WEBVTT

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The other is about a poet
who was a teacher of mine--

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John Berryman.

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And the title of the poem
is simply "Berryman."

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He was a teacher when I was 19.

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I have to tell you that.

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"I will tell you what he
told me in the years just

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after the war, as we then
called the Second World War.

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Don't lose your
arrogance yet, he said.

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You can do that
when you're older.

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Lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity.

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Just one time he
suggested changing

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the usual order of the same
words in a line of verse.

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Why point out a thing twice?

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He suggested I pray to the
Muse, get down on my knees

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and pray right
there in the corner.

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And he said he
meant it literally.

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It was in the days before
the beard and the drink,

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but he was deep in
tides of his own

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through which he
sailed chin sideways

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and head tilted like
attacking sloop.

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He was far older than
the dates allowed for.

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Much older than I was.

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He was in his 30s.

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He snapped down his
nose with an accent

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I think he had
affected in England.

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As for publishing, he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection

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slips.

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His lips and the bones
of his long fingers

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trembled with the vehemence
of his views about poetry.

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He said the great
presence that permitted

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everything and transmuted
it in poetry was passion.

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Passion was genius, and he
praised movement and invention.

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I had hardly begun to read.

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I asked, how can you ever
be sure that what you write

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is really any good at all.

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And he said, you can't.

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You can't.

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You can never be sure.

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You die without knowing
whether anything you wrote

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was any good.

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If you have to be
sure, don't write."

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