WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.570 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.570 --> 00:00:06.820 align:middle line:84% The poet [INAUDIBLE] but there's a great deal of activity 00:00:06.820 --> 00:00:10.210 align:middle line:90% going on in the next few weeks. 00:00:10.210 --> 00:00:13.110 align:middle line:84% Our last reading will be a week from tonight 00:00:13.110 --> 00:00:15.600 align:middle line:84% in the terrace lounge in the Student Union. 00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:17.520 align:middle line:84% And it will honor the undergraduate students 00:00:17.520 --> 00:00:20.340 align:middle line:84% whose work has been accepted for Persona Magazine. 00:00:20.340 --> 00:00:25.440 align:middle line:90% 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:30.120 align:middle line:84% An Israeli poet Ada Aharoni, is visiting the campus 00:00:30.120 --> 00:00:34.170 align:middle line:84% under the sponsorship of Hillel Foundation 00:00:34.170 --> 00:00:36.810 align:middle line:84% and is doing some readings tomorrow. 00:00:36.810 --> 00:00:39.360 align:middle line:84% I put some sheets advertising her readings 00:00:39.360 --> 00:00:42.540 align:middle line:84% on the refreshment table in the hall. 00:00:42.540 --> 00:00:47.850 align:middle line:84% Also, Friday night of this week, it's a night of women's poetry. 00:00:47.850 --> 00:00:50.550 align:middle line:84% 8 o'clock in the Student Union junior ballroom and I 00:00:50.550 --> 00:00:53.010 align:middle line:84% put some sheets about it on the table too. 00:00:53.010 --> 00:00:56.390 align:middle line:90% 00:00:56.390 --> 00:01:00.170 align:middle line:84% In addition to our reading next week, the English department 00:01:00.170 --> 00:01:05.030 align:middle line:84% is sponsoring a reading by Gary Holthouse and that's Tuesday 00:01:05.030 --> 00:01:10.220 align:middle line:84% afternoon at 3 o'clock, Student Union, 283. 00:01:10.220 --> 00:01:13.310 align:middle line:84% Pima College is sponsoring a reading, Thursday night 00:01:13.310 --> 00:01:14.560 align:middle line:90% by Jim Zimmerman. 00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:20.300 align:middle line:84% A fine young poet who teaches at Northern Arizona University. 00:01:20.300 --> 00:01:23.720 align:middle line:84% On Easter Sunday, Steve Orlen and Tony Hoagland 00:01:23.720 --> 00:01:26.180 align:middle line:84% will be reading at the dinner where 00:01:26.180 --> 00:01:30.860 align:middle line:84% artists' cooperative gallery 7:30 in the evening. 00:01:30.860 --> 00:01:33.530 align:middle line:84% It's in conjunction with showing of paintings and pastels 00:01:33.530 --> 00:01:36.710 align:middle line:90% by Gail Marcus Orban. 00:01:36.710 --> 00:01:39.440 align:middle line:84% The second Tucson Poetry Festival 00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:42.830 align:middle line:84% would be in the last weekend in the month. 00:01:42.830 --> 00:01:45.830 align:middle line:90% That's April 27, 28, and 29. 00:01:45.830 --> 00:01:48.650 align:middle line:84% I brought over a stack of our last newsletter 00:01:48.650 --> 00:01:50.930 align:middle line:84% because in case you didn't get it, 00:01:50.930 --> 00:01:54.590 align:middle line:84% there is an article about the Tucson Poetry Festival in that. 00:01:54.590 --> 00:01:59.130 align:middle line:84% And it gives a number where you can get more information. 00:01:59.130 --> 00:02:00.720 align:middle line:84% And a very special performance is 00:02:00.720 --> 00:02:04.620 align:middle line:84% being done by the University of Arizona Readers Theatre. 00:02:04.620 --> 00:02:08.820 align:middle line:84% A chamber theater production of C.E Poverman's novel 00:02:08.820 --> 00:02:10.889 align:middle line:90% Solomon's Daughter. 00:02:10.889 --> 00:02:13.860 align:middle line:84% And that will be next Friday and Saturday night 00:02:13.860 --> 00:02:16.370 align:middle line:90% at the U of A theater. 00:02:16.370 --> 00:02:17.805 align:middle line:90% Now there will be a short quiz. 00:02:17.805 --> 00:02:24.010 align:middle line:90% 00:02:24.010 --> 00:02:26.010 align:middle line:84% It's a great pleasure to have Henry Carlile here 00:02:26.010 --> 00:02:27.718 align:middle line:84% and I hope you can stay after the reading 00:02:27.718 --> 00:02:30.750 align:middle line:84% and meet him have some refreshments. 00:02:30.750 --> 00:02:33.300 align:middle line:84% He's published two collections of poetry. 00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:36.480 align:middle line:84% The Rough Hewn Table with the University of Missouri. 00:02:36.480 --> 00:02:41.370 align:middle line:84% Press and Running Lights with Dragon Gate Press. 00:02:41.370 --> 00:02:44.190 align:middle line:84% His work appears in many magazines and anthologies. 00:02:44.190 --> 00:02:47.000 align:middle line:90% 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:52.065 align:middle line:84% Since 1967 he's been associated with Portland State University. 00:02:52.065 --> 00:02:53.690 align:middle line:84% His honors include a National Endowment 00:02:53.690 --> 00:02:56.270 align:middle line:90% for the Arts discovery grant. 00:02:56.270 --> 00:02:57.950 align:middle line:90% A Devin's award. 00:02:57.950 --> 00:03:00.710 align:middle line:84% A National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and PEN 00:03:00.710 --> 00:03:03.020 align:middle line:90% and Syndicated Fiction Award. 00:03:03.020 --> 00:03:05.000 align:middle line:84% You have a great treat in store for you 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:06.140 align:middle line:90% listening to Henry Carlile. 00:03:06.140 --> 00:03:26.760 align:middle line:90% 00:03:26.760 --> 00:03:28.140 align:middle line:90% Can you all hear me. 00:03:28.140 --> 00:03:29.220 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:03:29.220 --> 00:03:30.480 align:middle line:90% The sound is all right. 00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:37.900 align:middle line:90% 00:03:37.900 --> 00:03:40.330 align:middle line:84% I thought I'd start with the poem which 00:03:40.330 --> 00:03:43.270 align:middle line:90% was on the announcement, 00:03:43.270 --> 00:03:43.870 align:middle line:90% The Fire. 00:03:43.870 --> 00:03:47.620 align:middle line:90% 00:03:47.620 --> 00:03:53.080 align:middle line:84% In Portland, I went flying with a neighbor of ours who 00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:56.350 align:middle line:84% has a light plane and he let me fly it. 00:03:56.350 --> 00:03:58.090 align:middle line:90% We were flying at night. 00:03:58.090 --> 00:04:01.870 align:middle line:84% I had flown light planes before with other friends. 00:04:01.870 --> 00:04:05.440 align:middle line:90% I like to do it. 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:07.960 align:middle line:84% And this poem was about the experience 00:04:07.960 --> 00:04:12.430 align:middle line:84% of looking down trying to discover which house was ours 00:04:12.430 --> 00:04:15.250 align:middle line:84% knowing that my wife and daughter would 00:04:15.250 --> 00:04:18.040 align:middle line:90% be down there someplace. 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:24.700 align:middle line:84% Flying sometimes late at night, dozing over a book. 00:04:24.700 --> 00:04:29.530 align:middle line:84% The fire low and the wind high outside. 00:04:29.530 --> 00:04:33.850 align:middle line:84% I hear above the moon in the wires, the lonely motor 00:04:33.850 --> 00:04:38.110 align:middle line:84% of a small plane and I wonder who's up there 00:04:38.110 --> 00:04:42.970 align:middle line:84% or if through the overcast he sees our lights 00:04:42.970 --> 00:04:47.860 align:middle line:84% and can find his way safely down the blue runway. 00:04:47.860 --> 00:04:52.930 align:middle line:84% I have been there once or twice, hunched over red instrument. 00:04:52.930 --> 00:04:57.730 align:middle line:84% Intent on some horizon at an unfelt altitude. 00:04:57.730 --> 00:05:02.530 align:middle line:84% How slowly the night passed beneath my wings yet 00:05:02.530 --> 00:05:06.520 align:middle line:84% the airspeed indicator read riden to. 00:05:06.520 --> 00:05:09.850 align:middle line:84% One of those lights down there was home. 00:05:09.850 --> 00:05:15.970 align:middle line:84% Small, indistinguishable in the darkness and someone pointing 00:05:15.970 --> 00:05:19.120 align:middle line:84% the star that moves, that's your father. 