WEBVTT

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I write a lot of poem
sequences, so some of them

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end up getting
fairly long, and so

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I'm going to read a few that
are excerpts from the longer

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sequences or series.

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And this one, too, is
set on Grand Manan,

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and I'll just read
you the first section.

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The village where my
place is is Castalia,

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which is a name that came
from ancient mythology

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of the home of the muses.

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Castalia is known as
the home of the muses.

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I don't think anybody on Grand
Manan knows that anymore.

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When I ask, people
say, I don't know.

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I think it's in the Bible.

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So.

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Castalia.

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I cut a three mile trail
in the woods on my property

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after my mother
and brother died.

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It was either that or lie in
bed for a year and disappear,

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so it seemed like a good
idea to go to the woods.

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"Castalia."

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"During my darkest
grief, the forest

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was like an open
sea, birch trees

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the beacon I used to
study my position.

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My brain felt at
home among saplings,

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that tangle seeking light,
that part of the soul Aristotle

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thought we held in
common with plants.

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Days and weeks cutting trail,
at first moving three feet

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through thicket, then 10, then
deeper into black spruce, bow

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saw, and clippers slung on
my back like Diana's quiver,

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trying to sense how
the path should rise,

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past cobble and copse
into high fern meadow,

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and beyond into balsam
fir, towering so high

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they make beneath them a
living room of reindeer moths

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and fungi, woods long worked by
men, timbers and field stones,

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oxen hauled downhill, even
the skins of island homes

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cloaked with fish scale of
cedar shingles cut here,

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where hardly a cedar
tree can be seen,

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so fruitful were those
times of building.

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The Greeks had a way
to speak about depth so

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that each spring had
a name and history,

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and a supplicant had a place to
go to beg for wisdom or healing

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or song, to make that part
of the soul held in common

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with song feel at home.

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North Head Seal Cove, Dark
Harbor do well for singing,

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but every place
needs its Castalia,

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where older thought emerges like
steam from vents in a caldera."

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