41.200 align:middle line:84%
Not far from here is
our old apartment.

00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:43.960 align:middle line:84%
We had a kitchen
and an Amish table.

00:29:43.960 --> 00:29:45.700 align:middle line:90%
We had a view.

00:29:45.700 --> 00:29:49.870 align:middle line:84%
And we discovered there love had
the feather and muscle of wings

00:29:49.870 --> 00:29:55.910 align:middle line:84%
and had come to live with us,
a brother of fire and air.

00:29:55.910 --> 00:29:58.760 align:middle line:84%
We had two infant
children, one of whom

00:29:58.760 --> 00:30:02.330 align:middle line:84%
was touched by death in
this town and spared.

00:30:02.330 --> 00:30:06.520 align:middle line:84%
And when the hero was hailed
by his comrades in hell,

00:30:06.520 --> 00:30:08.860 align:middle line:84%
their mouths opened,
and their voices failed,

00:30:08.860 --> 00:30:10.540 align:middle line:84%
and there is no
knowing what they

00:30:10.540 --> 00:30:16.345 align:middle line:84%
would have asked about a life
they had shared and lost.

00:30:16.345 --> 00:30:17.810 align:middle line:90%
I am your wife.

00:30:17.810 --> 00:30:19.730 align:middle line:90%
It was years ago.

00:30:19.730 --> 00:30:21.495 align:middle line:90%
Our child is healed.

00:30:21.495 --> 00:30:23.990 align:middle line:90%
We love each other still.

00:30:23.990 --> 00:30:27.950 align:middle line:84%
Across our day-to-day
and ordinary distances,

00:30:27.950 --> 00:30:29.900 align:middle line:90%
we speak plainly.

00:30:29.900 --> 00:30:32.510 align:middle line:90%
We hear each other clearly.

00:30:32.510 --> 00:30:37.010 align:middle line:84%
And yet I want to return to you
on the bridge of the Iowa river

00:30:37.010 --> 00:30:41.660 align:middle line:84%
as you were, with snow on
the shoulders of your coat

00:30:41.660 --> 00:30:45.200 align:middle line:84%
and a car passing with
its headlights on.

00:30:45.200 --> 00:30:48.530 align:middle line:84%
I see you as a hero
in a text, the image

00:30:48.530 --> 00:30:51.080 align:middle line:90%
blazing and the edges gilded.

00:30:51.080 --> 00:30:57.230 align:middle line:84%
And I long to cry out the epic
question, my dear companion,

00:30:57.230 --> 00:31:00.830 align:middle line:84%
will we ever live
so intensely again?

00:31:00.830 --> 00:31:05.150 align:middle line:84%
Will love come to us again
and be so formidable at rest?

00:31:05.150 --> 00:31:08.840 align:middle line:84%
It offered us ascension
even to look at him.

00:31:08.840 --> 00:31:12.155 align:middle line:84%
But the words are shadows
and you cannot hear me.

00:31:12.155 --> 00:31:16.700 align:middle line:84%
You walk away and
I cannot follow."

00:31:16.700 --> 00:31:19.130 align:middle line:84%
And the poem, which, in a
sense, is a sequel to that,

00:31:19.130 --> 00:31:22.250 align:middle line:84%
is this poem about that
experience, which changed

00:31:22.250 --> 00:31:24.230 align:middle line:90%
me forever, really, as a poet.

00:31:24.230 --> 00:31:28.560 align:middle line:84%
It made me want to think
of the sources of the poem,

00:31:28.560 --> 00:31:31.370 align:middle line:84%
what we leave out
and what we put in.

00:31:31.370 --> 00:31:34.460 align:middle line:84%
And somehow, I think every
poet comes in some way

00:31:34.460 --> 00:31:36.260 align:middle line:90%
to that series of choices.

00:31:36.260 --> 00:31:38.210 align:middle line:84%
This is a poem
called "The Journey."

00:31:38.210 --> 00:31:43.280 align:middle line:84%
And I've deliberately based
it on the poetry convention,

00:31:43.280 --> 00:31:46.970 align:middle line:84%
the very hierarchical
poem convention where

00:31:46.970 --> 00:31:49.220 align:middle line:84%
the poet goes down
to the underworld,

00:31:49.220 --> 00:31:53.600 align:middle line:84%
and goes right down there,
and is accompanied, usually,

00:31:53.600 --> 00:31:55.820 align:middle line:84%
by another poet, and
comes back wiser.

00:31:55.820 --> 00:31:59.630 align:middle line:84%
And I go back to the
underworld, go down with Sappho,

00:31:59.630 --> 00:32:00.850 align:middle line:90%
and come back no wiser.

00:32:00.850 --> 00:32:01.350 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:32:01.350 --> 00:32:07.520 align:middle line:84%
And I wanted to mark
this as, somehow,

00:32:07.520 --> 00:32:10.570 align:middle line:90%
a place that you could learn.

00:32:10.570 --> 00:32:12.580 align:middle line:90%
"The Journey."