00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:22.990 align:middle line:90% 00:05:22.990 --> 00:05:25.150 align:middle line:84% I'm going to go back to an older poem. 00:05:25.150 --> 00:05:27.220 align:middle line:84% Which I stopped reading for a while 00:05:27.220 --> 00:05:29.110 align:middle line:90% because I got tired of it. 00:05:29.110 --> 00:05:30.970 align:middle line:84% But I've started reading it again 00:05:30.970 --> 00:05:36.790 align:middle line:84% because since Jerry Falwell and others of his persuasion 00:05:36.790 --> 00:05:40.000 align:middle line:90% have been so vocal. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.270 align:middle line:84% It seemed the right time to read this poem. 00:05:43.270 --> 00:05:47.050 align:middle line:90% It's about my grandmother. 00:05:47.050 --> 00:05:54.490 align:middle line:84% She had a religious conversion of the low church border 00:05:54.490 --> 00:05:56.860 align:middle line:90% after having had 13 children. 00:05:56.860 --> 00:05:59.890 align:middle line:90% 00:05:59.890 --> 00:06:02.890 align:middle line:84% Which makes that kind of suspect, doesn't it. 00:06:02.890 --> 00:06:05.530 align:middle line:84% But she threw my grandfather out of the house. 00:06:05.530 --> 00:06:08.780 align:middle line:90% 00:06:08.780 --> 00:06:10.420 align:middle line:90% She was very difficult woman. 00:06:10.420 --> 00:06:13.720 align:middle line:90% 00:06:13.720 --> 00:06:16.480 align:middle line:84% After this poem first appeared in the book. 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:20.860 align:middle line:84% I got a letter from a woman down in a little town 00:06:20.860 --> 00:06:23.350 align:middle line:90% called Glide Oregon. 00:06:23.350 --> 00:06:30.610 align:middle line:84% And she was concerned because she felt that I was godless 00:06:30.610 --> 00:06:33.400 align:middle line:84% and I needed saving and she wrote me 00:06:33.400 --> 00:06:36.280 align:middle line:84% this very concerned letter and sent me 00:06:36.280 --> 00:06:38.500 align:middle line:90% a lot of religious literature. 00:06:38.500 --> 00:06:42.400 align:middle line:84% And I wrote back to her and I said, I'm not against religion, 00:06:42.400 --> 00:06:44.470 align:middle line:90% I'm against fanaticism. 00:06:44.470 --> 00:06:46.570 align:middle line:84% And she sent me a whole bunch more. 00:06:46.570 --> 00:06:49.780 align:middle line:90% 00:06:49.780 --> 00:06:52.090 align:middle line:90% Grandmother. 00:06:52.090 --> 00:06:55.870 align:middle line:84% No one remembered when she first discovered God. 00:06:55.870 --> 00:06:59.530 align:middle line:84% Her conversion was sudden as a slammed door. 00:06:59.530 --> 00:07:03.550 align:middle line:84% Outside, my grandfather beat the door jam with his fist 00:07:03.550 --> 00:07:07.690 align:middle line:84% but she God furious, would not relent. 00:07:07.690 --> 00:07:10.450 align:middle line:84% Shut up like an oyster on a speck of dirt. 00:07:10.450 --> 00:07:13.120 align:middle line:84% She praised God in her bed clothes. 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:15.670 align:middle line:84% Read the Bible like a French novel 00:07:15.670 --> 00:07:18.700 align:middle line:84% and dreamed each night of Christ the Savior. 00:07:18.700 --> 00:07:21.850 align:middle line:84% The lightning bolt of Revelation forking at her 00:07:21.850 --> 00:07:23.950 align:middle line:84% from the black cloud of her Bible 00:07:23.950 --> 00:07:28.810 align:middle line:84% and the Godhead stirring inside her like a sick sea. 00:07:28.810 --> 00:07:32.710 align:middle line:84% Overnight, her skirts grew longer and her temper shorter. 00:07:32.710 --> 00:07:36.400 align:middle line:84% The black buttons on her boots crept higher and higher on legs 00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:38.500 align:middle line:90% that had never seen the light. 00:07:38.500 --> 00:07:41.200 align:middle line:84% Whenever she rode the cable car downtown, 00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:43.690 align:middle line:84% she pulled her bonnet tight around her ears 00:07:43.690 --> 00:07:46.300 align:middle line:84% to let no evil word hiss through. 00:07:46.300 --> 00:07:49.930 align:middle line:84% Her eyes magnified by scripture, split 00:07:49.930 --> 00:07:52.810 align:middle line:84% by the seeing lens and reading lens which 00:07:52.810 --> 00:07:54.440 align:middle line:90% could never look together. 00:07:54.440 --> 00:07:57.820 align:middle line:84% Beholders of two worlds, one black and one 00:07:57.820 --> 00:08:01.330 align:middle line:84% white, negative, censored and unprintable. 00:08:01.330 --> 00:08:04.750 align:middle line:84% A damned world bleached of color. 00:08:04.750 --> 00:08:07.930 align:middle line:84% Stern is an iron stove, she drove her children off 00:08:07.930 --> 00:08:09.010 align:middle line:90% to church. 00:08:09.010 --> 00:08:11.260 align:middle line:84% Beat their bottoms with a willow to make 00:08:11.260 --> 00:08:13.690 align:middle line:84% them kneel like 13 sinful [AUDIO OUT].. 00:08:13.690 --> 00:08:17.950 align:middle line:84% Recalcitrant, flatulent, bleeding at the altars, 00:08:17.950 --> 00:08:22.660 align:middle line:84% pinched upright in their pews reciting alphabets of sin. 00:08:22.660 --> 00:08:25.240 align:middle line:84% While the preacher, a red faced Russian 00:08:25.240 --> 00:08:27.550 align:middle line:84% with a beard as black as God gospel 00:08:27.550 --> 00:08:30.310 align:middle line:84% from the pulpit and the congregation flat 00:08:30.310 --> 00:08:31.360 align:middle line:90% their tongues. 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:35.500 align:middle line:84% Prophesying improbable forgiveness but nothing 00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:36.820 align:middle line:90% ever was. 00:08:36.820 --> 00:08:39.429 align:middle line:84% The family scattered out like rabbits 00:08:39.429 --> 00:08:42.640 align:middle line:84% from the sawed off shotgun of the true faith. 00:08:42.640 --> 00:08:45.940 align:middle line:84% While grandmother rocked in the cradle of belief. 00:08:45.940 --> 00:08:48.340 align:middle line:84% Reading and praying, reading and praying. 00:08:48.340 --> 00:08:51.310 align:middle line:84% Copying scriptures on tiny scraps of paper 00:08:51.310 --> 00:08:54.070 align:middle line:84% that peep like mice or children from every nook 00:08:54.070 --> 00:08:56.350 align:middle line:90% and cranny of the old house. 00:08:56.350 --> 00:09:00.220 align:middle line:84% From cookie jars and table drawers and kitchen cupboards. 00:09:00.220 --> 00:09:02.530 align:middle line:90% Even from the Bible itself. 00:09:02.530 --> 00:09:06.400 align:middle line:84% Marsupial with misconceptions, threatening every minute 00:09:06.400 --> 00:09:07.600 align:middle line:90% to explode. 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:10.930 align:middle line:84% Until one day her heart did and we hunkered 00:09:10.930 --> 00:09:12.880 align:middle line:90% in the shadow of her death. 00:09:12.880 --> 00:09:15.520 align:middle line:84% A bad luck come to nothing family. 00:09:15.520 --> 00:09:16.540 align:middle line:90% Wrong census. 00:09:16.540 --> 00:09:21.370 align:middle line:90% 00:09:21.370 --> 00:09:24.760 align:middle line:84% This next poem is from the same book. 00:09:24.760 --> 00:09:29.980 align:middle line:84% My first book, The Rough Hewn Table and it's a request. 00:09:29.980 --> 00:09:32.770 align:middle line:84% I'm going to dedicate this one to my friend 00:09:32.770 --> 00:09:36.350 align:middle line:84% John Anderson, who asked me to read it. 00:09:36.350 --> 00:09:38.830 align:middle line:84% And I'm only going to read part of the poem. 00:09:38.830 --> 00:09:43.240 align:middle line:84% If I had to write this poem over again, 00:09:43.240 --> 00:09:46.040 align:middle line:84% I'd revise a lot of the first part of it. 00:09:46.040 --> 00:09:51.460 align:middle line:84% But it came out of an experience in part, at least. 00:09:51.460 --> 00:09:54.070 align:middle line:90% Which is described in the poem. 00:09:54.070 --> 00:09:57.310 align:middle line:84% But also from a couple of quotations that at the time, 00:09:57.310 --> 00:09:59.240 align:middle line:90% meant quite a bit to me. 