WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.840 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.840 --> 00:00:04.680 align:middle line:84% Or look at-- let me look at a second-- 00:00:04.680 --> 00:00:07.170 align:middle line:84% "The Elephant is Slow to Mate," the D.H. Lawrence 00:00:07.170 --> 00:00:10.350 align:middle line:90% poem, to speak of gush. 00:00:10.350 --> 00:00:13.380 align:middle line:90% 00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:15.735 align:middle line:90% This one has the cadences of-- 00:00:15.735 --> 00:00:21.540 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.540 --> 00:00:26.190 align:middle line:84% what is the-- oh God, I cannot remember the name of a stride 00:00:26.190 --> 00:00:26.880 align:middle line:90% rhythm. 00:00:26.880 --> 00:00:29.700 align:middle line:90% A kind of Joplin-stride rhythm. 00:00:29.700 --> 00:00:33.300 align:middle line:84% There's a kind of cadence with a very short step in it 00:00:33.300 --> 00:00:36.270 align:middle line:84% that's a wonderful musical element in this poem, 00:00:36.270 --> 00:00:38.250 align:middle line:84% and I'll read it, and you'll see how it works. 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:43.950 align:middle line:84% This poem is predicated on a design that greatly dilates 00:00:43.950 --> 00:00:51.810 align:middle line:84% something and works up your need to hear 00:00:51.810 --> 00:00:55.740 align:middle line:90% the orgasmic moment revealed. 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:58.980 align:middle line:84% Right from the title, he's telling you 00:00:58.980 --> 00:01:00.600 align:middle line:84% he's going to emphasize the slow, 00:01:00.600 --> 00:01:04.620 align:middle line:84% but if there's an elephant mating in the offing, 00:01:04.620 --> 00:01:06.540 align:middle line:90% you want to see it. 00:01:06.540 --> 00:01:08.940 align:middle line:84% So he plays on that disposition, that thing 00:01:08.940 --> 00:01:12.810 align:middle line:84% we want when we come into the poem, that we also are waiting. 00:01:12.810 --> 00:01:17.070 align:middle line:84% "The elephant, the huge old beast, is slow to mate. 00:01:17.070 --> 00:01:20.400 align:middle line:84% He finds a female, they show no haste. 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:26.250 align:middle line:84% They wait for the sympathy in their vast, shy hearts slowly, 00:01:26.250 --> 00:01:28.980 align:middle line:84% slowly to rouse as they loiter--" 00:01:28.980 --> 00:01:32.730 align:middle line:84% Now look at how much stuff is going to come after this "as." 00:01:32.730 --> 00:01:35.460 align:middle line:84% This "as," this long thing-- that's 00:01:35.460 --> 00:01:38.370 align:middle line:84% a trail-- that's going to follow the "as" down to word 00:01:38.370 --> 00:01:41.490 align:middle line:90% is all connotation. 00:01:41.490 --> 00:01:44.700 align:middle line:84% To use the fancy word for a delay 00:01:44.700 --> 00:01:48.090 align:middle line:84% is it's not only loitering, but it comprehends 00:01:48.090 --> 00:01:50.850 align:middle line:84% dashing in panic, which also manages 00:01:50.850 --> 00:01:53.970 align:middle line:84% to feel like delay or slowness, because 00:01:53.970 --> 00:01:56.580 align:middle line:84% of the perspective of long stretches of time 00:01:56.580 --> 00:01:59.100 align:middle line:84% in which something else isn't happening. 00:01:59.100 --> 00:02:01.110 align:middle line:84% It's really interesting that panic-- 00:02:01.110 --> 00:02:04.890 align:middle line:84% dash in panic could participate in the delay-- 00:02:04.890 --> 00:02:07.080 align:middle line:90% half of the poem-- but it does. 00:02:07.080 --> 00:02:09.090 align:middle line:90% They-- excuse me. 00:02:09.090 --> 00:02:12.190 align:middle line:84% "--for the sympathy in their vast, shy hearts slowly, 00:02:12.190 --> 00:02:15.570 align:middle line:84% slowly to rouse as they loiter along the river-beds and drink 00:02:15.570 --> 00:02:19.140 align:middle line:84% and browse and dash in panic through the brake--" 00:02:19.140 --> 00:02:23.550 align:middle line:84% Not an accident to pick a noun like that there, 00:02:23.550 --> 00:02:27.990 align:middle line:84% which means two things and conjures up the verb. 00:02:27.990 --> 00:02:31.920 align:middle line:84% "--and dash in panic through the brake of forest with the herd, 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:35.970 align:middle line:84% and sleep in massive silence, and wake together, 00:02:35.970 --> 00:02:37.890 align:middle line:90% without a word." 00:02:37.890 --> 00:02:41.400 align:middle line:84% So now, there's the part where you know-- as Lawrence always 00:02:41.400 --> 00:02:49.140 align:middle line:84% is-- that he's conjuring up the figure of the human 00:02:49.140 --> 00:02:52.710 align:middle line:84% to some extent, because after all, who would have expected 00:02:52.710 --> 00:02:54.120 align:middle line:90% elephants to have words? 00:02:54.120 --> 00:02:56.910 align:middle line:84% But "sleep together without a word" 00:02:56.910 --> 00:03:00.720 align:middle line:84% can't help but bring us into question. 00:03:00.720 --> 00:03:04.020 align:middle line:84% "So slowly the great hot elephant hearts 00:03:04.020 --> 00:03:07.980 align:middle line:84% grow full of desire, and the great beasts mate in secret 00:03:07.980 --> 00:03:10.050 align:middle line:90% at last, hiding their fire." 00:03:10.050 --> 00:03:12.900 align:middle line:84% Now at that moment, you may feel massively disappointed. 00:03:12.900 --> 00:03:22.330 align:middle line:84% I do, but he has some more plays to manage for us. 00:03:22.330 --> 00:03:24.540 align:middle line:84% In fact, much of-- in this poem-- 00:03:24.540 --> 00:03:29.250 align:middle line:84% much of the famous Lawrencian excess, 00:03:29.250 --> 00:03:32.490 align:middle line:84% that all of this "great hot elephant heart" 00:03:32.490 --> 00:03:35.850 align:middle line:84% stuff, and desire, and "hiding their fire," 00:03:35.850 --> 00:03:39.360 align:middle line:84% all that stuff is all now being used 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:42.210 align:middle line:84% in the service of a design, and you'll 00:03:42.210 --> 00:03:46.590 align:middle line:84% see how even that is self-ironizing 00:03:46.590 --> 00:03:48.240 align:middle line:84% to a certain extent, is self-conscious, 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:50.110 align:middle line:90% is part of the design. 