00:32:12.580 --> 00:32:14.320 align:middle line:90%
"And then the dark fell.

00:32:14.320 --> 00:32:16.610 align:middle line:84%
And there has never,
I said, been a poem

00:32:16.610 --> 00:32:20.020 align:middle line:84%
to an antibiotic,
never a word to compare

00:32:20.020 --> 00:32:24.340 align:middle line:84%
with the odes on the flower
of the raw sloe for fever,

00:32:24.340 --> 00:32:26.740 align:middle line:84%
or the devious
Africa-seeking tern,

00:32:26.740 --> 00:32:29.290 align:middle line:84%
or the protein treasures
of the sea-bed.

00:32:29.290 --> 00:32:32.680 align:middle line:84%
Depend on it,
somewhere a poet is

00:32:32.680 --> 00:32:34.840 align:middle line:84%
wasting his sweet
uncluttered metres

00:32:34.840 --> 00:32:38.290 align:middle line:84%
on the obvious emblem
instead of the real thing.

00:32:38.290 --> 00:32:40.375 align:middle line:84%
Instead of sulpha
we shall have hyssop

00:32:40.375 --> 00:32:44.050 align:middle line:84%
dipped in the wild blood of the
unblemished lamb so every day,

00:32:44.050 --> 00:32:46.000 align:middle line:84%
the language gets
less for the task

00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:49.000 align:middle line:84%
and we are less
with the language.

00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:51.790 align:middle line:84%
I finished speaking
and the anger faded.

00:32:51.790 --> 00:32:53.180 align:middle line:90%
And dark fell.

00:32:53.180 --> 00:32:57.520 align:middle line:84%
And the book beside me laid open
at the page, Aphrodite comforts

00:32:57.520 --> 00:33:00.880 align:middle line:90%
Sappho in her love's duress.

00:33:00.880 --> 00:33:03.700 align:middle line:84%
The poplars shifted their
music in the garden.

00:33:03.700 --> 00:33:06.670 align:middle line:90%
A child startled in a dream.

00:33:06.670 --> 00:33:10.480 align:middle line:84%
My room was a mess, the usual
hardcovers, half finished cups,

00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:12.700 align:middle line:84%
clothes piled up
on an old chair.

00:33:12.700 --> 00:33:14.530 align:middle line:90%
But I was listening out.

00:33:14.530 --> 00:33:18.820 align:middle line:84%
But in my head was a loosening
and sweetening heaviness,

00:33:18.820 --> 00:33:22.690 align:middle line:84%
not sleep, but nearly sleep, not
dreaming, really, but as ready

00:33:22.690 --> 00:33:27.220 align:middle line:84%
to believe and still
unfevered, calm and unsurprised

00:33:27.220 --> 00:33:29.500 align:middle line:84%
when she came and
stood beside me.

00:33:29.500 --> 00:33:31.510 align:middle line:84%
And I would have
known her anywhere.

00:33:31.510 --> 00:33:33.980 align:middle line:84%
I would have gone
with her anyway.

00:33:33.980 --> 00:33:35.620 align:middle line:90%
And she came wordlessly.

00:33:35.620 --> 00:33:38.290 align:middle line:84%
And without a word,
I went with her down,

00:33:38.290 --> 00:33:41.860 align:middle line:84%
down, down without so much
as ever touching down,

00:33:41.860 --> 00:33:44.680 align:middle line:84%
but always, always
with a sense of mulch

00:33:44.680 --> 00:33:49.030 align:middle line:84%
beneath us, the way of stairs
winding down to a river.

00:33:49.030 --> 00:33:52.090 align:middle line:84%
And as we went on, the
light went on fading.

00:33:52.090 --> 00:33:56.770 align:middle line:84%
And I looked sideways to be
certain it was she, misshapen,

00:33:56.770 --> 00:33:59.815 align:middle line:84%
musical Sappho, the
scholiast's nightingale.

00:33:59.815 --> 00:34:04.570 align:middle line:84%
And down we went, again down
until we came to a sudden rest

00:34:04.570 --> 00:34:08.350 align:middle line:84%
beside a river in what
seemed to be an oppressive

00:34:08.350 --> 00:34:10.880 align:middle line:90%
suburb of the dawn.

00:34:10.880 --> 00:34:13.150 align:middle line:84%
My eyes got slowly
used to the bad light.

00:34:13.150 --> 00:34:16.389 align:middle line:84%
At first, I saw
shadows, only shadows.

00:34:16.389 --> 00:34:19.120 align:middle line:84%
Then I could make out
women and children.

00:34:19.120 --> 00:34:22.750 align:middle line:84%
And in a way, they
were the grace of love.

00:34:22.750 --> 00:34:25.540 align:middle line:84%
Cholera, typhus, croup,
diphtheria, she said,

00:34:25.540 --> 00:34:29.500 align:middle line:84%
in those days, they racketed
in every backstreet and alley

00:34:29.500 --> 00:34:31.300 align:middle line:90%
of old Europe.