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:01.450 align:middle line:90% One is from Luke. 00:10:01.450 --> 00:10:05.170 align:middle line:90% 00:10:05.170 --> 00:10:12.190 align:middle line:84% I believe it's chapter 11 verse 34, if I'm not mistaken. 00:10:12.190 --> 00:10:16.870 align:middle line:84% The quotation is, the light of the body is the eye. 00:10:16.870 --> 00:10:19.570 align:middle line:84% Therefore when thine eye is [AUDIO OUT] thy 00:10:19.570 --> 00:10:21.430 align:middle line:90% whole body is full of light. 00:10:21.430 --> 00:10:26.980 align:middle line:84% But when thine eye is evil thy body also is full of darkness. 00:10:26.980 --> 00:10:31.540 align:middle line:84% And also from a quotation which seems similar, 00:10:31.540 --> 00:10:34.240 align:middle line:84% from a letter of Van Gogh's to his brother Tale. 00:10:34.240 --> 00:10:39.010 align:middle line:84% Which goes, let us pray that our eye may become single 00:10:39.010 --> 00:10:43.200 align:middle line:84% and then our whole body shall be full of light. 00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:49.860 align:middle line:84% And this is the third and fourth section of the poem. 00:10:49.860 --> 00:10:54.615 align:middle line:84% Midway-- excuse me it's titled Narcissus a Notebook. 00:10:54.615 --> 00:10:58.530 align:middle line:90% 00:10:58.530 --> 00:11:03.990 align:middle line:84% Midway between the hugest red star, the smallest electron. 00:11:03.990 --> 00:11:08.520 align:middle line:84% I can't turn my eyes from this world and don't want to. 00:11:08.520 --> 00:11:10.500 align:middle line:90% Flowers and nova's. 00:11:10.500 --> 00:11:13.230 align:middle line:90% Snowflakes and diatoms. 00:11:13.230 --> 00:11:17.790 align:middle line:84% Observable and immeasurable explosions of species. 00:11:17.790 --> 00:11:21.240 align:middle line:84% Brief love affairs and words confuse me. 00:11:21.240 --> 00:11:24.240 align:middle line:84% Looking for it with a mind in chaos. 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:27.900 align:middle line:84% Considering all the physical evidence of a fear. 00:11:27.900 --> 00:11:31.050 align:middle line:84% Letting the light fall past my hearing. 00:11:31.050 --> 00:11:34.830 align:middle line:90% Letting the eye mislead the eye. 00:11:34.830 --> 00:11:38.340 align:middle line:84% That afternoon we walked through the badlands 00:11:38.340 --> 00:11:42.360 align:middle line:84% and saw the Earth forgetting itself and believed 00:11:42.360 --> 00:11:43.830 align:middle line:90% in those scars. 00:11:43.830 --> 00:11:47.100 align:middle line:84% Believed weather might reveal us. 00:11:47.100 --> 00:11:50.760 align:middle line:84% And in the Wind River Canyon, in a lightning storm. 00:11:50.760 --> 00:11:55.680 align:middle line:84% We saw the same colors, only this time more intense. 00:11:55.680 --> 00:11:59.730 align:middle line:84% And stopping to look, found the red shafted flicker 00:11:59.730 --> 00:12:04.350 align:middle line:84% trapped in a ball of line with a fish hook through its leg. 00:12:04.350 --> 00:12:08.790 align:middle line:84% Together we held it and cut the hook free 00:12:08.790 --> 00:12:13.170 align:middle line:84% then watched it fly off between lightning breaks. 00:12:13.170 --> 00:12:15.780 align:middle line:84% Coming back from the river, where I'd 00:12:15.780 --> 00:12:18.090 align:middle line:90% washed the blood from my hands. 00:12:18.090 --> 00:12:21.630 align:middle line:84% I found the dried remains of a young Kingfisher. 00:12:21.630 --> 00:12:26.340 align:middle line:84% Ants crawling from its eye sockets, didn't tell you. 00:12:26.340 --> 00:12:30.630 align:middle line:84% That night in the Tetons, I lay awake with my hands 00:12:30.630 --> 00:12:32.280 align:middle line:90% over my eyes. 00:12:32.280 --> 00:12:37.170 align:middle line:90% Clouds filled all the mountains. 00:12:37.170 --> 00:12:39.690 align:middle line:90% Part 4. 00:12:39.690 --> 00:12:42.750 align:middle line:84% After they had prepared his funeral pyre. 00:12:42.750 --> 00:12:46.200 align:middle line:84% They turned and found where his body had been. 00:12:46.200 --> 00:12:49.680 align:middle line:84% A flower of gold with white rimmed petals. 00:12:49.680 --> 00:12:52.680 align:middle line:90% Narcissus, Narcissus. 00:12:52.680 --> 00:12:55.050 align:middle line:90% We are what we long for. 00:12:55.050 --> 00:12:57.990 align:middle line:84% Now, you are everywhere in spring. 00:12:57.990 --> 00:13:00.570 align:middle line:84% Under trees and flowering shrubs, 00:13:00.570 --> 00:13:03.300 align:middle line:90% among ground cover plantings. 00:13:03.300 --> 00:13:07.950 align:middle line:84% Near water in rock gardens and patios or in borders 00:13:07.950 --> 00:13:12.060 align:middle line:84% by secret pathways or naturalized and sweeping 00:13:12.060 --> 00:13:13.020 align:middle line:90% drifts. 00:13:13.020 --> 00:13:16.530 align:middle line:84% Wherever light and space are available. 00:13:16.530 --> 00:13:29.220 align:middle line:90% 00:13:29.220 --> 00:13:33.720 align:middle line:84% When I was very young, we lived in Seattle. 00:13:33.720 --> 00:13:36.190 align:middle line:84% My mother was always getting married and divorced. 00:13:36.190 --> 00:13:41.610 align:middle line:84% She married four times which is a little confusing for me. 00:13:41.610 --> 00:13:45.960 align:middle line:84% But at the time that this poem refers to, 00:13:45.960 --> 00:13:48.090 align:middle line:90% we were living in Seattle. 00:13:48.090 --> 00:13:50.550 align:middle line:84% And they had street photographers then, 00:13:50.550 --> 00:13:54.840 align:middle line:84% who would take your photograph and then hand you a card. 00:13:54.840 --> 00:14:00.690 align:middle line:84% And you could send a $0.25 or whatever it was then 00:14:00.690 --> 00:14:04.020 align:middle line:84% and it was very inexpensive and get your photo. 00:14:04.020 --> 00:14:07.080 align:middle line:84% They weren't very good, just snapshots. 00:14:07.080 --> 00:14:11.700 align:middle line:84% But there was one of my mother and myself 00:14:11.700 --> 00:14:13.680 align:middle line:90% that I'm especially fond of. 00:14:13.680 --> 00:14:15.960 align:middle line:90% I was being very bad that day. 00:14:15.960 --> 00:14:19.200 align:middle line:84% I had a little wooden sword and I was really-- 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:23.260 align:middle line:84% I guess I was about five years old then maybe. 00:14:23.260 --> 00:14:25.290 align:middle line:84% And I had been cutting up rather badly 00:14:25.290 --> 00:14:27.420 align:middle line:90% and my mother was very cross. 00:14:27.420 --> 00:14:30.150 align:middle line:84% And at the moment that the photo was taken, 00:14:30.150 --> 00:14:32.370 align:middle line:90% passing under a theater marquee. 00:14:32.370 --> 00:14:37.140 align:middle line:84% And I thought that the titles of the films were rather funny. 00:14:37.140 --> 00:14:44.930 align:middle line:84% The poem is titled Grace, which is my mother's name. 00:14:44.930 --> 00:14:47.030 align:middle line:84% You look away as though to pretend you 00:14:47.030 --> 00:14:49.580 align:middle line:90% can't see the man aiming at us. 00:14:49.580 --> 00:14:51.680 align:middle line:90% He must have stood for hours. 00:14:51.680 --> 00:14:55.610 align:middle line:84% Focusing, shooting, holding out his card. 00:14:55.610 --> 00:15:01.070 align:middle line:84% Perhaps, having already decided who should pass and who stop. 00:15:01.070 --> 00:15:03.560 align:middle line:84% Why are you dressed all in black? 00:15:03.560 --> 00:15:05.420 align:middle line:90% You were never religious. 00:15:05.420 --> 00:15:07.220 align:middle line:90% No one has died. 00:15:07.220 --> 00:15:09.950 align:middle line:84% You told me past the theater, errant 00:15:09.950 --> 00:15:13.400 align:middle line:84% night, feet skipping off the pavement. 00:15:13.400 --> 00:15:17.360 align:middle line:84% How famous we seem with that caption above our heads. 00:15:17.360 --> 00:15:22.610 align:middle line:84% Two big features, The Grapes of Wrath of mice and men. 00:15:22.610 --> 00:15:26.690 align:middle line:84% After all these years, I seem to see us reversed. 00:15:26.690 --> 00:15:32.540 align:middle line:84% I, the little angry mother and you the son, unruly as always. 