00:03:50.110 --> 00:03:52.920 align:middle line:84% So that all the-- even to repeat the word "great" as much 00:03:52.920 --> 00:03:54.862 align:middle line:84% as he does, or bigness is constantly 00:03:54.862 --> 00:03:56.070 align:middle line:90% repeated throughout the poem. 00:03:56.070 --> 00:04:00.390 align:middle line:84% That's part of pumping up your sense of don't delay any 00:04:00.390 --> 00:04:03.750 align:middle line:84% longer, you don't-- give us the big moment. 00:04:03.750 --> 00:04:05.820 align:middle line:84% "Oldest they are--" and now he's going 00:04:05.820 --> 00:04:09.060 align:middle line:84% into the moral realm which really disappoints us, 00:04:09.060 --> 00:04:13.260 align:middle line:84% if we were panting to see something pornographic 00:04:13.260 --> 00:04:14.850 align:middle line:90% in the elephant world. 00:04:14.850 --> 00:04:17.670 align:middle line:84% "Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts, 00:04:17.670 --> 00:04:21.690 align:middle line:84% so they know at last how to wait for the loneliest of feasts 00:04:21.690 --> 00:04:23.970 align:middle line:90% for the full repast. 00:04:23.970 --> 00:04:28.410 align:middle line:84% They do not snatch, they do not tear--" 00:04:28.410 --> 00:04:30.540 align:middle line:90% like us, implicitly, right? 00:04:30.540 --> 00:04:34.350 align:middle line:84% They do not snatch, even "snatch" has its freight. 00:04:34.350 --> 00:04:36.510 align:middle line:84% "They do not snatch, they do not tear. 00:04:36.510 --> 00:04:43.890 align:middle line:84% Their massive blood moves as the moon-tides, near, more near 00:04:43.890 --> 00:04:47.250 align:middle line:90% till they touch in flood." 00:04:47.250 --> 00:04:51.180 align:middle line:84% And then, you do get it, but you get it in a touch. 00:04:51.180 --> 00:04:54.180 align:middle line:84% I mean, to have a flood in a touch, 00:04:54.180 --> 00:04:56.790 align:middle line:84% it's this extraordinary conjunction of two things. 00:04:56.790 --> 00:04:59.400 align:middle line:84% I mean, you've almost relinquished the chance 00:04:59.400 --> 00:05:03.360 align:middle line:84% of being flooded with this elephant cum, whatever 00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:05.220 align:middle line:90% this orgasmic moment. 00:05:05.220 --> 00:05:06.940 align:middle line:90% I mean, flood is no accident. 00:05:06.940 --> 00:05:08.880 align:middle line:84% The sheer dimension of this animal 00:05:08.880 --> 00:05:11.530 align:middle line:84% is part of what pumps up your expectation. 00:05:11.530 --> 00:05:14.250 align:middle line:90% So "flood" is the word. 00:05:14.250 --> 00:05:16.770 align:middle line:84% It's no accident, but the delicacy that would put that 00:05:16.770 --> 00:05:18.690 align:middle line:84% next to "touch," and that would-- 00:05:18.690 --> 00:05:22.130 align:middle line:84% even in the course of talking about "moon-tides," I mean, 00:05:22.130 --> 00:05:24.440 align:middle line:84% he's not only pulled back in time, 00:05:24.440 --> 00:05:29.900 align:middle line:84% so that part of the loitering can even comprehend the dashing 00:05:29.900 --> 00:05:34.580 align:middle line:84% and panic, such that this dilation of time can include 00:05:34.580 --> 00:05:37.190 align:middle line:84% dashings and sleepings and wakings. 00:05:37.190 --> 00:05:41.150 align:middle line:84% He's pulled back into a totally different time perspective. 00:05:41.150 --> 00:05:42.800 align:middle line:90% You feel there's almost-- 00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:45.950 align:middle line:84% it's almost paleontological or something, 00:05:45.950 --> 00:05:48.440 align:middle line:90% given an elephant's aspect. 00:05:48.440 --> 00:05:51.650 align:middle line:84% So there's that wonderment that you feel at 00:05:51.650 --> 00:05:55.010 align:middle line:84% has being able to do that to your sense of time. 00:05:55.010 --> 00:05:57.710 align:middle line:84% And at the same time, that mimics, 00:05:57.710 --> 00:06:00.530 align:middle line:84% in many ways, your expectations about a huge animal, 00:06:00.530 --> 00:06:03.230 align:middle line:90% about bigness in space. 00:06:03.230 --> 00:06:05.120 align:middle line:84% This bigness in time and bigness in space 00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:06.980 align:middle line:84% are cooperating to do things, having 00:06:06.980 --> 00:06:13.670 align:middle line:84% to do also with your own breathlessness and expectations 00:06:13.670 --> 00:06:14.480 align:middle line:90% in reading. 00:06:14.480 --> 00:06:17.330 align:middle line:84% And so, administering that in the reader 00:06:17.330 --> 00:06:20.960 align:middle line:84% is the poem's real, savvy territory. 00:06:20.960 --> 00:06:25.200 align:middle line:90% 00:06:25.200 --> 00:06:27.480 align:middle line:84% Even things like "full repast" is nice, 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:29.520 align:middle line:84% once that time thing starts operating. 00:06:29.520 --> 00:06:31.980 align:middle line:84% What repast would mean, of course, it means meal, 00:06:31.980 --> 00:06:33.510 align:middle line:90% but there's a past in there. 00:06:33.510 --> 00:06:35.310 align:middle line:84% And we talked in the class the other day 00:06:35.310 --> 00:06:39.150 align:middle line:84% about crypt words in poems, and this 00:06:39.150 --> 00:06:44.130 align:middle line:84% is another kind of-- this is a kind of stowaway word, where 00:06:44.130 --> 00:06:46.380 align:middle line:84% at the literal level, "past" isn't intended, 00:06:46.380 --> 00:06:49.680 align:middle line:84% but there is this whiff of it, of time, 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:53.475 align:middle line:90% the temporal past inside. 00:06:53.475 --> 00:06:57.495 align:middle line:84% And since "oldest they are" is the beginning of that stanza. 00:06:57.495 --> 00:07:00.580 align:middle line:90% 00:07:00.580 --> 00:07:04.210 align:middle line:84% The kinds of subtleties about ending and expectation-- 00:07:04.210 --> 00:07:07.330 align:middle line:84% you can see it in a tiny way in the little two lines 00:07:07.330 --> 00:07:10.540 align:middle line:84% at the bottom of the page from Paul Valéry. 00:07:10.540 --> 00:07:12.160 align:middle line:90% It's part of a wonderful-- 00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:16.780 align:middle line:84% Valéry has these wonderful meditations on perception 00:07:16.780 --> 00:07:18.760 align:middle line:90% and conception. 00:07:18.760 --> 00:07:22.030 align:middle line:84% The conceptual and perceptual worlds, I'd say. 00:07:22.030 --> 00:07:25.960 align:middle line:84% He's really interested in the ways in which intelligence is 00:07:25.960 --> 00:07:28.870 align:middle line:84% figured forth by the five senses, 00:07:28.870 --> 00:07:32.050 align:middle line:84% that is the one big sense that makes so many claims 00:07:32.050 --> 00:07:35.380 align:middle line:84% for thinking, it's constantly informed by the five other 00:07:35.380 --> 00:07:37.600 align:middle line:90% senses in Valéry. 