00:34:31.300 --> 00:34:34.389 align:middle line:84%
Behold the children
of the plague.

00:34:34.389 --> 00:34:37.780 align:middle line:84%
Then to my horror, I
could see to each nipple

00:34:37.780 --> 00:34:41.770 align:middle line:84%
some had clipped a limpet
shape, suckling darknesses,

00:34:41.770 --> 00:34:43.960 align:middle line:84%
while others have their
arms weighed down,

00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:46.929 align:middle line:90%
making terrible Pietas.

00:34:46.929 --> 00:34:50.320 align:middle line:84%
She took my seat and
said to me, be careful.

00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:55.000 align:middle line:84%
Do not define these women by
their work, not as washer women

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:57.370 align:middle line:84%
trussed in dust and
sweating, muscling water

00:34:57.370 --> 00:35:01.040 align:middle line:84%
into linen by the river's edge,
nor as court ladies brailled

00:35:01.040 --> 00:35:05.210 align:middle line:84%
in silk on wool and woven
with an ivory unicorn,

00:35:05.210 --> 00:35:07.640 align:middle line:84%
nor as laundresses
tossing cotton,

00:35:07.640 --> 00:35:10.565 align:middle line:84%
brisking daylight with
lavender and gossip.

00:35:10.565 --> 00:35:14.870 align:middle line:84%
But these are women who went
out like you, when dusk became

00:35:14.870 --> 00:35:17.720 align:middle line:84%
a dark sweet with leaves,
recovering the day,

00:35:17.720 --> 00:35:21.500 align:middle line:84%
stooping, picking up teddy
bears, and rag dolls,

00:35:21.500 --> 00:35:24.950 align:middle line:84%
and tricycles, and
buckets, love's archeology.

00:35:24.950 --> 00:35:29.060 align:middle line:84%
And they too, like you, stood
boot deep in flowers once

00:35:29.060 --> 00:35:34.220 align:middle line:84%
in summer, or saw winter come in
with a single magpie in a caul

00:35:34.220 --> 00:35:37.670 align:middle line:90%
of haws, a solo harlequin.

00:35:37.670 --> 00:35:39.350 align:middle line:90%
I stood fixed.

00:35:39.350 --> 00:35:42.350 align:middle line:84%
I could not reach
or speak to them.

00:35:42.350 --> 00:35:45.500 align:middle line:84%
Between us was the melancholy
river, the dream water,

00:35:45.500 --> 00:35:47.420 align:middle line:90%
the narcotic crossing.

00:35:47.420 --> 00:35:51.380 align:middle line:84%
And they had passed over
it, its cold persuasions.

00:35:51.380 --> 00:35:53.990 align:middle line:90%
I whispered, let me be.

00:35:53.990 --> 00:35:56.740 align:middle line:84%
Let me at least
be their witness.

00:35:56.740 --> 00:36:01.550 align:middle line:84%
But she said, what you have seen
is beyond speech, beyond song,

00:36:01.550 --> 00:36:03.470 align:middle line:90%
only not beyond love.

00:36:03.470 --> 00:36:04.850 align:middle line:90%
Remember it.

00:36:04.850 --> 00:36:06.846 align:middle line:90%
You will remember it.

00:36:06.846 --> 00:36:09.740 align:middle line:84%
And I heard her say,
but she was fading fast

00:36:09.740 --> 00:36:13.070 align:middle line:84%
as we emerged under
the stars of heaven,

00:36:13.070 --> 00:36:14.510 align:middle line:90%
there are not many of us.

00:36:14.510 --> 00:36:18.290 align:middle line:84%
You are dear and stand
beside me as my own daughter.

00:36:18.290 --> 00:36:21.800 align:middle line:84%
I have brought you here
so you will know forever

00:36:21.800 --> 00:36:25.460 align:middle line:84%
the silences in which are
our beginnings, in which we

00:36:25.460 --> 00:36:27.180 align:middle line:90%
have an origin like water.

00:36:27.180 --> 00:36:29.270 align:middle line:90%
And the wind shifted.

00:36:29.270 --> 00:36:32.270 align:middle line:84%
And the window clasp
opened and banged.

00:36:32.270 --> 00:36:35.490 align:middle line:84%
And I woke up to find
the poetry books stacked

00:36:35.490 --> 00:36:39.920 align:middle line:84%
higgledy piggledy, my skirt
spread out where I had laid it.

00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:41.360 align:middle line:90%
Nothing was changed.

00:36:41.360 --> 00:36:43.560 align:middle line:90%
Nothing was more clear.

00:36:43.560 --> 00:36:44.480 align:middle line:90%
But it was wet.

00:36:44.480 --> 00:36:46.220 align:middle line:90%
And the year was late.

00:36:46.220 --> 00:36:49.460 align:middle line:90%
The rain was grief in arrears.

00:36:49.460 --> 00:36:53.390 align:middle line:84%
My children slept the
last dark out safely.

00:36:53.390 --> 00:36:54.547 align:middle line:90%
And I wept."

