WEBVTT

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Somebody asked me,
yesterday in Tucson,

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I was being asked some questions
about being a poet laureate,

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and what it was like
being in Washington.

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And there was surprise
when I told him

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that I didn't write any poems.

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And I once was on a panel
with four other poetry

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laureates, ex-poetry laureates,
to the United States.

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And we found out that no one
wrote any poems during our time

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as poet laureates.

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You're so busy,
as poet laureate.

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In those days, they
ask for correspondence.

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I mean, people send letters.

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You get a letter from the
poet laureate of Arkansas,

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who is 95 years old, and
written in kind of old zinc pen.

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And you got to write back.

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So but who wants to, then,
you go home and write a poem?

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So we're all stuck.

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And Billy Collins
said, "I got it.

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It's a government conspiracy
to prevent American poets

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from writing poetry."

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[LAUGHTER]

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So that's as good an
explanation as any.

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But after I left, there
were poems about Washington.

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This is called
"Cherry Blossom Time."

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"Grey sewage bubbling up out of
street sewers after the spring

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rain with the clear
view of hawkers

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of quack remedies
and their customers

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swarming on the Capitol steps.

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At the National Gallery
the saints' tormented faces

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suddenly made sense.

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Several turned their
eyes on me as I stepped

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over the shiny parquetry.

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And who and what was
I, if you please?

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A minor provincial
grumbler on a holiday,

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with hands clasped behind his
back nodding to every stranger

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he meets as if this were a 1950s
Fall of the Roman Empire movie

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set, and we the bewildered,
absurdly costumed,

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milling extras among the
pink cherry blossoms."

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