00:15:32.540 --> 00:15:35.420 align:middle line:84% Aiming sword down the camera's muzzle. 00:15:35.420 --> 00:15:41.540 align:middle line:84% That breath fixed and burning, that petrifying light. 00:15:41.540 --> 00:15:44.900 align:middle line:84% The Grapes of Wrath was one of my mother's favorite films 00:15:44.900 --> 00:15:47.990 align:middle line:84% and she took me to see it three times when I was a little kid 00:15:47.990 --> 00:15:49.490 align:middle line:90% and I hated it. 00:15:49.490 --> 00:15:53.450 align:middle line:84% I thought it was the most depressing film I'd ever seen. 00:15:53.450 --> 00:15:56.270 align:middle line:84% Of course, I love it now and I understand 00:15:56.270 --> 00:15:57.980 align:middle line:90% why my mother liked it. 00:15:57.980 --> 00:16:01.760 align:middle line:84% It meant a lot to her and it describes some of her life 00:16:01.760 --> 00:16:03.470 align:middle line:90% to her, I think. 00:16:03.470 --> 00:16:07.550 align:middle line:84% She drifted around the country looking for work, 00:16:07.550 --> 00:16:10.400 align:middle line:84% much the way Steinbeck's characters did. 00:16:10.400 --> 00:16:12.980 align:middle line:90% 00:16:12.980 --> 00:16:17.030 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I in part had that landscape in my mind. 00:16:17.030 --> 00:16:20.390 align:middle line:84% I don't know why the Midwestern landscape 00:16:20.390 --> 00:16:23.330 align:middle line:90% has meant a lot to me. 00:16:23.330 --> 00:16:27.690 align:middle line:84% We had a horrendous trip from Minnesota out to California 00:16:27.690 --> 00:16:28.190 align:middle line:90% once. 00:16:28.190 --> 00:16:31.610 align:middle line:84% Which was like a replay of The Grapes of Wrath. 00:16:31.610 --> 00:16:34.580 align:middle line:84% And it was during the Second World War 00:16:34.580 --> 00:16:36.590 align:middle line:84% and we went through to [AUDIO OUT] out there. 00:16:36.590 --> 00:16:38.930 align:middle line:84% When you couldn't buy tires or anything. 00:16:38.930 --> 00:16:40.070 align:middle line:90% It was awful. 00:16:40.070 --> 00:16:45.740 align:middle line:84% But in some way this poem is about fathers, I guess. 00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:49.490 align:middle line:90% But also about that period. 00:16:49.490 --> 00:16:55.360 align:middle line:84% A lot of the imagery is about that period titled, Depression. 00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:59.210 align:middle line:84% He's pushing a Black Ford through an empty street. 00:16:59.210 --> 00:17:03.020 align:middle line:84% A car like his father's that beat the flat roads like wind 00:17:03.020 --> 00:17:05.930 align:middle line:90% in summer and brought him here. 00:17:05.930 --> 00:17:08.329 align:middle line:90% He never forgave his father. 00:17:08.329 --> 00:17:10.970 align:middle line:90% That was the year he left home. 00:17:10.970 --> 00:17:15.079 align:middle line:84% Then there was talk of weather and everyone was packing. 00:17:15.079 --> 00:17:18.740 align:middle line:84% Windmills were stopped all over Kansas. 00:17:18.740 --> 00:17:22.910 align:middle line:84% He is thinking of father's, the ways they never forgive you. 00:17:22.910 --> 00:17:25.880 align:middle line:90% Withholding love like lust. 00:17:25.880 --> 00:17:29.270 align:middle line:84% But they quit, they stop like pumps. 00:17:29.270 --> 00:17:32.600 align:middle line:84% There is no way to set them working again. 00:17:32.600 --> 00:17:34.640 align:middle line:90% He is thinking of Mother's. 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:37.340 align:middle line:84% How she could not know, how he half followed 00:17:37.340 --> 00:17:39.800 align:middle line:90% girls down darks of his heart. 00:17:39.800 --> 00:17:45.650 align:middle line:84% How that loneliness is passed to sons, to the fathers of sons. 00:17:45.650 --> 00:17:47.960 align:middle line:90% He is pushing a Black Ford. 00:17:47.960 --> 00:17:52.310 align:middle line:84% Its problem is such a heart, you cannot give it enough care. 00:17:52.310 --> 00:17:56.690 align:middle line:84% Like a father it will quit and there is no end to this. 00:17:56.690 --> 00:18:06.630 align:middle line:90% 00:18:06.630 --> 00:18:09.360 align:middle line:90% My real father was Spanish. 00:18:09.360 --> 00:18:15.900 align:middle line:84% He was born in Havana and Carlile is my adopted name. 00:18:15.900 --> 00:18:19.380 align:middle line:84% When I went to get a passport once, I had a lot of trouble 00:18:19.380 --> 00:18:20.940 align:middle line:90% with the passport agency. 00:18:20.940 --> 00:18:25.710 align:middle line:84% Because when I presented them my birth certificate and 00:18:25.710 --> 00:18:29.370 align:middle line:84% with my real father's name which was Pareto, on it. 00:18:29.370 --> 00:18:34.050 align:middle line:84% And it said born in Havana and boy that was enough. 00:18:34.050 --> 00:18:39.270 align:middle line:84% Never mind that I haven't seen him since I was two years old. 00:18:39.270 --> 00:18:43.530 align:middle line:84% But I started this poem in free verse. 00:18:43.530 --> 00:18:46.200 align:middle line:90% It's titled Havana Blues. 00:18:46.200 --> 00:18:49.740 align:middle line:84% And it seemed to want to go into couplets 00:18:49.740 --> 00:18:52.410 align:middle line:84% and even though it seemed to me that some of the rhymes in it 00:18:52.410 --> 00:18:54.720 align:middle line:90% were terribly obvious. 00:18:54.720 --> 00:18:59.610 align:middle line:84% I thought I'd just go with them and see where it went 00:18:59.610 --> 00:19:05.820 align:middle line:84% and I left it this way in couplets. 00:19:05.820 --> 00:19:09.060 align:middle line:84% There's a Senator alluded to and here 00:19:09.060 --> 00:19:10.725 align:middle line:90% was Senator Eugene McCarthy. 00:19:10.725 --> 00:19:14.910 align:middle line:90% 00:19:14.910 --> 00:19:18.090 align:middle line:90% The right McCarthy. 00:19:18.090 --> 00:19:20.430 align:middle line:84% Tonight, I thought of you as I smoked 00:19:20.430 --> 00:19:23.280 align:middle line:84% a cigar smuggled in from your birthplace 00:19:23.280 --> 00:19:27.720 align:middle line:84% by a Senator who gave it to a friend, who gave it to me. 00:19:27.720 --> 00:19:31.410 align:middle line:84% Why speak as though to someone I could see. 00:19:31.410 --> 00:19:35.160 align:middle line:84% I try to know why fathers leave their sons. 00:19:35.160 --> 00:19:37.740 align:middle line:90% Why it is easy to forget. 00:19:37.740 --> 00:19:42.030 align:middle line:84% It must be, when you've never written me to say you're well. 00:19:42.030 --> 00:19:45.600 align:middle line:84% If you're alive and wish me well. 00:19:45.600 --> 00:19:48.480 align:middle line:84% Would like to visit when you have a chance. 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:51.150 align:middle line:90% Were you too proud or grieved? 00:19:51.150 --> 00:19:54.600 align:middle line:84% The evidence suggests you were and so I 00:19:54.600 --> 00:19:58.290 align:middle line:90% understand and must forgive. 00:19:58.290 --> 00:20:02.970 align:middle line:84% If you would only send a card to say, hello again, your father. 00:20:02.970 --> 00:20:06.570 align:middle line:84% But I'm talking to myself, why bother. 00:20:06.570 --> 00:20:10.330 align:middle line:84% You might be dead for all I know or care. 00:20:10.330 --> 00:20:14.970 align:middle line:84% I care and yet I must confess, my fear is finding you. 00:20:14.970 --> 00:20:17.610 align:middle line:90% Not knowing what to say. 00:20:17.610 --> 00:20:22.080 align:middle line:84% I'm talking to myself, a game I play with words. 00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:26.880 align:middle line:84% Your face the paper that I press blank, father, ghost. 00:20:26.880 --> 00:20:31.140 align:middle line:84% And if I miss you now, I miss for both of us. 00:20:31.140 --> 00:20:35.490 align:middle line:84% At two, a small imperfect replica of you. 00:20:35.490 --> 00:20:46.300 align:middle line:90% 00:20:46.300 --> 00:20:49.750 align:middle line:84% I read this in one of the classes last night. 00:20:49.750 --> 00:20:52.600 align:middle line:84% I hope you'll forgive me if I read it again. 00:20:52.600 --> 00:20:54.175 align:middle line:90% It's titled Spider Reeves. 