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:41.110 align:middle line:84% And he's working that out, he's working out thinking 00:07:41.110 --> 00:07:43.390 align:middle line:90% in a very materialistic way. 00:07:43.390 --> 00:07:46.900 align:middle line:84% It's really interesting to read him if you're a poet. 00:07:46.900 --> 00:07:49.780 align:middle line:84% I actually find his book, Poems in the Rough, 00:07:49.780 --> 00:07:54.010 align:middle line:84% to be much more interesting than his more famous essays 00:07:54.010 --> 00:07:55.480 align:middle line:90% on poetry and art. 00:07:55.480 --> 00:07:59.140 align:middle line:84% But in a way, you can see they're prose poems-- 00:07:59.140 --> 00:08:00.310 align:middle line:90% these poems in the rough. 00:08:00.310 --> 00:08:03.700 align:middle line:90% So it's hard to separate out-- 00:08:03.700 --> 00:08:11.980 align:middle line:84% he's partly interested in retaxonomizing, these worlds 00:08:11.980 --> 00:08:15.040 align:middle line:84% that we so handily separate into prose or poetry 00:08:15.040 --> 00:08:16.120 align:middle line:90% criticism or poetry. 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:19.150 align:middle line:90% 00:08:19.150 --> 00:08:21.880 align:middle line:84% Animal, vegetable, mineral, everything. 00:08:21.880 --> 00:08:24.680 align:middle line:84% And look at this little description of pain. 00:08:24.680 --> 00:08:27.520 align:middle line:84% I mean, actually, you got to love the first one too 00:08:27.520 --> 00:08:30.490 align:middle line:84% which is about visual, because the visual and the sonic 00:08:30.490 --> 00:08:31.960 align:middle line:90% are both played here. 00:08:31.960 --> 00:08:33.850 align:middle line:84% Let me just do the first one, too, quickly. 00:08:33.850 --> 00:08:37.230 align:middle line:84% "The color of a thing is that--" he loves to use science, 00:08:37.230 --> 00:08:39.309 align:middle line:90% he departs from a point-- 00:08:39.309 --> 00:08:41.710 align:middle line:84% he uses a point of departure no one can argue with. 00:08:41.710 --> 00:08:46.000 align:middle line:84% And then, it bursts into flower, into a realm you never 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:48.160 align:middle line:84% would have foreseen, just because he nags it, 00:08:48.160 --> 00:08:51.250 align:middle line:84% he hangs onto it the way Rilke hangs onto something. 00:08:51.250 --> 00:08:54.460 align:middle line:84% And what makes him great is he works at it 00:08:54.460 --> 00:08:56.500 align:middle line:90% longer than other people do. 00:08:56.500 --> 00:08:59.440 align:middle line:84% He won't let it go until it yields forth 00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:01.420 align:middle line:90% its uncontainability somehow. 00:09:01.420 --> 00:09:04.870 align:middle line:84% "The color of a thing is that one which, out of all colors, 00:09:04.870 --> 00:09:07.490 align:middle line:84% the thing repels and cannot assimilate." 00:09:07.490 --> 00:09:11.320 align:middle line:84% Now this is based on the fact that the tan color is not 00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:18.190 align:middle line:84% in the table, it's reflected back to the eye from the table. 00:09:18.190 --> 00:09:21.910 align:middle line:84% The color is not in the thing, it's reflected off the thing, 00:09:21.910 --> 00:09:25.842 align:middle line:90% and then, the senses glean it. 00:09:25.842 --> 00:09:28.300 align:middle line:84% "The color of a thing is that one which, out of all colors, 00:09:28.300 --> 00:09:30.520 align:middle line:84% the thing repels and cannot assimilate. 00:09:30.520 --> 00:09:36.130 align:middle line:84% High heaven refuses blue, returning azure to the retina. 00:09:36.130 --> 00:09:40.390 align:middle line:84% All summer long, the leaves hold in the red." 00:09:40.390 --> 00:09:42.520 align:middle line:90% Isn't that great? 00:09:42.520 --> 00:09:45.340 align:middle line:84% You feel fall in there, and because 00:09:45.340 --> 00:09:47.740 align:middle line:84% on the color wheel, their position-- 00:09:47.740 --> 00:09:49.038 align:middle line:90% green and red are opposites. 00:09:49.038 --> 00:09:50.830 align:middle line:84% There's this wonderful sense of an opposite 00:09:50.830 --> 00:09:53.920 align:middle line:90% being buried inside the leaf. 00:09:53.920 --> 00:09:56.500 align:middle line:84% "High heaven refuses blue, returning azure to the retina. 00:09:56.500 --> 00:09:58.390 align:middle line:84% All summer long, the leaves hold in the red." 00:09:58.390 --> 00:10:01.060 align:middle line:84% And here's the third stage that still boggles my mind. 00:10:01.060 --> 00:10:03.940 align:middle line:84% I still not can entirely get the two halves of my brain 00:10:03.940 --> 00:10:06.700 align:middle line:84% around this next one, and I love it most of all of them. 00:10:06.700 --> 00:10:10.630 align:middle line:90% "Charcoal gobbles everything." 00:10:10.630 --> 00:10:14.170 align:middle line:84% That works on so many levels, I cannot even begin to say it, 00:10:14.170 --> 00:10:16.780 align:middle line:90% but you feel it. 00:10:16.780 --> 00:10:19.780 align:middle line:84% "To our senses, things offer only their rejections. 00:10:19.780 --> 00:10:21.610 align:middle line:90% We know them by their refuse. 00:10:21.610 --> 00:10:25.450 align:middle line:84% Perfume is what the flowers throw away. 00:10:25.450 --> 00:10:27.580 align:middle line:84% Perhaps, we can only know of their people 00:10:27.580 --> 00:10:30.730 align:middle line:84% by what they eliminate, by what their substance will not 00:10:30.730 --> 00:10:31.510 align:middle line:90% accept. 00:10:31.510 --> 00:10:35.260 align:middle line:84% If you are good, it is because you retain your evil. 00:10:35.260 --> 00:10:38.710 align:middle line:84% If you blaze, hurling off sparkles and lightnings, 00:10:38.710 --> 00:10:41.440 align:middle line:84% then your sorrow, gloom, and stupidity 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:43.330 align:middle line:90% are keeping house inside you. 00:10:43.330 --> 00:10:47.230 align:middle line:84% They are more you, more yours, than your brilliance. 00:10:47.230 --> 00:10:49.765 align:middle line:84% Your genius is everything you are not." 00:10:49.765 --> 00:10:52.820 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:52.820 --> 00:10:53.320 align:middle line:90% 00:10:53.320 --> 00:10:54.490 align:middle line:90% He's so wonderful. 