00:36:54.547 --> 00:36:55.541 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:36:55.541 --> 00:36:58.523 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:36:58.523 --> 00:37:04.487 align:middle line:90%


00:37:04.487 --> 00:37:05.490 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:37:05.490 --> 00:37:07.000 align:middle line:90%
A simple question, I suspect.

00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:09.450 align:middle line:84%
Is there a connection
in the prose story

00:37:09.450 --> 00:37:13.168 align:middle line:84%
that you shared us with the
Biblical grief of the Pieta?

00:37:13.168 --> 00:37:14.460 align:middle line:90%
So do you remember [INAUDIBLE]?

00:37:14.460 --> 00:37:16.150 align:middle line:90%
Yes, I do know the story.

00:37:16.150 --> 00:37:18.450 align:middle line:90%
And I do it.

00:37:18.450 --> 00:37:21.930 align:middle line:84%
I tried, as much as I
could, to take this story

00:37:21.930 --> 00:37:24.000 align:middle line:90%
as I heard it from my mother.

00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:27.280 align:middle line:84%
And then it has all kinds
of biblical references.

00:37:27.280 --> 00:37:29.850 align:middle line:90%
And I agree with you.

00:37:29.850 --> 00:37:33.420 align:middle line:84%
But as she told it to
me, she told it to me

00:37:33.420 --> 00:37:37.055 align:middle line:84%
as a piece of sort of
known family history.

00:37:37.055 --> 00:37:37.930 align:middle line:90%
You know what I mean?

00:37:37.930 --> 00:37:41.715 align:middle line:84%
An unprovable
piece of narrative.

00:37:41.715 --> 00:37:45.750 align:middle line:84%
And I was so taken by
it that I noted it down.

00:37:45.750 --> 00:37:48.027 align:middle line:84%
But I think there
are echoes in it.

00:37:48.027 --> 00:37:50.110 align:middle line:84%
But I don't think she told
them with those echoes.

00:37:50.110 --> 00:37:59.148 align:middle line:90%


00:37:59.148 --> 00:38:01.920 align:middle line:90%
[INAUDIBLE]

00:38:01.920 --> 00:38:02.420 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:38:02.420 --> 00:38:04.660 align:middle line:84%
Could you tell us a
little about your process

00:38:04.660 --> 00:38:06.960 align:middle line:84%
of writing as a
writer and how you

00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:09.130 align:middle line:90%
derive these wonderful poems?

00:38:09.130 --> 00:38:11.815 align:middle line:90%
Well, it's changed.

00:38:11.815 --> 00:38:15.710 align:middle line:84%
It is certainly changed
since I was younger.

00:38:15.710 --> 00:38:19.850 align:middle line:90%
I grew up in a literary city.

00:38:19.850 --> 00:38:22.130 align:middle line:84%
Certainly, when I was
18 or 19, people always

00:38:22.130 --> 00:38:25.250 align:middle line:84%
sat at cafe tables and wrote
poems straight off, you know.

00:38:25.250 --> 00:38:29.660 align:middle line:84%
And I certainly thought that
any poem that you could write

00:38:29.660 --> 00:38:30.890 align:middle line:90%
in a weekend wasn't worth it.

00:38:30.890 --> 00:38:32.690 align:middle line:90%
I changed all of that.

00:38:32.690 --> 00:38:33.950 align:middle line:90%
There were no workshops.

00:38:33.950 --> 00:38:35.150 align:middle line:90%
There was no revision.

00:38:35.150 --> 00:38:37.430 align:middle line:84%
There was nothing
like that in Dublin.

00:38:37.430 --> 00:38:41.930 align:middle line:84%
But it changed over the years
very much in terms of revision.

00:38:41.930 --> 00:38:44.300 align:middle line:84%
That may be a
sociological thing.

00:38:44.300 --> 00:38:48.470 align:middle line:84%
I suspect that a missing
factor in poetry today,

00:38:48.470 --> 00:38:53.180 align:middle line:84%
an undocumented factor
compared with 100 years ago,

00:38:53.180 --> 00:38:57.140 align:middle line:84%
is how much people can do with
their heads or how little.

00:38:57.140 --> 00:39:00.200 align:middle line:84%
I'm an outgrowth
of a later stage.

00:39:00.200 --> 00:39:02.000 align:middle line:90%
I can do very little in my head.

00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:06.080 align:middle line:84%
But I'm convinced that
there were people who

00:39:06.080 --> 00:39:07.460 align:middle line:90%
could do a lot in their head.

00:39:07.460 --> 00:39:11.810 align:middle line:84%
And therefore, they could do
the last process pretty quickly.

00:39:11.810 --> 00:39:14.960 align:middle line:90%
For me, the work is as I write.

00:39:14.960 --> 00:39:17.400 align:middle line:84%
It's not-- I don't
write when it's done.

