WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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I don't know if this becomes
a spectacle conversation.

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But what I would
say is I don't even

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think I could write that poem.

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You know, now, but
I wrote it then.

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So I'm just going to do one
from each book, I think.

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So there's "Hip Logic."

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And there were other
poems to choose in it,

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but what I thought, especially
after that one, is like, oh,

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I could do slapstick.

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So inside the book are
these small 11-line poems,

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and the anagram poems.

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I do like forms and
making them up sometimes.

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So this one is called "Bowling."

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And so, without going
through the context

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for this particular
form, the basic rule

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was like whatever
word I got, I got them

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randomly out of the newspaper.

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Whatever the word it
was, that was going

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to be the subject of the poem.

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So I have one like "Segregate."

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That's easy, you can
imagine what that's about.

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Or "Careless," or "Corporal,"
so when I got bowling,

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I was like, bowling?

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And then, the other rule
is that you have to use--

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I like Scrabble quite a bit.

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They call me The
Scrabbler, so anyway.

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So this is connected to it.

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So inside of the poem is
like, blow is in bowling.

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You can hear that if
you shuffle around boil.

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So the words have
to have bowling,

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have to be made at the end
of the line out of bowling.

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Anyway, but here's
violence, again,

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slightly different angle on it.

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"Bowling."

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He got home late.

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It's in the voice
of a woman, it's

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what I should say,
like, a housewife.

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And her husband's like a bowler.

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OK.

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He got home late and
lingered in the kitchen.

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And when I heard his wingtips
shuffling down the hall,

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I imagined a lion
entering the bedroom.

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I lit a candle
and began to glow.

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I was in the same fire pink
gown I wore on our wedding

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night, the one I
won playing bingo.

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I said, "Let's not talk
about those glib pins

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at the edge of a lane," and
stretched as his long fold

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out fingers approached.

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But when he asked me to blow
on his chicken noodle soup

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to cool it down, my
sweat began to boil.

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Yes, I threw the soup
on him your honor.

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Then, I threw the bowl.

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[LAUGHTER]

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All right.

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I don't have to explain that.

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OK.

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"Wind in the Box," so
in "Wind in the Box,"

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there are several
poems with that title.

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There are six of them.

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So people will say to me,
this is a suicide note.

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This is not about
spectacle, or maybe it is.

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Why "Wind in the box"?

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Why do you have six poems?

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And I'm like,
because it's a cube.

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A box actually has
six sides to it.

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But it's an old book now.

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No one's still figured it out,
but that's what's going on.

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So here's one of those poems.

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And again, I guess,
I'll say this.

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So spectacle, as it relates
to a kind of personal sense,

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maybe that's the
first poem, spectacle

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in terms of a kind of
imaginative sense, I think,

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is maybe the last poem.

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And then here, in
the next book, it

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has something to do with a
sort of the political notion

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of the spectacle of violence
as Americans, watching that how

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we relate to the things that
America does bearing witness

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to it while also
being a member of it.

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So this one is called
"Wind in the box."

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Even the dirt dreams of it now.

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It is two roads
along two rivers.

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The sky, above a mother's
face, the day her husband

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leaves for war.

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No blood and stars, but
the blood and stars.

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Let's find it and
break its fucking neck.

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Let's break its fucking jaw.

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Let's break its fucking
ganged-in vessels.

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And if it pushes back, and a
tiny blue rises on its cheek,

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let's break that,
too, until stars

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dance in the corners of
its eyes like white seeds.

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And let's break those, too,
until all the words we know

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are split into.

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No power but the power of need,
let's get up ready to feel.

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God bless the rage in us.

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It's how we know each other.

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We who keep vigil by the
windows, we who pour ashes

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from the windows into the wind,
skin passing over skin, let's

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walk up the hill and along the
rows that do not ask questions.

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Near the white and
yellow flowers,

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strangers are moored in size.

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Soon, it will rise without
kissing anyone goodbye.

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It says we will not be renewed.

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We will not be filled
like the birdhouse.

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It says, we will
arrive unwashed.

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Aren't you tired?

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Let's lie down.

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Let's cry out and rest.

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What is it?

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Don't ask me.

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