00:10:54.490 --> 00:10:56.470 align:middle line:84% But you see how every step by step, 00:10:56.470 --> 00:10:59.020 align:middle line:84% he gets you to a place you would have said was impossible, 00:10:59.020 --> 00:11:02.300 align:middle line:84% it's a self contradiction, and yet, he earned it. 00:11:02.300 --> 00:11:04.510 align:middle line:90% It's amazing what he does. 00:11:04.510 --> 00:11:06.790 align:middle line:84% So look at the one about music and pain. 00:11:06.790 --> 00:11:09.980 align:middle line:84% "Pain is musical," and he's very precise. 00:11:09.980 --> 00:11:11.680 align:middle line:90% He's a scientist. 00:11:11.680 --> 00:11:15.190 align:middle line:84% Look at the vocabulary of music here, the precision. 00:11:15.190 --> 00:11:18.520 align:middle line:84% "Pain is musical, we can almost speak of it in musical terms. 00:11:18.520 --> 00:11:21.790 align:middle line:84% There are sharps and flats--" Indeed we do, 00:11:21.790 --> 00:11:24.700 align:middle line:84% but when the doctor asks you what kind of pain you have, 00:11:24.700 --> 00:11:28.270 align:middle line:84% you have to become a wine taster in responding, 00:11:28.270 --> 00:11:33.220 align:middle line:84% it's like how to find the words for my pain, my special pain. 00:11:33.220 --> 00:11:37.210 align:middle line:84% "There are sharps and flats, andantes and furiosos--" 00:11:37.210 --> 00:11:40.870 align:middle line:84% Isn't it great thinking about what kind of pain that means? 00:11:40.870 --> 00:11:43.020 align:middle line:84% I mean, when you imagine what it means? 00:11:43.020 --> 00:11:47.980 align:middle line:84% "--andantes and furiosos, sustained notes, rests, 00:11:47.980 --> 00:11:52.570 align:middle line:84% arpeggios, progressions, sudden silences too." 00:11:52.570 --> 00:11:55.280 align:middle line:90% 00:11:55.280 --> 00:11:57.980 align:middle line:84% The astonishing and brilliant thing in here 00:11:57.980 --> 00:12:02.150 align:middle line:84% is that "rests" is buried in the line, 00:12:02.150 --> 00:12:04.520 align:middle line:84% and "sudden silences" is at the end, 00:12:04.520 --> 00:12:10.490 align:middle line:84% and it takes a discerning reader to remember the distinction 00:12:10.490 --> 00:12:12.140 align:middle line:90% between the two. 00:12:12.140 --> 00:12:16.160 align:middle line:84% A lesser writer, a lesser reader will pass them off-- 00:12:16.160 --> 00:12:19.190 align:middle line:84% pass it off as a reiteration, it isn't. 00:12:19.190 --> 00:12:22.780 align:middle line:84% There's a mortal difference between the two, right? 00:12:22.780 --> 00:12:26.390 align:middle line:90% A rest is an orchestrated-- 00:12:26.390 --> 00:12:28.070 align:middle line:90% it's a part of the music. 00:12:28.070 --> 00:12:33.590 align:middle line:84% It's written in, and it's surrounded by music. 00:12:33.590 --> 00:12:37.640 align:middle line:84% A sudden silence is the end of the music. 00:12:37.640 --> 00:12:39.890 align:middle line:90% So the end-- at this end is-- 00:12:39.890 --> 00:12:43.040 align:middle line:90% in pain's terms-- that's death. 00:12:43.040 --> 00:12:46.070 align:middle line:84% The rest in a pain is something else. 00:12:46.070 --> 00:12:47.680 align:middle line:90% It's a little relief. 00:12:47.680 --> 00:12:50.540 align:middle line:84% The two were actually quite opposed to each other, 00:12:50.540 --> 00:12:54.680 align:middle line:90% not synonyms. 00:12:54.680 --> 00:12:57.590 align:middle line:84% And you know that he could make you so discerning, 00:12:57.590 --> 00:13:02.450 align:middle line:84% that he could make you such a gustatory specialist, 00:13:02.450 --> 00:13:04.910 align:middle line:84% that you could taste the flavor of the difference. 00:13:04.910 --> 00:13:07.530 align:middle line:84% And that it would be about pain, about life, 00:13:07.530 --> 00:13:10.220 align:middle line:84% about life and death, ultimately here. 00:13:10.220 --> 00:13:14.720 align:middle line:84% It's amazing, and such a little implement-- it's a two-line-- 00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:18.110 align:middle line:84% one and a half lines, it's a little device, really, 00:13:18.110 --> 00:13:20.060 align:middle line:90% a figurative device. 00:13:20.060 --> 00:13:21.440 align:middle line:90% But it unlocks it-- 00:13:21.440 --> 00:13:25.550 align:middle line:84% and very precisely used-- but it unlocks this uncontainability. 00:13:25.550 --> 00:13:28.190 align:middle line:90% 00:13:28.190 --> 00:13:30.740 align:middle line:84% You get a totally different character at work 00:13:30.740 --> 00:13:32.630 align:middle line:84% in Alan Dugan with "Love Song: I and Thou." 00:13:32.630 --> 00:13:34.880 align:middle line:84% Most people know this poem, I'll just race through it, 00:13:34.880 --> 00:13:36.570 align:middle line:90% because it's patent. 00:13:36.570 --> 00:13:38.095 align:middle line:84% I think how it works, but it's fun. 00:13:38.095 --> 00:13:39.470 align:middle line:84% Love song-- First of all, there's 00:13:39.470 --> 00:13:41.085 align:middle line:84% "Love Song: I and Thou," which makes 00:13:41.085 --> 00:13:43.460 align:middle line:84% you think you're going to be in the realms of the sacred. 00:13:43.460 --> 00:13:47.990 align:middle line:84% Again, how the writer sets you up for a fall, 00:13:47.990 --> 00:13:50.720 align:middle line:84% really, to have your mind changed. 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:53.780 align:middle line:84% Because "I and Thou," it's the era of Buber 00:13:53.780 --> 00:14:02.090 align:middle line:84% and all the faintly spiritual senses of human communication 00:14:02.090 --> 00:14:03.390 align:middle line:90% and contact. 00:14:03.390 --> 00:14:04.520 align:middle line:90% "Love Song: I and Thou." 00:14:04.520 --> 00:14:06.590 align:middle line:84% "Nothing is plumb, level, or square. 00:14:06.590 --> 00:14:07.790 align:middle line:90% The studs are bowed. 00:14:07.790 --> 00:14:11.690 align:middle line:84% The joists are shaky by nature, no piece fits any other piece 00:14:11.690 --> 00:14:14.390 align:middle line:84% without a gap or pinch, and bent nails 00:14:14.390 --> 00:14:16.700 align:middle line:84% dance all over the surfacing like maggots. 00:14:16.700 --> 00:14:19.130 align:middle line:90% By Christ, I am no carpenter. 00:14:19.130 --> 00:14:22.160 align:middle line:84% I built the roof for myself, the walls for myself, 00:14:22.160 --> 00:14:25.400 align:middle line:84% the floors for myself, and got hung up in it myself. 