00:39:17.400 --> 00:39:20.420 align:middle line:84%
So I think the, for me,
the process is entirely

00:39:20.420 --> 00:39:23.180 align:middle line:84%
governed by the fact
that what I write

00:39:23.180 --> 00:39:26.600 align:middle line:90%
becomes what I will change.

00:39:26.600 --> 00:39:29.000 align:middle line:90%
Nothing comes out of changes.

00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:30.470 align:middle line:90%
I wish it did.

00:39:30.470 --> 00:39:35.030 align:middle line:90%
I think it takes too long.

00:39:35.030 --> 00:39:38.840 align:middle line:84%
And Henry James said, it's
taking too much of my life

00:39:38.840 --> 00:39:40.818 align:middle line:90%
to do too little of my work.

00:39:40.818 --> 00:39:42.610 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:39:42.610 --> 00:39:45.100 align:middle line:84%
There's that whenever
you do this thing.

00:39:45.100 --> 00:39:48.760 align:middle line:90%


00:39:48.760 --> 00:39:49.590 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:39:49.590 --> 00:39:50.280 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:39:50.280 --> 00:39:51.920 align:middle line:84%
I was wondering,
which four lines

00:39:51.920 --> 00:39:53.170 align:middle line:90%
did you fax to the airline?

00:39:53.170 --> 00:39:53.670 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:39:53.670 --> 00:39:57.290 align:middle line:84%
I faxed four lines from a
poem called "The Singers."

00:39:57.290 --> 00:40:03.810 align:middle line:84%
And I don't know that
I-- "finding voice where

00:40:03.810 --> 00:40:07.140 align:middle line:84%
they found a vision"
is the last line of it.

00:40:07.140 --> 00:40:12.770 align:middle line:84%
And so it's there, that
they're all upside down.

00:40:12.770 --> 00:40:13.670 align:middle line:90%
And it's [INAUDIBLE].

00:40:13.670 --> 00:40:15.740 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:40:15.740 --> 00:40:21.080 align:middle line:84%
I think that it was a very
well-intentioned initiative.

00:40:21.080 --> 00:40:28.690 align:middle line:84%
But somehow, you know, it was
one of those things in Ireland.

00:40:28.690 --> 00:40:30.620 align:middle line:84%
Ireland thinks up a
lot of these things.

00:40:30.620 --> 00:40:31.120 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:40:31.120 --> 00:40:35.070 align:middle line:84%
And not all of them
come to fruition.

00:40:35.070 --> 00:40:36.608 align:middle line:90%
But that particular one did.

00:40:36.608 --> 00:40:38.400 align:middle line:84%
It's very hard when
you're sitting, looking

00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:41.670 align:middle line:84%
at the seat in front of
you, to know who knows what,

00:40:41.670 --> 00:40:42.660 align:middle line:90%
including myself.

00:40:42.660 --> 00:40:46.110 align:middle line:84%
And if you look at it,
it's very collage-ey.

00:40:46.110 --> 00:40:47.370 align:middle line:90%
But those were the four lines.

00:40:47.370 --> 00:40:50.100 align:middle line:84%
But it's very hard to see them
together as four lines there.

00:40:50.100 --> 00:40:51.670 align:middle line:90%
They're around the place.

00:40:51.670 --> 00:40:53.543 align:middle line:90%
But that they're woven into it.

00:40:53.543 --> 00:40:54.870 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:40:54.870 --> 00:40:55.735 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:40:55.735 --> 00:40:59.760 align:middle line:84%
So one of your predecessors at
Stanford was Denise Levertov.

00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:00.900 align:middle line:90%
Oh, certainly.

00:41:00.900 --> 00:41:04.230 align:middle line:84%
And she used a lot of the
myths and classical allusions.

00:41:04.230 --> 00:41:06.750 align:middle line:84%
And I wondered what
you think of her work.

00:41:06.750 --> 00:41:09.090 align:middle line:90%
I love Denise Levertov's work.

00:41:09.090 --> 00:41:12.330 align:middle line:84%
And I have the honor
to [INAUDIBLE] Denise.

00:41:12.330 --> 00:41:15.080 align:middle line:90%
And she's irreplaceable.

00:41:15.080 --> 00:41:17.850 align:middle line:84%
I have the honor to
come after Denise.

00:41:17.850 --> 00:41:22.770 align:middle line:84%
But I was a great admirer
of hers from way back.

00:41:22.770 --> 00:41:28.350 align:middle line:84%
And she has a hugely
interesting way

00:41:28.350 --> 00:41:31.320 align:middle line:84%
of doing almost a
watercolor of myth.

00:41:31.320 --> 00:41:35.100 align:middle line:84%
It's so quick, and fresh,
and immediate that it never

00:41:35.100 --> 00:41:36.810 align:middle line:90%
looks like myth.

00:41:36.810 --> 00:41:38.010 align:middle line:90%
So I love her work.

00:41:38.010 --> 00:41:42.190 align:middle line:84%
And her work, to me, looks more
important every single day.

00:41:42.190 --> 00:41:45.900 align:middle line:90%
I really think so.

