WEBVTT

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I'm going to read now from
this section of the book, which

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is called In Salvador,
1978 to 1980.

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And I'm going to tell
you the little stories

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between the poems.

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And in this section as
well, read a few excerpts

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of, sort of, their small
prose of vignettes,

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that I wrote for this
book, which is brand new.

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It is a book of
photographs taken

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by thirty different
photographers from Europe,

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and North America,
and Latin America.

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Who were correspondents
in El Salvador

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between 1979 and the present.

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So this will be interwoven,
along with these stories.

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The section is dedicated to
the memory of Monseigneur Oscar

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Romero, who was the
Archbishop of San Salvador,

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until his assassination
in March 1980.

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Begins with an epigraph.

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Lines from the poet Antonio
Machado, these lines

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are also engraved on the
poet's tombstone, in Spanish.

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Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar

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And in English this is roughly,
walker, there is no path.

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You make the path
while you walk.

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Begins in California 1975.

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I got my first teaching
job in creative writing

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and composition at San
Diego State University.

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This was also the last
teaching job anyone ever got

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without a poetry book yet--

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So I was living a few miles
from the Mexican border

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and my students
at San Diego State

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called their city of San Diego,
a golf course with houses.

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They called their University
a cemetery with lights.

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So this is where I taught.

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It was very comfortable.

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It was very beautiful
on the golf course.

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And the nice-- very beautiful
climate and all of that.

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So which we took very
much for granted, very

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affluent community.

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And we never paused
a moment to think

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about conditions in
countries to the South of us.

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So that is what
this poem addresses.

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It is, arbitrarily, however
titled "San Onofre", instead of

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San Diego.

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This is because if
you live in San Diego

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and you drive North to Los
Angeles, along Highway 5,

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at 90 miles an hour.

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You have to slow your
car down at San Onofre,

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to 10 miles an hour.

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So that you can pass through
the checkpoints of the US

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immigration authority.

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And they will look inside the
car as you were slowing down

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and they will wave
you through like this.

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And if you don't look
American, to them.

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Whatever that means.

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They must have some
characteristics

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that we all share.

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They pull you over to the
side and ask you to prove it.

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But while you're doing that
you, can have a nice little tour

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of San Onofre.

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On your left, on the
ocean side of the highway,

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are the twin white igloos of
the San Onofre nuclear reactor.

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These are on the beach, on a
fault line on the tributary

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of the San Andreas.

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And on your right, on the
coast off the cliff on the top

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you'll see a fence, which is
the beginning of San Clemente.

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Do you remember the
significance of that?

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So I thought that this
town needed a poem, badly.

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So that's why I
gave it this name.

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[LAUGHTER] Darn it.

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Close OK.

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"We have come far
South, beyond here.

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The oldest women shelling
lemurs into Black Scholes.

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Portio scratching his
name on the walls.

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The slender ribbons of piss
children patting the mud.

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If we go on, we might
stop in the street,

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in the very place where
someone disappeared.

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And the words, come with
us, we might hear them.

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If that happened, we
would pass our lives

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with our hands tied together.

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That is why we feel
it is enough to listen

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to the wind, jostling
lemons, to dogs, ticking

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across the terraces knowing that
wild birds and warmer weather

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are forever moving North.

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The cries of those who vanish
might take years to get here."

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