00:14:25.400 --> 00:14:28.460 align:middle line:84% I danced with a purple thumb at this house-warming, 00:14:28.460 --> 00:14:31.580 align:middle line:84% drunk with my prime whiskey, rage. 00:14:31.580 --> 00:14:37.070 align:middle line:84% Oh, I spat rage's nails into the frame-up of my work, it held. 00:14:37.070 --> 00:14:40.490 align:middle line:84% It settled plumb, level, solid, square and true 00:14:40.490 --> 00:14:41.660 align:middle line:90% for that great moment. 00:14:41.660 --> 00:14:44.810 align:middle line:84% Then, it screamed and went on through skewing as wrong 00:14:44.810 --> 00:14:45.530 align:middle line:90% the other way. 00:14:45.530 --> 00:14:46.820 align:middle line:90% God damned it. 00:14:46.820 --> 00:14:49.410 align:middle line:90% This is hell, but I planned it. 00:14:49.410 --> 00:14:51.650 align:middle line:84% I sawed it, I nailed it, and I will 00:14:51.650 --> 00:14:53.570 align:middle line:90% live in it until it kills me. 00:14:53.570 --> 00:14:56.750 align:middle line:84% I can nail my left palm to the left-hand crosspiece, 00:14:56.750 --> 00:14:58.890 align:middle line:84% but I can't do everything myself. 00:14:58.890 --> 00:15:03.905 align:middle line:84% I need a hand to nail the right, a help, a love, a you, a wife." 00:15:03.905 --> 00:15:07.226 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:15:07.226 --> 00:15:08.720 align:middle line:90% 00:15:08.720 --> 00:15:11.780 align:middle line:84% I mean, there's two or three turns in this poem. 00:15:11.780 --> 00:15:13.520 align:middle line:84% Big turns, you know, where you think 00:15:13.520 --> 00:15:17.240 align:middle line:84% you're going to get relief, and then, it skews on through. 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:19.910 align:middle line:84% And there's a lot of self-knowing, 00:15:19.910 --> 00:15:23.540 align:middle line:84% the nailing himself up, and a lot 00:15:23.540 --> 00:15:29.420 align:middle line:84% of knowing about how endearing a proposal 00:15:29.420 --> 00:15:33.770 align:middle line:90% this might be to any candidate. 00:15:33.770 --> 00:15:36.710 align:middle line:84% And then, rhetorically speaking, what happens 00:15:36.710 --> 00:15:38.930 align:middle line:84% is that the rhetorical balances in the poem 00:15:38.930 --> 00:15:41.960 align:middle line:84% have extra energy, because he administers them so well. 00:15:41.960 --> 00:15:43.820 align:middle line:90% There's gorgeous rhetoric. 00:15:43.820 --> 00:15:46.880 align:middle line:84% I mean, he-- a sentence or a stretch of the poem, 00:15:46.880 --> 00:15:50.390 align:middle line:84% a section of the poem will build on the pieces of rhetoric. 00:15:50.390 --> 00:15:52.850 align:middle line:84% You feel carpentry at work in this poem. 00:15:52.850 --> 00:15:54.320 align:middle line:84% I mean, just rhetorical structures, 00:15:54.320 --> 00:16:00.230 align:middle line:84% how phrases are made parallel and build one after the other. 00:16:00.230 --> 00:16:02.600 align:middle line:84% "I built the roof for myself, the walls for myself, 00:16:02.600 --> 00:16:05.520 align:middle line:84% the floors for myself, and got hung up in it myself," 00:16:05.520 --> 00:16:09.980 align:middle line:84% which is also a figure of Christ, right? 00:16:09.980 --> 00:16:15.110 align:middle line:84% And then, the way that "plumb, level, solid, square, and true" 00:16:15.110 --> 00:16:16.443 align:middle line:90% calls back the first line. 00:16:16.443 --> 00:16:18.360 align:middle line:84% And now, we're in the second half of the poem, 00:16:18.360 --> 00:16:19.860 align:middle line:84% so we think, oh, this is going to be 00:16:19.860 --> 00:16:21.140 align:middle line:90% the half where things go well. 00:16:21.140 --> 00:16:22.710 align:middle line:90% But it isn't. 00:16:22.710 --> 00:16:26.480 align:middle line:84% It's just a passing moment, the way the present is right 00:16:26.480 --> 00:16:28.970 align:middle line:90% between the past and the future. 00:16:28.970 --> 00:16:32.390 align:middle line:90% You're going to skew on through. 00:16:32.390 --> 00:16:36.890 align:middle line:84% And then, that trail of four little phrases at the end, also 00:16:36.890 --> 00:16:44.780 align:middle line:84% rhetorically parallel, just hammering the proposal out 00:16:44.780 --> 00:16:46.370 align:middle line:90% makes great rhetorical force. 00:16:46.370 --> 00:16:49.500 align:middle line:90% 00:16:49.500 --> 00:16:56.370 align:middle line:84% Not to mention, "a you," which marries an indefinite article 00:16:56.370 --> 00:17:00.300 align:middle line:84% with what is, presumably, a very specific address, 00:17:00.300 --> 00:17:07.200 align:middle line:84% and also carries with it a little bit of insult. You 00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:11.369 align:middle line:84% know, anyone will do, I just need another hammer. 00:17:11.369 --> 00:17:13.079 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:17:13.079 --> 00:17:15.480 align:middle line:90% I'm ready for you. 00:17:15.480 --> 00:17:16.740 align:middle line:90% Is it? 00:17:16.740 --> 00:17:24.900 align:middle line:84% There's a prize, but he can-- the man can write, or could. 00:17:24.900 --> 00:17:27.420 align:middle line:84% Similarly, look at Julio Cortázar quickly. 00:17:27.420 --> 00:17:28.410 align:middle line:90% I don't want to-- 00:17:28.410 --> 00:17:31.995 align:middle line:84% I know it's already after five, so I shouldn't. 00:17:31.995 --> 00:17:34.450 align:middle line:84% But you can read "Lines of the Hand" on your own. 00:17:34.450 --> 00:17:35.790 align:middle line:90% This is one in which-- 00:17:35.790 --> 00:17:39.360 align:middle line:84% this is a little prose poem in which he sends you 00:17:39.360 --> 00:17:40.620 align:middle line:90% on all kinds of wrong trails. 00:17:40.620 --> 00:17:44.220 align:middle line:84% You think you're going to be in the happy land of this cartoon 00:17:44.220 --> 00:17:46.800 align:middle line:84% character, he makes it a cartoon character, 00:17:46.800 --> 00:17:49.230 align:middle line:84% and it turns very mortal in the very last word, 00:17:49.230 --> 00:17:51.300 align:middle line:90% and not till that last word. 00:17:51.300 --> 00:17:53.040 align:middle line:84% This line comes out, it does all kinds 00:17:53.040 --> 00:17:54.780 align:middle line:84% of cartoonesque impossible things. 00:17:54.780 --> 00:17:57.510 align:middle line:84% So you don't think you're in any-- it's carefree, 00:17:57.510 --> 00:18:01.170 align:middle line:84% it's constantly attracted to the women in its arbitrary 00:18:01.170 --> 00:18:05.250 align:middle line:84% path, the shapely women in its path to the docks, 00:18:05.250 --> 00:18:06.540 align:middle line:90% and it gets on the ship. 00:18:06.540 --> 00:18:08.160 align:middle line:84% And you think it's all accidental, 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:09.660 align:middle line:84% even when there's a guy there who's 00:18:09.660 --> 00:18:11.280 align:middle line:90% unhappy and drinking cognac. 