00:41:45.900 --> 00:41:46.860 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:41:46.860 --> 00:41:48.930 align:middle line:84%
You talk a lot
about the disconnect

00:41:48.930 --> 00:41:51.630 align:middle line:90%
between past and history.

00:41:51.630 --> 00:41:52.170 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:41:52.170 --> 00:41:55.890 align:middle line:84%
And I'm wondering if you think
that poets and other artists

00:41:55.890 --> 00:41:59.350 align:middle line:84%
have some kind of
political imperative

00:41:59.350 --> 00:42:04.620 align:middle line:84%
to discover and expose
that disconnect,

00:42:04.620 --> 00:42:07.140 align:middle line:84%
and why that disconnect
exists in the first place?

00:42:07.140 --> 00:42:09.810 align:middle line:84%
I think there was several
very interesting parts

00:42:09.810 --> 00:42:10.830 align:middle line:90%
of the question.

00:42:10.830 --> 00:42:12.630 align:middle line:90%
I'm in the--

00:42:12.630 --> 00:42:16.590 align:middle line:84%
I don't think poets as such
have political imperatives.

00:42:16.590 --> 00:42:20.010 align:middle line:84%
And I think people are right
to stand by the process

00:42:20.010 --> 00:42:21.660 align:middle line:90%
and privacy of the artist.

00:42:21.660 --> 00:42:25.050 align:middle line:84%
It would be very difficult in
Ireland in the last 25 years

00:42:25.050 --> 00:42:27.520 align:middle line:84%
to not hit somewhere
deeply at [INAUDIBLE],,

00:42:27.520 --> 00:42:29.410 align:middle line:90%
whether or not you're political.

00:42:29.410 --> 00:42:32.650 align:middle line:84%
And you live in
the toxic climate

00:42:32.650 --> 00:42:36.070 align:middle line:84%
of the gaps between language
and the gaps between the past

00:42:36.070 --> 00:42:37.090 align:middle line:90%
and history.

00:42:37.090 --> 00:42:39.615 align:middle line:84%
I don't think it's a political
imperative for poets.

00:42:39.615 --> 00:42:40.990 align:middle line:84%
And I wouldn't
presume to say so.

00:42:40.990 --> 00:42:43.330 align:middle line:84%
But it was very
important for me,

00:42:43.330 --> 00:42:48.550 align:middle line:84%
because Irish history is a very
compelling and very assertive

00:42:48.550 --> 00:42:50.020 align:middle line:90%
narrative.

00:42:50.020 --> 00:42:54.670 align:middle line:84%
And I did not want to take
my meaning as an Irish person

00:42:54.670 --> 00:42:56.170 align:middle line:90%
from a story of heroes.

00:42:56.170 --> 00:42:58.490 align:middle line:90%
I didn't need to do that.

00:42:58.490 --> 00:43:02.050 align:middle line:84%
I think what we are and who
we are is infinitely more

00:43:02.050 --> 00:43:04.270 align:middle line:84%
important than the
story of heroes.

00:43:04.270 --> 00:43:07.020 align:middle line:90%
We survived.

00:43:07.020 --> 00:43:08.340 align:middle line:90%
We were human.

00:43:08.340 --> 00:43:09.390 align:middle line:90%
We lived through it.

00:43:09.390 --> 00:43:10.740 align:middle line:90%
And we should honor that.

00:43:10.740 --> 00:43:13.830 align:middle line:84%
The story of heroes is
a very seductive story.

00:43:13.830 --> 00:43:17.550 align:middle line:84%
And it is usually the
story of the strongest.

00:43:17.550 --> 00:43:20.530 align:middle line:90%
It's not the story of everybody.

00:43:20.530 --> 00:43:24.010 align:middle line:84%
And so, to me, it was
important, for me.

00:43:24.010 --> 00:43:29.610 align:middle line:84%
And I certainly would not
commend that to anybody else

00:43:29.610 --> 00:43:31.480 align:middle line:90%
if they have their own journey.

00:43:31.480 --> 00:43:35.490 align:middle line:84%
I would say that Irish
writing from Joyce onwards

00:43:35.490 --> 00:43:38.340 align:middle line:90%
has been very conscious of it.

00:43:38.340 --> 00:43:41.640 align:middle line:84%
And although Irish
literature was heavily

00:43:41.640 --> 00:43:44.820 align:middle line:84%
accessorized by the national
tradition in the 19th century,

00:43:44.820 --> 00:43:46.530 align:middle line:84%
I think 20th century
Irish writers

00:43:46.530 --> 00:43:49.860 align:middle line:84%
began to break away
in one way or another,

00:43:49.860 --> 00:43:51.240 align:middle line:90%
whatever they called it.

00:43:51.240 --> 00:43:52.669 align:middle line:90%
And that was part of it.