00:20:54.175 --> 00:20:57.170 align:middle line:90% 00:20:57.170 --> 00:21:00.490 align:middle line:84% And it has a reference in it to Damascus twist. 00:21:00.490 --> 00:21:04.510 align:middle line:84% Which is a kind of tobacco, but also a kind of steel 00:21:04.510 --> 00:21:07.120 align:middle line:84% that shotgun barrels used to be made out of. 00:21:07.120 --> 00:21:11.920 align:middle line:84% It's an annealed kind of wire which is wound in a spiral. 00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:17.050 align:middle line:84% And it was designed for use with black powder. 00:21:17.050 --> 00:21:20.620 align:middle line:84% And smokeless powder shotgun loads 00:21:20.620 --> 00:21:26.410 align:middle line:84% used to have warnings written on them that they shouldn't be 00:21:26.410 --> 00:21:31.090 align:middle line:90% used in Damascus twist barrels. 00:21:31.090 --> 00:21:33.190 align:middle line:84% Well, my friend who had a shotgun, 00:21:33.190 --> 00:21:38.020 align:middle line:84% a double barreled shotgun, one barrel of which worked, 00:21:38.020 --> 00:21:39.430 align:middle line:90% did it and got away with it. 00:21:39.430 --> 00:21:42.100 align:middle line:90% He was always taking chances. 00:21:42.100 --> 00:21:45.850 align:middle line:84% And I knew that one day he would die young. 00:21:45.850 --> 00:21:46.960 align:middle line:90% He did. 00:21:46.960 --> 00:21:49.720 align:middle line:84% He went out-- he was a commercial fisherman. 00:21:49.720 --> 00:21:53.200 align:middle line:84% And he went out on Grays Harbor in a storm 00:21:53.200 --> 00:21:54.970 align:middle line:84% when all the other fishermen were sitting 00:21:54.970 --> 00:21:56.410 align:middle line:90% at the dock playing poker. 00:21:56.410 --> 00:21:58.360 align:middle line:84% And everyone told him not to go out, 00:21:58.360 --> 00:22:02.230 align:middle line:84% and he went out anyway, got outside then the breakwater 00:22:02.230 --> 00:22:05.020 align:middle line:84% and saw it was too rough and turned his boat around 00:22:05.020 --> 00:22:06.040 align:middle line:90% and started to come in. 00:22:06.040 --> 00:22:11.920 align:middle line:90% And he broached and drowned. 00:22:11.920 --> 00:22:15.970 align:middle line:84% But unfortunately, a lot of these misadventures 00:22:15.970 --> 00:22:20.620 align:middle line:84% which are described in this poem are 00:22:20.620 --> 00:22:22.240 align:middle line:90% ones that I was involved with. 00:22:22.240 --> 00:22:25.360 align:middle line:90% And he scared hell out of me. 00:22:25.360 --> 00:22:28.090 align:middle line:90% Spider Reeves. 00:22:28.090 --> 00:22:32.540 align:middle line:84% But for the broken firing pin, would it have lived elsewhere. 00:22:32.540 --> 00:22:35.290 align:middle line:84% You could have blown it out with your breath. 00:22:35.290 --> 00:22:37.360 align:middle line:90% Poked it out with a stick. 00:22:37.360 --> 00:22:41.560 align:middle line:84% But you liked to see its many eyes gleam from the chamber, 00:22:41.560 --> 00:22:43.660 align:middle line:90% each time you opened it. 00:22:43.660 --> 00:22:49.030 align:middle line:84% The next door chamber, took in noisy tenants, threw them out. 00:22:49.030 --> 00:22:52.360 align:middle line:84% What the spider thought of that loud eviction. 00:22:52.360 --> 00:22:56.920 align:middle line:84% It next door to death, no more a damned fool than you. 00:22:56.920 --> 00:23:00.370 align:middle line:84% Smokeless powder, Damascus twist. 00:23:00.370 --> 00:23:04.330 align:middle line:84% Lucky you didn't poach your own head instead of the dears. 00:23:04.330 --> 00:23:08.920 align:middle line:84% One night you shot it eyes and fetched a scream so shrill, 00:23:08.920 --> 00:23:10.690 align:middle line:90% you thought it was a woman's. 00:23:10.690 --> 00:23:13.330 align:middle line:90% It was a ring tailed Coons. 00:23:13.330 --> 00:23:16.000 align:middle line:84% Who else but you, would plug a punctured gas 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:17.260 align:middle line:90% tank with a match. 00:23:17.260 --> 00:23:19.750 align:middle line:90% Patch a leaking boat with gum. 00:23:19.750 --> 00:23:24.460 align:middle line:84% Get lost in fog on an ebb tide with the wind building. 00:23:24.460 --> 00:23:27.220 align:middle line:84% In school, they called you spider. 00:23:27.220 --> 00:23:31.180 align:middle line:84% Not for the spider in your gun but because you snagged 00:23:31.180 --> 00:23:35.470 align:middle line:84% passes with your sticky hands running so many directions 00:23:35.470 --> 00:23:36.280 align:middle line:90% at once. 00:23:36.280 --> 00:23:38.980 align:middle line:90% It seemed you had eight legs. 00:23:38.980 --> 00:23:41.110 align:middle line:90% Now you run with the tide. 00:23:41.110 --> 00:23:43.660 align:middle line:90% So many lost molecules. 00:23:43.660 --> 00:23:46.450 align:middle line:90% A gleam in the dog shark's eye. 00:23:46.450 --> 00:23:49.000 align:middle line:90% A diatomaceous spark. 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:51.070 align:middle line:90% You were not very bright. 00:23:51.070 --> 00:23:52.795 align:middle line:90% You could have learned to live. 00:23:52.795 --> 00:24:02.500 align:middle line:90% 00:24:02.500 --> 00:24:11.157 align:middle line:84% My third step father, I do lose track sometimes. 00:24:11.157 --> 00:24:13.780 align:middle line:90% 00:24:13.780 --> 00:24:17.770 align:middle line:84% Was probably more of a father to me than anyone. 00:24:17.770 --> 00:24:20.500 align:middle line:84% My mother finally found a man she could be happy with 00:24:20.500 --> 00:24:23.660 align:middle line:84% and stayed with him for many, many years. 00:24:23.660 --> 00:24:27.940 align:middle line:84% But several years ago, he had a terrible accident 00:24:27.940 --> 00:24:30.310 align:middle line:90% with a propane gas tank. 00:24:30.310 --> 00:24:33.130 align:middle line:84% Which exploded in their camping trailer. 00:24:33.130 --> 00:24:37.480 align:middle line:90% And he had a bad burn. 00:24:37.480 --> 00:24:41.950 align:middle line:84% 40% burn, first, second, and third degree burn. 00:24:41.950 --> 00:24:47.180 align:middle line:84% And since he was very old, it's rather dangerous. 00:24:47.180 --> 00:24:52.270 align:middle line:84% There are all kinds of side effects from burns as you know. 00:24:52.270 --> 00:24:56.890 align:middle line:84% But I used to have a very happy dream about my stepfather. 00:24:56.890 --> 00:24:59.500 align:middle line:84% I alluded to it on the first book. 00:24:59.500 --> 00:25:04.480 align:middle line:84% I'd dream that he wrote an absolutely perfect book 00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:05.470 align:middle line:90% of poems. 00:25:05.470 --> 00:25:09.400 align:middle line:90% A small selected poems. 00:25:09.400 --> 00:25:12.520 align:middle line:84% And it always made me terrifically happy 00:25:12.520 --> 00:25:14.620 align:middle line:84% because it would be like one of those dreams 00:25:14.620 --> 00:25:18.370 align:middle line:84% where you have a big house and you forgot all the rooms that 00:25:18.370 --> 00:25:20.440 align:middle line:84% are in it and you find a little room in it 00:25:20.440 --> 00:25:21.730 align:middle line:90% that you're happy in. 00:25:21.730 --> 00:25:25.690 align:middle line:84% I would forget that my stepfather had 00:25:25.690 --> 00:25:28.840 align:middle line:84% done this marvelous thing and then I would remember it 00:25:28.840 --> 00:25:31.210 align:middle line:90% and it was always great. 00:25:31.210 --> 00:25:33.730 align:middle line:84% But then when this accident happened, 00:25:33.730 --> 00:25:36.730 align:middle line:90% I finally deciphered the dream. 00:25:36.730 --> 00:25:39.850 align:middle line:84% I realized what the green book was 00:25:39.850 --> 00:25:42.230 align:middle line:84% and I've never had the dream since. 00:25:42.230 --> 00:25:45.580 align:middle line:84% And it really bothers me because it was a happy dream. 00:25:45.580 --> 00:25:47.920 align:middle line:90% I wish it would come back. 00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:51.340 align:middle line:84% Anyway, the poem is titled The Book of The Deer, The Bear 00:25:51.340 --> 00:25:54.370 align:middle line:90% and the Elk. 00:25:54.370 --> 00:25:56.560 align:middle line:84% You never wrote the small green book 00:25:56.560 --> 00:25:59.560 align:middle line:90% like the poems of Edward Thomas. 