00:18:11.280 --> 00:18:13.470 align:middle line:84% And then, this line goes up his leg, 00:18:13.470 --> 00:18:16.380 align:middle line:84% as it went down the leg of the most beautiful woman 00:18:16.380 --> 00:18:17.820 align:middle line:90% on the bus, getting there. 00:18:17.820 --> 00:18:23.550 align:middle line:84% And it comes up his arm, and the end is "finds shelter 00:18:23.550 --> 00:18:25.440 align:middle line:84% in the palm of the right hand, which 00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:29.370 align:middle line:84% is just beginning to close around the butt of a revolver." 00:18:29.370 --> 00:18:31.230 align:middle line:84% And then, you remember where you started, 00:18:31.230 --> 00:18:33.060 align:middle line:84% "From a letter thrown on a table, 00:18:33.060 --> 00:18:36.990 align:middle line:84% a line comes," which goes through the city. 00:18:36.990 --> 00:18:42.060 align:middle line:84% And so, he sets you up not to take seriously, 00:18:42.060 --> 00:18:44.040 align:middle line:84% the questions of consequentiality, 00:18:44.040 --> 00:18:46.620 align:middle line:84% because it seems arbitrary where the line goes. 00:18:46.620 --> 00:18:49.570 align:middle line:84% It's sort of accidental, it's happy go lucky. 00:18:49.570 --> 00:18:54.510 align:middle line:84% But in the end, "revolver" circles you back 00:18:54.510 --> 00:18:57.480 align:middle line:90% to the beginning, in an odd way. 00:18:57.480 --> 00:19:00.790 align:middle line:84% Is such that that line of writing-- 00:19:00.790 --> 00:19:02.700 align:middle line:84% In fact, the title requires you to think 00:19:02.700 --> 00:19:06.270 align:middle line:84% of the lines of the hand as not only the writer's line coming 00:19:06.270 --> 00:19:09.090 align:middle line:84% out of a letter and going out into the world, 00:19:09.090 --> 00:19:15.110 align:middle line:84% but fate lines, love lines, fortune-tellers lines. 00:19:15.110 --> 00:19:18.530 align:middle line:90% But "revolver" is a wonderful-- 00:19:18.530 --> 00:19:22.250 align:middle line:84% is revolver in Spanish the same as in English? 00:19:22.250 --> 00:19:23.090 align:middle line:90% It is, isn't it? 00:19:23.090 --> 00:19:27.380 align:middle line:84% Yeah, so it has that same wonderful-- 00:19:27.380 --> 00:19:28.805 align:middle line:90% sending you round. 00:19:28.805 --> 00:19:33.790 align:middle line:90% 00:19:33.790 --> 00:19:37.810 align:middle line:84% Now that-- "What time is it" also does a similar thing. 00:19:37.810 --> 00:19:42.010 align:middle line:84% There's this odd-- there are a couple of these poems I'll just 00:19:42.010 --> 00:19:42.775 align:middle line:90% sketch. 00:19:42.775 --> 00:19:43.900 align:middle line:90% I'm not going to read them. 00:19:43.900 --> 00:19:47.380 align:middle line:84% I know it's time, really, to tie things up here, so 00:19:47.380 --> 00:19:49.000 align:middle line:90% as not to weary you. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.900 align:middle line:84% But "What time is it" and "On the Lawn at the Villa," 00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:56.440 align:middle line:84% and maybe even "Rainy Forests of Northern California" 00:19:56.440 --> 00:20:00.820 align:middle line:84% are poems that suspend their endings, 00:20:00.820 --> 00:20:04.180 align:middle line:84% that fail to deliver a wallop, when you 00:20:04.180 --> 00:20:06.910 align:middle line:90% had been prepared for a wallop. 00:20:06.910 --> 00:20:10.540 align:middle line:84% And that too is a strategy for ending. 00:20:10.540 --> 00:20:12.580 align:middle line:84% It's just the opposite strategy, but it 00:20:12.580 --> 00:20:14.800 align:middle line:90% is as powerful in its own way. 00:20:14.800 --> 00:20:17.470 align:middle line:84% I mean, I'm just going to read the Louis Simpson quickly, not 00:20:17.470 --> 00:20:19.725 align:middle line:84% go into details about how it misleads 00:20:19.725 --> 00:20:21.850 align:middle line:84% us or things like that, and then, what it delivers. 00:20:21.850 --> 00:20:23.600 align:middle line:84% But you'll get the sense of it immediately 00:20:23.600 --> 00:20:28.060 align:middle line:84% as an emotional force, because you so want something 00:20:28.060 --> 00:20:29.890 align:middle line:90% to happen that doesn't happen. 00:20:29.890 --> 00:20:34.630 align:middle line:84% It becomes, even a moral force as it happens in this poem, "On 00:20:34.630 --> 00:20:35.620 align:middle line:90% the Lawn at the Villa." 00:20:35.620 --> 00:20:37.300 align:middle line:90% This is a speaker-- 00:20:37.300 --> 00:20:39.610 align:middle line:90% who it soon becomes plain-- 00:20:39.610 --> 00:20:42.460 align:middle line:84% is not the poet who's writing the poem. 00:20:42.460 --> 00:20:45.250 align:middle line:84% Many contemporary American poems, it's almost impossible 00:20:45.250 --> 00:20:49.180 align:middle line:84% to separate out the poet's voice from the voice of the narrator, 00:20:49.180 --> 00:20:51.370 align:middle line:84% and you're not supposed to separate them out. 00:20:51.370 --> 00:20:54.700 align:middle line:84% Whereas here, it's a very distinct narrator, also 00:20:54.700 --> 00:20:57.550 align:middle line:84% with pretensions to writerlyness. 00:20:57.550 --> 00:21:01.990 align:middle line:84% He talks cozily with the reader about art, 00:21:01.990 --> 00:21:04.660 align:middle line:84% and becomes really distasteful to you 00:21:04.660 --> 00:21:07.360 align:middle line:90% in the course of his coziness. 00:21:07.360 --> 00:21:08.740 align:middle line:90% "On the lawn at the villa. 00:21:08.740 --> 00:21:10.600 align:middle line:84% That's the way to start, eh, reader? 00:21:10.600 --> 00:21:13.210 align:middle line:84% We know where we stand, somewhere expensive. 00:21:13.210 --> 00:21:16.810 align:middle line:84% You and I, imperturbes, as Walt would say, 00:21:16.810 --> 00:21:20.440 align:middle line:84% before the diversions of wealth, you and I engagés." 00:21:20.440 --> 00:21:24.010 align:middle line:84% Now first of all, Walt is probably Walt Whitman. 00:21:24.010 --> 00:21:27.180 align:middle line:84% And to use him in this service as the one who says 00:21:27.180 --> 00:21:31.000 align:middle line:84% "imperturbes" and "engagés," as though those were French 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:34.270 align:middle line:84% affectations that Walt strewed around for decorative 00:21:34.270 --> 00:21:37.120 align:middle line:84% purposes-- it's true that there's a lot of French 00:21:37.120 --> 00:21:38.290 align:middle line:90% in "Leaves of Grass." 