00:43:52.669 --> 00:43:58.660 align:middle line:90%


00:43:58.660 --> 00:43:59.410 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:43:59.410 --> 00:44:01.630 align:middle line:84%
Can you talk a
little bit about how

00:44:01.630 --> 00:44:05.110 align:middle line:84%
you do or don't place yourself
in the Irish tradition of being

00:44:05.110 --> 00:44:10.450 align:middle line:84%
a writer in exile and
how that may or may not

00:44:10.450 --> 00:44:12.290 align:middle line:84%
have changed your
sense of your voice

00:44:12.290 --> 00:44:16.240 align:middle line:84%
or your sense of
your perspective?

00:44:16.240 --> 00:44:18.330 align:middle line:84%
Well, I grew up
as a Irish writer.

00:44:18.330 --> 00:44:23.680 align:middle line:84%
I learned the unwisdom of
placing myself anywhere

00:44:23.680 --> 00:44:25.210 align:middle line:90%
in that tradition.

00:44:25.210 --> 00:44:29.230 align:middle line:84%
And I think I would
certainly say that--

00:44:29.230 --> 00:44:34.090 align:middle line:84%
there's an old jazz phrase,
'once you've been there,

00:44:34.090 --> 00:44:34.940 align:middle line:90%
there you are'.

00:44:34.940 --> 00:44:38.600 align:middle line:84%
There is no way that
I don't always--

00:44:38.600 --> 00:44:40.100 align:middle line:90%
I'm always in Ireland.

00:44:40.100 --> 00:44:42.290 align:middle line:90%
And I will always be.

00:44:42.290 --> 00:44:47.540 align:middle line:84%
And I suspect that's true
of most Irish people.

00:44:47.540 --> 00:44:51.800 align:middle line:84%
And so, yes, in the sense of
the broadening of something,

00:44:51.800 --> 00:44:55.535 align:middle line:84%
I do think that it is
very important that we--

00:44:55.535 --> 00:44:57.560 align:middle line:90%
I started way back.

00:44:57.560 --> 00:45:02.630 align:middle line:84%
But we did not have
a hubris as writers.

00:45:02.630 --> 00:45:07.910 align:middle line:84%
Irish writing was commendable
because it was human,

00:45:07.910 --> 00:45:11.240 align:middle line:84%
because the Irish story
was a dramatization

00:45:11.240 --> 00:45:14.190 align:middle line:84%
of the human story, not
the other way around.

00:45:14.190 --> 00:45:16.760 align:middle line:84%
If we were going to
sit down and say,

00:45:16.760 --> 00:45:19.490 align:middle line:84%
it's important
because it's Irish,

00:45:19.490 --> 00:45:22.310 align:middle line:90%
then it's really a narrow view.

00:45:22.310 --> 00:45:24.260 align:middle line:90%
And I didn't agree with that.

00:45:24.260 --> 00:45:27.240 align:middle line:84%
But I do think you
change and you re-change.

00:45:27.240 --> 00:45:29.090 align:middle line:84%
And I think you
re-change your dialogue

00:45:29.090 --> 00:45:30.920 align:middle line:90%
with the place you came from.

00:45:30.920 --> 00:45:33.590 align:middle line:84%
I have been very
critical of Ireland.

00:45:33.590 --> 00:45:37.850 align:middle line:84%
And I believe it is
the duty of the writer

00:45:37.850 --> 00:45:42.560 align:middle line:84%
to make those critiques and
to continue those critiques.

00:45:42.560 --> 00:45:44.930 align:middle line:84%
[INAUDIBLE] wrote
a thing about--

00:45:44.930 --> 00:45:46.370 align:middle line:84%
she said the measure
of the writer

00:45:46.370 --> 00:45:48.230 align:middle line:84%
is the ability to
use their words

00:45:48.230 --> 00:45:50.240 align:middle line:90%
against their own loyalties.

00:45:50.240 --> 00:45:54.650 align:middle line:84%
And certainly, I think
Irish writers have

00:45:54.650 --> 00:45:57.680 align:middle line:90%
made a very good try at that.

00:45:57.680 --> 00:46:05.510 align:middle line:84%
It's, at times, easy as an Irish
writer to be moved by the story

00:46:05.510 --> 00:46:06.830 align:middle line:90%
beyond criticism.

00:46:06.830 --> 00:46:09.770 align:middle line:84%
But it is no service
to the story.

00:46:09.770 --> 00:46:14.840 align:middle line:84%
And I think the right thing
is to be in the critique.

00:46:14.840 --> 00:46:18.800 align:middle line:84%
I thought of myself as,
because I was a woman,

00:46:18.800 --> 00:46:21.950 align:middle line:84%
because I think there were
genuine tensions in that

00:46:21.950 --> 00:46:25.130 align:middle line:84%
country, that they
certainly could see women

00:46:25.130 --> 00:46:26.540 align:middle line:90%
as women writers.

00:46:26.540 --> 00:46:31.580 align:middle line:84%
But they found it very difficult
to see women as Irish writers

00:46:31.580 --> 00:46:37.340 align:middle line:84%
with the ability to change
the past and write the future.

