WEBVTT

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Thank you so much.

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All right.

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There are a couple of
poems that I wrote having--

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moving away from
subject matter I

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think is a good thing in poetry.

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If someone said a little subject
matter goes a long way then--

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Flaubert, toward
the end of his life,

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said he wanted to write
a book about nothing.

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So I've been trying
to achieve that.

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And what I would
do, I'd just write--

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I just-- so I'd write a title
on the top of a piece of paper

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and then try to imagine a poem
that might belong on Earth.

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And the title of this one
is "Hippos on Holiday."

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"Hippos on holiday is really
not the title of a movie,

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but if it was, I would
be sure to see it.

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I love their short legs
and their big heads,

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the whole hippo look.

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Hundreds of them would
frolic in the mud

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of a wide, slow-moving
river, and I

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would eat my popcorn in the
dark of a neighborhood theater.

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When they open their
enormous mouths

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lined with big stubby teeth, I
would drink my enormous Coke.

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I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing

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with the hippos,
which is the way it

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is with a truly great movie.

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Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?

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[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]

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