00:21:38.290 --> 00:21:41.170 align:middle line:84% It's a surprising truth, but this-- 00:21:41.170 --> 00:21:44.260 align:middle line:84% Simpson uses it in this character's voice 00:21:44.260 --> 00:21:46.480 align:middle line:84% to be a sort of literary affectation. 00:21:46.480 --> 00:21:47.740 align:middle line:90% And OK. 00:21:47.740 --> 00:21:48.910 align:middle line:90% So then, he begins again. 00:21:48.910 --> 00:21:50.650 align:middle line:84% He's done his little attempt to be 00:21:50.650 --> 00:21:52.870 align:middle line:84% Walt. "On the lawn at the villa set 00:21:52.870 --> 00:21:56.170 align:middle line:84% a manufacturer of explosives, his wife from Paris, 00:21:56.170 --> 00:21:58.990 align:middle line:90% and a young man named Bruno." 00:21:58.990 --> 00:22:00.580 align:middle line:90% Here, we're almost-- what is it? 00:22:00.580 --> 00:22:03.730 align:middle line:84% Hemingway maybe, there's some other thing going on. 00:22:03.730 --> 00:22:06.130 align:middle line:84% "And myself, being American, willing 00:22:06.130 --> 00:22:09.700 align:middle line:84% to talk to these malefactors, the manufacturer of explosives, 00:22:09.700 --> 00:22:12.100 align:middle line:90% and so on, but somehow superior. 00:22:12.100 --> 00:22:14.590 align:middle line:90% By that, I mean democratic. 00:22:14.590 --> 00:22:16.630 align:middle line:84% It's complicated, being an American, having 00:22:16.630 --> 00:22:18.130 align:middle line:84% the money and the bad conscience, 00:22:18.130 --> 00:22:19.760 align:middle line:90% both at the same time. 00:22:19.760 --> 00:22:24.310 align:middle line:84% Perhaps after all, this is not the right subject for a poem." 00:22:24.310 --> 00:22:25.940 align:middle line:90% So he starts again. 00:22:25.940 --> 00:22:29.200 align:middle line:84% "We were all sitting there paralyzed in the hot Tuscan 00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:32.350 align:middle line:84% afternoon, and the bodies of the machine-gun crew 00:22:32.350 --> 00:22:34.900 align:middle line:90% were draped over the balcony. 00:22:34.900 --> 00:22:37.180 align:middle line:90% So we sat there all afternoon." 00:22:37.180 --> 00:22:39.820 align:middle line:90% 00:22:39.820 --> 00:22:44.730 align:middle line:84% Isn't it amazing how powerful that deflating last line is? 00:22:44.730 --> 00:22:48.030 align:middle line:84% Just, aargh, you want to throttle the guy. 00:22:48.030 --> 00:22:50.730 align:middle line:90% It makes you feel murderous. 00:22:50.730 --> 00:22:54.040 align:middle line:84% Because he turns-- the thing that, of course, most matter-- 00:22:54.040 --> 00:22:56.580 align:middle line:84% what is it-- going to most momentously matter 00:22:56.580 --> 00:22:59.970 align:middle line:84% to any reader with a soul, is what's 00:22:59.970 --> 00:23:02.400 align:middle line:90% the state of those bodies? 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:04.230 align:middle line:84% The bodies of the machine-gun crew 00:23:04.230 --> 00:23:11.310 align:middle line:84% draped like decoration, in his scenario. 00:23:11.310 --> 00:23:15.240 align:middle line:84% Draped over the balcony, but are they dead? 00:23:15.240 --> 00:23:17.260 align:middle line:84% I mean, it's in a way bad enough they're there, 00:23:17.260 --> 00:23:19.290 align:middle line:90% but it matters mortally to us. 00:23:19.290 --> 00:23:19.920 align:middle line:90% Are they dead? 00:23:19.920 --> 00:23:24.030 align:middle line:84% Well, nothing could matter more to semantic moral field 00:23:24.030 --> 00:23:24.810 align:middle line:90% of the poem. 00:23:24.810 --> 00:23:28.500 align:middle line:84% And yet, that's the thing that he steadfastly 00:23:28.500 --> 00:23:30.210 align:middle line:84% won't address throughout the whole poem, 00:23:30.210 --> 00:23:33.570 align:middle line:84% and that becomes Simpson's way of making a comment. 00:23:33.570 --> 00:23:36.510 align:middle line:84% He is refusing to give the wallop at the end. 00:23:36.510 --> 00:23:39.010 align:middle line:90% It's really a brilliant move. 00:23:39.010 --> 00:23:41.340 align:middle line:84% And one of the most forceful endings 00:23:41.340 --> 00:23:44.400 align:middle line:84% in American poetry in its withholding, in it's 00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:51.960 align:middle line:84% not delivering what we expect or crave. 00:23:51.960 --> 00:23:53.460 align:middle line:90% I recommend you read all these. 00:23:53.460 --> 00:23:55.020 align:middle line:90% They're quite wonderful. 00:23:55.020 --> 00:24:01.350 align:middle line:84% Maybe, the most fun is the little excerpt from Beckett. 00:24:01.350 --> 00:24:02.700 align:middle line:90% You know it's just-- 00:24:02.700 --> 00:24:06.510 align:middle line:84% to read Beckett-- my advice is read Beckett like a poet. 00:24:06.510 --> 00:24:09.750 align:middle line:84% Love his paragraphs, treat them as things that build 00:24:09.750 --> 00:24:12.330 align:middle line:90% and release. 00:24:12.330 --> 00:24:16.350 align:middle line:84% This is a particularly beautiful one because what-- 00:24:16.350 --> 00:24:20.640 align:middle line:84% the long trail arrives at something so cathartic. 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:23.850 align:middle line:84% "Watt, reflecting on this, heard a little voice say, Mr. Knott, 00:24:23.850 --> 00:24:27.360 align:middle line:84% having once known a man who was bitten by a dog, in the leg, 00:24:27.360 --> 00:24:30.540 align:middle line:84% and having once known another man who was scratched by a cat, 00:24:30.540 --> 00:24:34.260 align:middle line:84% in the nose, and having once known a fine healthy woman who 00:24:34.260 --> 00:24:37.410 align:middle line:84% was butted by a goat, in the loins, 00:24:37.410 --> 00:24:40.290 align:middle line:84% and having once known another man who was disemboweled 00:24:40.290 --> 00:24:43.620 align:middle line:84% by a bull, in the bowels, and having once 00:24:43.620 --> 00:24:45.780 align:middle line:84% frequented a canon who was kicked 00:24:45.780 --> 00:24:50.550 align:middle line:84% by a horse, in the crotch, is shy of dogs, 00:24:50.550 --> 00:24:53.880 align:middle line:84% and other four-footed friends, about the place, 00:24:53.880 --> 00:24:57.600 align:middle line:84% and of his inarticulate biped brothers and sisters in God 00:24:57.600 --> 00:24:58.800 align:middle line:90% hardly less so--" 00:24:58.800 --> 00:25:01.980 align:middle line:84% Now you think he's moving to the human, right? 00:25:01.980 --> 00:25:03.930 align:middle line:90% Inarticulate, but human. 