00:25:59.560 --> 00:26:01.450 align:middle line:90% It was a book I dreamed. 00:26:01.450 --> 00:26:04.840 align:middle line:84% But watching the green report of your heart on the monitor, 00:26:04.840 --> 00:26:07.720 align:middle line:84% it came to me as I stood like one of the doctors 00:26:07.720 --> 00:26:09.640 align:middle line:90% in my cap and gown. 00:26:09.640 --> 00:26:12.250 align:middle line:84% Home where you've lived like a bachelor, 00:26:12.250 --> 00:26:14.170 align:middle line:90% at the far end of the house. 00:26:14.170 --> 00:26:17.530 align:middle line:84% There is a green diary, the book of the deer, 00:26:17.530 --> 00:26:19.360 align:middle line:90% the bear and the elk. 00:26:19.360 --> 00:26:23.560 align:middle line:84% With snapshots of Julian and Bob and Harry. 00:26:23.560 --> 00:26:27.400 align:middle line:84% Old hunting friends, dead as the game strung up on poles 00:26:27.400 --> 00:26:30.130 align:middle line:90% or duped across fenders. 00:26:30.130 --> 00:26:32.990 align:middle line:84% I think you are the only one left. 00:26:32.990 --> 00:26:37.270 align:middle line:84% And still you fight to stay breathing, the scorched air 00:26:37.270 --> 00:26:38.620 align:middle line:90% of the burn ward. 00:26:38.620 --> 00:26:42.730 align:middle line:84% The sweet stink of your own charred flesh. 00:26:42.730 --> 00:26:45.850 align:middle line:90% Stepfather, don't go. 00:26:45.850 --> 00:26:49.180 align:middle line:84% 73 years is not the end of the book. 00:26:49.180 --> 00:26:51.850 align:middle line:84% The letters you never wrote because even 00:26:51.850 --> 00:26:57.310 align:middle line:84% before you blistered your hands, the act of writing pained you. 00:26:57.310 --> 00:27:00.400 align:middle line:84% It took four shots to bring it down. 00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:03.280 align:middle line:90% Your father never praised you. 00:27:03.280 --> 00:27:06.460 align:middle line:84% Rising in awe that night, he beckoned toward the woodshed 00:27:06.460 --> 00:27:09.790 align:middle line:84% where the skinned deer hung draped in burlap. 00:27:09.790 --> 00:27:12.430 align:middle line:90% Then he whipped you with a belt. 00:27:12.430 --> 00:27:15.310 align:middle line:84% Don't ever bring home meat shot up like that. 00:27:15.310 --> 00:27:17.560 align:middle line:90% One bullet is enough. 00:27:17.560 --> 00:27:22.240 align:middle line:84% I saw you kill a running buck at 300 yards with one shot. 00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:26.800 align:middle line:84% It's a brutal art that fathers passed to sons. 00:27:26.800 --> 00:27:29.680 align:middle line:84% When the propane tank ignited, you 00:27:29.680 --> 00:27:32.800 align:middle line:84% took the flaming cylinder in your arms like a lover 00:27:32.800 --> 00:27:34.960 align:middle line:90% and fought it out the door. 00:27:34.960 --> 00:27:38.230 align:middle line:84% Now you dream each night of the trailer burning. 00:27:38.230 --> 00:27:42.640 align:middle line:84% My mother screams and beats the fire out of her hair. 00:27:42.640 --> 00:27:45.670 align:middle line:84% She was not burned like you, twice 00:27:45.670 --> 00:27:48.760 align:middle line:90% and three times for your care. 00:27:48.760 --> 00:27:51.280 align:middle line:90% Now the deer are safe from us. 00:27:51.280 --> 00:27:55.090 align:middle line:84% I have one photograph to add to our book. 00:27:55.090 --> 00:27:57.700 align:middle line:90% A doe running through a field. 00:27:57.700 --> 00:27:59.860 align:middle line:90% My best shot. 00:27:59.860 --> 00:28:04.240 align:middle line:84% Somewhere in the grass behind her, a fan is hiding. 00:28:04.240 --> 00:28:06.850 align:middle line:84% You can't see it but it's waiting 00:28:06.850 --> 00:28:09.850 align:middle line:90% for its mother to draw us away. 00:28:09.850 --> 00:28:14.950 align:middle line:84% Later, she'll return and the two of them will be saved. 00:28:14.950 --> 00:28:19.045 align:middle line:84% Step father, father, be like the fan. 00:28:19.045 --> 00:28:25.190 align:middle line:90% 00:28:25.190 --> 00:28:27.650 align:middle line:84% I used to write a lot of bird poems 00:28:27.650 --> 00:28:29.930 align:middle line:84% and I was explaining this in class the other night. 00:28:29.930 --> 00:28:38.540 align:middle line:84% Because I couldn't seem to write directly about experiences. 00:28:38.540 --> 00:28:41.360 align:middle line:90% I was too shy. 00:28:41.360 --> 00:28:45.650 align:middle line:84% So, I would pick some ridiculous looking bird. 00:28:45.650 --> 00:28:51.950 align:middle line:84% Like a coot or a blue Heron or something and write about that. 00:28:51.950 --> 00:28:54.140 align:middle line:84% And it sort of expressed-- it became 00:28:54.140 --> 00:29:02.450 align:middle line:84% a sort of metaphor for a certain stage that I was going through. 00:29:02.450 --> 00:29:04.520 align:middle line:84% And it was inevitable I guess, that I 00:29:04.520 --> 00:29:07.745 align:middle line:84% would write a poem about the dodo, the extinct dodo. 00:29:07.745 --> 00:29:13.790 align:middle line:90% 00:29:13.790 --> 00:29:16.670 align:middle line:84% I really empathize with the dodo sometimes. 00:29:16.670 --> 00:29:21.920 align:middle line:84% It was a big dumb pigeon and it had no chance. 00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:25.280 align:middle line:84% And there's a sad story about the dodo. 00:29:25.280 --> 00:29:28.130 align:middle line:84% There is no complete dodo any place in the world. 00:29:28.130 --> 00:29:30.920 align:middle line:84% They have stuffed passenger pigeons, 00:29:30.920 --> 00:29:34.110 align:middle line:84% I think and other species that have gone extinct. 00:29:34.110 --> 00:29:36.560 align:middle line:90% But they have no complete dodos. 00:29:36.560 --> 00:29:39.260 align:middle line:84% They make up replicas of them, you know, 00:29:39.260 --> 00:29:40.400 align:middle line:90% what they looked like. 00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:43.820 align:middle line:84% They have pieces of dodos but they 00:29:43.820 --> 00:29:46.250 align:middle line:84% don't have enough pieces to put them all together 00:29:46.250 --> 00:29:47.780 align:middle line:90% and make one dodo, see. 00:29:47.780 --> 00:29:50.130 align:middle line:90% 00:29:50.130 --> 00:29:50.630 align:middle line:90% Right. 00:29:50.630 --> 00:29:53.330 align:middle line:90% 00:29:53.330 --> 00:29:57.470 align:middle line:84% Anyway, after I wrote this poem a friend 00:29:57.470 --> 00:29:59.390 align:middle line:90% sent me one of the stamps. 00:29:59.390 --> 00:30:01.520 align:middle line:90% It was a lovely stamp. 00:30:01.520 --> 00:30:02.610 align:middle line:90% It's one of my favorite. 00:30:02.610 --> 00:30:05.585 align:middle line:84% It says, save the dodo before it's too late. 00:30:05.585 --> 00:30:10.065 align:middle line:90% 00:30:10.065 --> 00:30:10.565 align:middle line:90% Dodo. 00:30:10.565 --> 00:30:14.390 align:middle line:90% 00:30:14.390 --> 00:30:17.060 align:middle line:90% Years they mistook me for you. 00:30:17.060 --> 00:30:19.070 align:middle line:84% Chanting your name in the streets, 00:30:19.070 --> 00:30:21.320 align:middle line:90% pointing grubby fingers. 00:30:21.320 --> 00:30:23.990 align:middle line:84% Today, in the Natural History Museum, 00:30:23.990 --> 00:30:28.340 align:middle line:84% I saw why dodo you look the way I feel. 00:30:28.340 --> 00:30:31.730 align:middle line:84% With your sad absent minded eyes and your beak 00:30:31.730 --> 00:30:34.160 align:middle line:90% like a stone age x. 00:30:34.160 --> 00:30:37.040 align:middle line:84% Even your feathers dingy and fuzzy. 00:30:37.040 --> 00:30:40.010 align:middle line:84% What woman would want them for a hat. 00:30:40.010 --> 00:30:44.210 align:middle line:84% With a name like dinosaur neptis, where could you go. 00:30:44.210 --> 00:30:49.640 align:middle line:84% Wings too small to fly with and feet so large and slow. 00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:51.890 align:middle line:90% You were not very palatable. 00:30:51.890 --> 00:30:54.500 align:middle line:90% Men slaughtered you for sport. 