00:46:37.340 --> 00:46:41.450 align:middle line:84%
I certainly believed
that a literature

00:46:41.450 --> 00:46:45.140 align:middle line:84%
without the voice and
the vision of women

00:46:45.140 --> 00:46:47.270 align:middle line:84%
disfigures the
national literature.

00:46:47.270 --> 00:46:50.540 align:middle line:84%
And I certainly believe
that all the way through.

00:46:50.540 --> 00:46:52.670 align:middle line:84%
I do genuinely think
things have changed.

00:46:52.670 --> 00:46:57.950 align:middle line:84%
But for me, it certainly
was about writing poems.

00:46:57.950 --> 00:47:00.140 align:middle line:90%
It's a very intense country.

00:47:00.140 --> 00:47:02.930 align:middle line:84%
And it's very intense
about its literature.

00:47:02.930 --> 00:47:04.850 align:middle line:84%
And the danger is
you will all end up

00:47:04.850 --> 00:47:07.380 align:middle line:84%
talking about something
that isn't literature.

00:47:07.380 --> 00:47:11.690 align:middle line:84%
And that's the-- charming as
that may be at certain times,

00:47:11.690 --> 00:47:13.910 align:middle line:90%
it's also digressive.

00:47:13.910 --> 00:47:20.060 align:middle line:84%
So I think I was
unbelievably fortunate to be

00:47:20.060 --> 00:47:25.310 align:middle line:84%
born in that place at that time
when those great writers had

00:47:25.310 --> 00:47:27.180 align:middle line:90%
found the way through.

00:47:27.180 --> 00:47:29.914 align:middle line:84%
And I think every Irish
writer of my generation

00:47:29.914 --> 00:47:31.770 align:middle line:90%
thinks exactly the same.

00:47:31.770 --> 00:47:34.560 align:middle line:90%


00:47:34.560 --> 00:47:35.460 align:middle line:90%
Yes?

00:47:35.460 --> 00:47:38.760 align:middle line:84%
I'm wondering if I could
request another poem that you

00:47:38.760 --> 00:47:41.572 align:middle line:90%
might have that you would read?

00:47:41.572 --> 00:47:43.530 align:middle line:84%
I think that's in the
subjunctive [INAUDIBLE]..

00:47:43.530 --> 00:47:46.300 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:47:46.300 --> 00:47:48.300 align:middle line:84%
A "Woman Turns
Herself into a Fish."

00:47:48.300 --> 00:47:49.570 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:47:49.570 --> 00:47:51.000 align:middle line:90%
But thank you for asking.

00:47:51.000 --> 00:47:52.020 align:middle line:90%
Let me find it now.

00:47:52.020 --> 00:47:55.940 align:middle line:90%
And it was a long time ago.

00:47:55.940 --> 00:47:56.440 align:middle line:90%
And --

00:47:56.440 --> 00:48:14.090 align:middle line:90%


00:48:14.090 --> 00:48:18.230 align:middle line:84%
"Unpod the bag, the seed,
slap the flanks back.

00:48:18.230 --> 00:48:19.160 align:middle line:90%
Flatten paps.

00:48:19.160 --> 00:48:22.790 align:middle line:90%
Make finny scaled and chill.

00:48:22.790 --> 00:48:24.842 align:middle line:84%
The slack and
dimple of the rump.

00:48:24.842 --> 00:48:29.120 align:middle line:84%
Pout the mouth, and
brow the eyes, and now.

00:48:29.120 --> 00:48:32.010 align:middle line:84%
And now eclipse in these
hips, these loins, the moon,

00:48:32.010 --> 00:48:33.080 align:middle line:90%
the blood flux.

00:48:33.080 --> 00:48:34.730 align:middle line:90%
It's done.

00:48:34.730 --> 00:48:35.960 align:middle line:90%
I turn.

00:48:35.960 --> 00:48:38.330 align:middle line:84%
I flab upward,
blub-lipped, hipless.

00:48:38.330 --> 00:48:42.050 align:middle line:84%
And I am sexless, shed of
ecstasy, a pale swimmer,

00:48:42.050 --> 00:48:46.110 align:middle line:84%
sequin-skinned, pearling
eggs, screamlessly in seaweed.

00:48:46.110 --> 00:48:48.900 align:middle line:90%
It's what I set my heart on.

00:48:48.900 --> 00:48:52.110 align:middle line:84%
Yet ruddering and muscling
in the sunless tons

00:48:52.110 --> 00:48:56.840 align:middle line:84%
of new freedoms, still I feel
a chill pull, a brightening,

00:48:56.840 --> 00:48:58.830 align:middle line:90%
a light, a light.

00:48:58.830 --> 00:49:01.530 align:middle line:84%
And how, in my loomy
cold, my greens.

00:49:01.530 --> 00:49:04.800 align:middle line:90%
Still, she moons in me."

00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:05.700 align:middle line:90%
Right.

00:49:05.700 --> 00:49:07.800 align:middle line:90%
So [INAUDIBLE].

00:49:07.800 --> 00:49:10.850 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]