00:25:03.930 --> 00:25:07.410 align:middle line:84% But instead, look "for he once--" and indeed, 00:25:07.410 --> 00:25:11.490 align:middle line:84% he adds more humans in the men-of-the-cloth category. 00:25:11.490 --> 00:25:15.000 align:middle line:84% So you think it's a continuation of human reference from before, 00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:16.230 align:middle line:90% when the canon appeared. 00:25:16.230 --> 00:25:19.860 align:middle line:84% But no, that's the turn of a surprise. 00:25:19.860 --> 00:25:22.500 align:middle line:84% "--of his inarticulate biped brothers and sisters in God 00:25:22.500 --> 00:25:25.530 align:middle line:84% hardly less so, for he once knew a missionary who was trampled 00:25:25.530 --> 00:25:29.940 align:middle line:84% to death by an ostrich, in the stomach--" 00:25:29.940 --> 00:25:33.780 align:middle line:84% Trampled to death by an ostrich in the stomach, 00:25:33.780 --> 00:25:37.380 align:middle line:84% the rhetorical parallels require that he put some body part 00:25:37.380 --> 00:25:40.140 align:middle line:84% there, but to be trampled to death by-- 00:25:40.140 --> 00:25:45.300 align:middle line:84% the organ becomes so inconsequential then. 00:25:45.300 --> 00:25:47.418 align:middle line:84% There's some hilarity in his understanding 00:25:47.418 --> 00:25:48.960 align:middle line:84% that setting up those parallels makes 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:51.878 align:middle line:90% us see how impossible it is. 00:25:51.878 --> 00:25:53.670 align:middle line:84% "He once knew a missionary who was trampled 00:25:53.670 --> 00:25:56.010 align:middle line:84% to death by an ostrich, in the stomach, 00:25:56.010 --> 00:25:58.470 align:middle line:84% and he once knew a priest who, on leaving 00:25:58.470 --> 00:26:01.590 align:middle line:84% with a sigh of relief the chapel where he had served mass, 00:26:01.590 --> 00:26:04.890 align:middle line:84% with his own hands, to more than a hundred persons, 00:26:04.890 --> 00:26:09.330 align:middle line:84% was shat on, from above, by a dove, in the eye." 00:26:09.330 --> 00:26:11.730 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:26:11.730 --> 00:26:16.770 align:middle line:84% That's purely rhetorical build-up and release, 00:26:16.770 --> 00:26:18.090 align:middle line:90% ingenious work. 00:26:18.090 --> 00:26:20.760 align:middle line:84% It happens in prose too, so I don't 00:26:20.760 --> 00:26:23.580 align:middle line:84% mean to make this the exclusive territory of poetry. 00:26:23.580 --> 00:26:27.000 align:middle line:84% Now, you know I started with that Emo Philips, 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:29.340 align:middle line:84% I got to tell you the other one, the unspeakable one. 00:26:29.340 --> 00:26:33.180 align:middle line:84% This will go in the library forever, but so be it. 00:26:33.180 --> 00:26:35.280 align:middle line:84% I've been salting most of my life 00:26:35.280 --> 00:26:38.625 align:middle line:90% and love good salts elsewhere. 00:26:38.625 --> 00:26:40.500 align:middle line:84% And this is one of the ones that tips me over 00:26:40.500 --> 00:26:44.160 align:middle line:84% into uncontrolability whenever I hear it unexpectedly. 00:26:44.160 --> 00:26:47.010 align:middle line:84% My friends would fuck anything that moved, but I never saw 00:26:47.010 --> 00:26:48.870 align:middle line:90% any reason to limit myself-- 00:26:48.870 --> 00:26:51.805 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:26:51.805 --> 00:26:53.700 align:middle line:90% 00:26:53.700 --> 00:26:56.640 align:middle line:84% --which withholds beautifully, I think. 00:26:56.640 --> 00:27:01.380 align:middle line:90% 00:27:01.380 --> 00:27:03.360 align:middle line:90% No analysis, if you'll forgive. 00:27:03.360 --> 00:27:07.830 align:middle line:84% The pun is adequate to the occasion, 00:27:07.830 --> 00:27:10.470 align:middle line:84% but I could analyze the hell out of it. 00:27:10.470 --> 00:27:12.540 align:middle line:84% Being a respectable lecturer instead, 00:27:12.540 --> 00:27:17.190 align:middle line:84% I'm going to end on these four lines from John Frederick Nims. 00:27:17.190 --> 00:27:23.400 align:middle line:84% "For the-- Finally for its sense of the joy of the thing. 00:27:23.400 --> 00:27:26.550 align:middle line:84% I mean, in the end, it's about where the true wealth lies, 00:27:26.550 --> 00:27:29.850 align:middle line:84% not in calculations, of that sense, 00:27:29.850 --> 00:27:33.330 align:middle line:84% of numbers about where profit comes from in art, 00:27:33.330 --> 00:27:39.830 align:middle line:84% but in immersion, in the thing that produces the value for us. 00:27:39.830 --> 00:27:45.010 align:middle line:84% And in this case, there's a kind of joy in not calculating. 00:27:45.010 --> 00:27:48.820 align:middle line:84% Luckily in the end, there are always more arses at work 00:27:48.820 --> 00:27:51.160 align:middle line:84% than those of literary criticism." 00:27:51.160 --> 00:27:54.610 align:middle line:90% This isn't "Ars Poetica." 00:27:54.610 --> 00:27:57.460 align:middle line:84% Notice to-- just as I read this, and I'll let the poem have 00:27:57.460 --> 00:27:59.290 align:middle line:84% the last word, and we'll be done-- 00:27:59.290 --> 00:28:03.610 align:middle line:84% how many senses of layer there are, how many layers of layer. 00:28:03.610 --> 00:28:08.470 align:middle line:84% There's the layer of eggs which is foremost or most 00:28:08.470 --> 00:28:11.920 align:middle line:84% superficial in the metaphorical field of the poem, that layer. 00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:19.180 align:middle line:84% But a lay, of course, as Bob Dylan told us or made famous, 00:28:19.180 --> 00:28:22.480 align:middle line:90% is the layer is also-- 00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:25.560 align:middle line:84% is both the lover and the singer of a song. 00:28:25.560 --> 00:28:28.340 align:middle line:90% A lay is a poem or a song. 00:28:28.340 --> 00:28:31.930 align:middle line:84% So all of those are at work here, "Ars Poetica." 00:28:31.930 --> 00:28:35.500 align:middle line:84% "The goose that laid the golden egg died looking up its crotch, 00:28:35.500 --> 00:28:38.470 align:middle line:84% to find out how its sphincter worked. 00:28:38.470 --> 00:28:40.330 align:middle line:90% Would you lay well? 00:28:40.330 --> 00:28:42.310 align:middle line:90% Don't watch." 00:28:42.310 --> 00:28:44.110 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:28:44.110 --> 00:28:45.500 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:28:45.500 --> 00:28:46.000 align:middle line:90%