00:30:54.500 --> 00:30:57.515 align:middle line:84% Hogs ate the one egg you laid each year. 00:30:57.515 --> 00:31:01.190 align:middle line:90% 00:31:01.190 --> 00:31:04.220 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, I think I know how it feels 00:31:04.220 --> 00:31:06.560 align:middle line:90% to be scattered over the world. 00:31:06.560 --> 00:31:12.560 align:middle line:84% A foot in the British Museum a head in Copenhagen. 00:31:12.560 --> 00:31:17.780 align:middle line:84% To be a lesson after the fact, an entity in name only and that 00:31:17.780 --> 00:31:18.680 align:middle line:90% taken in vain. 00:31:18.680 --> 00:31:22.910 align:middle line:90% 00:31:22.910 --> 00:31:23.750 align:middle line:90% Poor dodo. 00:31:23.750 --> 00:31:31.450 align:middle line:90% 00:31:31.450 --> 00:31:34.900 align:middle line:84% In Oregon I've always been interested 00:31:34.900 --> 00:31:39.730 align:middle line:84% in eccentric hermits, various kinds. 00:31:39.730 --> 00:31:46.180 align:middle line:84% There was one called John Terno, who lived 00:31:46.180 --> 00:31:48.040 align:middle line:90% near where I did as a child. 00:31:48.040 --> 00:31:51.610 align:middle line:84% Who ran off into the Olympic Peninsula 00:31:51.610 --> 00:31:53.350 align:middle line:90% and became a wild man. 00:31:53.350 --> 00:31:56.230 align:middle line:84% And they haunted him for years and after he 00:31:56.230 --> 00:32:01.600 align:middle line:84% had killed a bunch of people who had tried to capture him 00:32:01.600 --> 00:32:08.380 align:middle line:90% they finally shot him. 00:32:08.380 --> 00:32:12.170 align:middle line:84% And he was one of those local mythic people 00:32:12.170 --> 00:32:15.820 align:middle line:90% who became a legend. 00:32:15.820 --> 00:32:18.430 align:middle line:84% I've alluded to him also to hermit 00:32:18.430 --> 00:32:22.032 align:middle line:84% I knew, who was a terrible smelling old hermit. 00:32:22.032 --> 00:32:23.740 align:middle line:84% He would come out of the woods every once 00:32:23.740 --> 00:32:24.980 align:middle line:90% in a while to buy supplies. 00:32:24.980 --> 00:32:27.230 align:middle line:84% Everybody called him posy flowers. 00:32:27.230 --> 00:32:30.460 align:middle line:84% I don't think that was his real name, however. 00:32:30.460 --> 00:32:37.810 align:middle line:84% But the other one, the most recently who was interested me 00:32:37.810 --> 00:32:40.690 align:middle line:84% is called the Birdman of Redmond. 00:32:40.690 --> 00:32:45.550 align:middle line:84% And they first did a local series on him 00:32:45.550 --> 00:32:49.390 align:middle line:84% and then later he was on one of those awful television 00:32:49.390 --> 00:32:54.170 align:middle line:84% shows like faces and places or are real people. 00:32:54.170 --> 00:32:56.860 align:middle line:90% I guess it was. 00:32:56.860 --> 00:33:01.480 align:middle line:84% But he has some marvelous gift with birds. 00:33:01.480 --> 00:33:04.660 align:middle line:84% For some reason, they trust him and he 00:33:04.660 --> 00:33:08.210 align:middle line:84% can walk outside his old trailer and just say, here birds, here 00:33:08.210 --> 00:33:08.710 align:middle line:90% birds. 00:33:08.710 --> 00:33:15.700 align:middle line:84% And they come from miles around and land all over him. 00:33:15.700 --> 00:33:20.710 align:middle line:84% He's been fighting a long battle with some companies, 00:33:20.710 --> 00:33:22.240 align:middle line:90% to build a rock crusher. 00:33:22.240 --> 00:33:24.880 align:middle line:84% And he's been fighting this single handed battle 00:33:24.880 --> 00:33:28.420 align:middle line:84% to try to keep them away because he's afraid they'll scare away 00:33:28.420 --> 00:33:29.500 align:middle line:90% all his birds. 00:33:29.500 --> 00:33:35.020 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I wrote this poem about him and then 00:33:35.020 --> 00:33:39.520 align:middle line:84% not having ever seen him, except on television. 00:33:39.520 --> 00:33:45.550 align:middle line:84% And then, guessing about some things. 00:33:45.550 --> 00:33:51.250 align:middle line:84% Later, Kim Stafford, William Stafford son went to visit him 00:33:51.250 --> 00:33:53.500 align:middle line:90% and wrote an article on him. 00:33:53.500 --> 00:33:57.190 align:middle line:84% And I found and I said, well, I hope 00:33:57.190 --> 00:34:00.250 align:middle line:84% he's never read this poem because there 00:34:00.250 --> 00:34:04.060 align:middle line:84% are a couple of things in it that might hurt his feelings. 00:34:04.060 --> 00:34:08.260 align:middle line:84% Like something about filthy, you know. 00:34:08.260 --> 00:34:10.659 align:middle line:84% And I didn't know if that were true or not. 00:34:10.659 --> 00:34:14.900 align:middle line:84% I thought it was but Kim said, Yeah, he really is. 00:34:14.900 --> 00:34:18.699 align:middle line:84% He smells awful but he's a nice man. 00:34:18.699 --> 00:34:26.710 align:middle line:90% Anyway, the Birdman of Redmond. 00:34:26.710 --> 00:34:30.250 align:middle line:84% He will not be told the rock crushers legal weight 00:34:30.250 --> 00:34:34.120 align:middle line:84% or why the courts consider the rights of birds worth less. 00:34:34.120 --> 00:34:36.850 align:middle line:90% Worth less than gravel or money. 00:34:36.850 --> 00:34:39.820 align:middle line:84% Therefore, he may stand a few more days 00:34:39.820 --> 00:34:41.800 align:middle line:84% with his arms spread in the clearing, 00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:44.380 align:middle line:90% crying here birds, here birds. 00:34:44.380 --> 00:34:47.320 align:middle line:90% As the flocks gather for crumbs. 00:34:47.320 --> 00:34:49.360 align:middle line:90% I have known others like him. 00:34:49.360 --> 00:34:51.400 align:middle line:90% Filthy, kindly men. 00:34:51.400 --> 00:34:54.820 align:middle line:84% Living alone, friends to deer and chipmunk 00:34:54.820 --> 00:34:59.050 align:middle line:84% no longer able to speak sensibly of the world outside, 00:34:59.050 --> 00:35:02.230 align:middle line:84% though they babble to anyone who comes. 00:35:02.230 --> 00:35:07.450 align:middle line:84% One I heard, took to the trees and was found years later, 00:35:07.450 --> 00:35:10.600 align:middle line:90% his face chewed by rats. 00:35:10.600 --> 00:35:15.730 align:middle line:84% Some swore him a genius wronged in politics or love. 00:35:15.730 --> 00:35:18.130 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, I think there is in each of us 00:35:18.130 --> 00:35:20.650 align:middle line:90% a simple place with its fire. 00:35:20.650 --> 00:35:25.450 align:middle line:84% A place of refusals to forget whatever we came here for. 00:35:25.450 --> 00:35:30.190 align:middle line:84% A face no matter, surely some awful failure. 00:35:30.190 --> 00:35:33.820 align:middle line:84% Some call it the self, we must lure as slowly 00:35:33.820 --> 00:35:37.450 align:middle line:84% as the eyes that come each night to circle the fire. 00:35:37.450 --> 00:35:39.910 align:middle line:90% Most never find it. 00:35:39.910 --> 00:35:42.520 align:middle line:84% I have dreamed such a place for years. 00:35:42.520 --> 00:35:45.460 align:middle line:84% A room I had almost forgotten in the house so huge 00:35:45.460 --> 00:35:48.730 align:middle line:84% it was hard to remember each room in hallway. 00:35:48.730 --> 00:35:51.310 align:middle line:90% I want so much to believe in it. 00:35:51.310 --> 00:35:56.230 align:middle line:84% Because I know that others have seen it too or some such place. 00:35:56.230 --> 00:35:58.570 align:middle line:84% There are too many rock crushers. 00:35:58.570 --> 00:36:03.040 align:middle line:84% Too many tempers that break every hardness but our own. 00:36:03.040 --> 00:36:06.490 align:middle line:84% Just once, I'd like some gentleness to win. 00:36:06.490 --> 00:36:11.200 align:middle line:84% It may not, which is why we have these places in ourselves. 00:36:11.200 --> 00:36:13.480 align:middle line:90% These rooms we barely remember. 00:36:13.480 --> 00:36:22.590 align:middle line:90% 00:36:22.590 --> 00:36:24.480 align:middle line:84% Well, time to read some new poems. 00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:28.680 align:middle line:84% These are our recent written since Running Lights. 00:36:28.680 --> 00:36:31.260 align:middle line:90% 00:36:31.260 --> 00:36:34.110 align:middle line:84% The first one I'll read is titled, The Cloud and The Plow 00:36:34.110 --> 00:36:36.930 align:middle line:90% and The Meaning of Rhyme. 00:36:36.930 --> 00:36:39.780 align:middle line:84% And it's kind of a playful response to something 00:36:39.780 --> 00:36:41.250 align:middle line:90% that my wife wrote once. 00:36:41.250 --> 00:36:44.190 align:middle line:84% It was an essay that she wrote that interested me a lot. 00:36:44.190 --> 00:36:48.900 align:middle line:84% About why we write in lines because 00:36:48.900 --> 00:36:53.350 align:middle line:84% we plow fields in straight lines and so on. 00:36:53.350 --> 00:36:56.605 align:middle line:84% It was kind of an interesting organic theory of poetry. 00:36:56.605 --> 00:37:01.290 align:middle line:90% 00:37:01.290 --> 00:37:04.200 align:middle line:84% Something about the poetry coming naturally out 00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:09.240 align:middle line:84% of experience and sort of arranging itself. 00:37:09.240 --> 00:37:12.280 align:middle line:84% And I believe, there's a great deal of truth in that. 00:37:12.280 --> 00:37:15.370 align:middle line:84% But I started writing this poem late one night. 00:37:15.370 --> 00:37:18.270 align:middle line:84% And I guess playing with the language 00:37:18.270 --> 00:37:24.340 align:middle line:84% and just having a lot of fun with it. 00:37:24.340 --> 00:37:26.980 align:middle line:84% You think the cloud will come closer and make 00:37:26.980 --> 00:37:28.570 align:middle line:90% everything clear. 00:37:28.570 --> 00:37:30.400 align:middle line:90% That's what you think. 00:37:30.400 --> 00:37:34.360 align:middle line:84% But it is elsewhere making someone else rain. 00:37:34.360 --> 00:37:36.460 align:middle line:84% The man in the cloud colored suit, 00:37:36.460 --> 00:37:39.190 align:middle line:90% cannot undertake his own shadow. 00:37:39.190 --> 00:37:42.550 align:middle line:90% It follows like a dog of rhyme. 00:37:42.550 --> 00:37:45.700 align:middle line:84% He puts out the light and he is everywhere. 00:37:45.700 --> 00:37:48.010 align:middle line:90% A shadow in the shadows. 00:37:48.010 --> 00:37:50.200 align:middle line:84% He turns on the light, his shadow 00:37:50.200 --> 00:37:53.440 align:middle line:84% starts from him like gray business. 00:37:53.440 --> 00:37:56.800 align:middle line:84% Why did you start this enterprise of rain? 00:37:56.800 --> 00:37:59.710 align:middle line:84% The reasons for rhyme are everywhere. 00:37:59.710 --> 00:38:03.280 align:middle line:84% You were not thinking of unplowing the fields. 00:38:03.280 --> 00:38:05.500 align:middle line:84% You'd like the furrows to refrain 00:38:05.500 --> 00:38:10.060 align:middle line:84% like a concentration of exact foreheads all nodding as one. 00:38:10.060 --> 00:38:13.990 align:middle line:84% The bell calling every man to mass on the same note, 00:38:13.990 --> 00:38:16.600 align:middle line:90% an absolute disaster. 00:38:16.600 --> 00:38:20.920 align:middle line:84% Grief that embezzlers and runs spending from real to real. 00:38:20.920 --> 00:38:23.830 align:middle line:84% Bringing on blades, helping the hogs 00:38:23.830 --> 00:38:27.670 align:middle line:84% that pour from their pens and your own pet grasshopper. 00:38:27.670 --> 00:38:32.170 align:middle line:84% All new and yet there is some precedent for this. 00:38:32.170 --> 00:38:36.310 align:middle line:84% As after great thunder and sin, you feel refreshed. 00:38:36.310 --> 00:38:41.230 align:middle line:84% As after hard rain, you see the steam rising from fields 00:38:41.230 --> 00:38:44.350 align:middle line:84% and hear the birds starting up all over again. 00:38:44.350 --> 00:38:48.400 align:middle line:84% Their fierce little engines, strange, you even 00:38:48.400 --> 00:38:49.420 align:middle line:90% knew they could sing. 00:38:49.420 --> 00:39:05.510 align:middle line:90% 00:39:05.510 --> 00:39:09.530 align:middle line:84% A gay friend of mine I like a lot. 00:39:09.530 --> 00:39:14.690 align:middle line:84% Confessed to me with a characteristic self irony 00:39:14.690 --> 00:39:19.670 align:middle line:84% that he felt himself to be in an untenable situation. 00:39:19.670 --> 00:39:24.740 align:middle line:84% He's getting old and fat and he's still hopelessly addicted 00:39:24.740 --> 00:39:27.740 align:middle line:90% to athletic young men. 00:39:27.740 --> 00:39:31.850 align:middle line:84% So, I wrote a poem for him titled Keeper of The Towels. 00:39:31.850 --> 00:39:36.480 align:middle line:90% 00:39:36.480 --> 00:39:41.570 align:middle line:84% Which is really an off, it's a derivation from Rilke poem. 00:39:41.570 --> 00:39:46.520 align:middle line:84% It's written in form so its titled Keeper of The Towels 00:39:46.520 --> 00:39:47.390 align:middle line:90% after Rilke. 00:39:47.390 --> 00:39:50.310 align:middle line:90% 00:39:50.310 --> 00:39:53.790 align:middle line:84% His site from ever peering through the showers 00:39:53.790 --> 00:39:57.630 align:middle line:84% has grown so keen he thinks of little else. 00:39:57.630 --> 00:40:03.180 align:middle line:84% And he is always present, like the evening hours to shyly seek 00:40:03.180 --> 00:40:06.060 align:middle line:90% what elevates his pulse. 00:40:06.060 --> 00:40:10.440 align:middle line:84% Thigh, shoulder, calf or thrilling bum. 00:40:10.440 --> 00:40:14.670 align:middle line:84% Divine torsos of Larry Bruce and bushy. 00:40:14.670 --> 00:40:18.480 align:middle line:84% He combs himself by dosing up on valium. 00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:22.530 align:middle line:84% Fearful to be forward, might prove touchy. 00:40:22.530 --> 00:40:26.430 align:middle line:84% His loitering bespeaks a hidden poignant need, 00:40:26.430 --> 00:40:30.030 align:middle line:84% in which the will to act stands paralyzed. 00:40:30.030 --> 00:40:34.380 align:middle line:84% Careless do they know what lusts they feed so easy 00:40:34.380 --> 00:40:36.640 align:middle line:90% in themselves, so idolized. 00:40:36.640 --> 00:40:45.500 align:middle line:90% 00:40:45.500 --> 00:40:47.570 align:middle line:84% A couple of summers ago I was teaching 00:40:47.570 --> 00:40:50.930 align:middle line:84% at the Centrum Foundation in Washington 00:40:50.930 --> 00:40:55.440 align:middle line:84% and after the conference I decided to go salmon fishing. 00:40:55.440 --> 00:40:59.640 align:middle line:84% And while I was fishing I saw a poseidon class submarine 00:40:59.640 --> 00:41:02.950 align:middle line:90% coming up the Straits. 00:41:02.950 --> 00:41:04.960 align:middle line:84% I didn't know what it was at first because you 00:41:04.960 --> 00:41:07.120 align:middle line:84% can see the black conning tower on one 00:41:07.120 --> 00:41:09.100 align:middle line:90% of those things for miles. 00:41:09.100 --> 00:41:16.290 align:middle line:84% It looks like the dorsal of a killer whale. 00:41:16.290 --> 00:41:22.480 align:middle line:84% And that is in water where there are a lot of killer whales 00:41:22.480 --> 00:41:34.250 align:middle line:84% and I ran my boat at it and flew a band, the trident flag. 00:41:34.250 --> 00:41:39.020 align:middle line:84% This was a month before the USS Ohio came in. 00:41:39.020 --> 00:41:44.580 align:middle line:84% It didn't seem right somehow for this thing that 00:41:44.580 --> 00:41:49.110 align:middle line:84% can annihilate most of the major cities in the Soviet Union 00:41:49.110 --> 00:41:53.410 align:middle line:84% to be in a beautiful place like that. 00:41:53.410 --> 00:41:56.860 align:middle line:84% And of course, it automatically makes it a target 00:41:56.860 --> 00:41:58.420 align:middle line:90% by its very presence there. 00:41:58.420 --> 00:42:02.290 align:middle line:84% It makes a target out of a place that 00:42:02.290 --> 00:42:07.490 align:middle line:84% is very important to people who live in the Northwest. 00:42:07.490 --> 00:42:13.120 align:middle line:84% So, I wrote this poem of Port Townsend, the month 00:42:13.120 --> 00:42:13.885 align:middle line:90% before trident. 00:42:13.885 --> 00:42:17.050 align:middle line:90% 00:42:17.050 --> 00:42:20.440 align:middle line:84% Down Haro Strait in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 00:42:20.440 --> 00:42:23.830 align:middle line:84% The killer whales would broach and roll. 00:42:23.830 --> 00:42:27.220 align:middle line:84% Lifting tall dorsal, free of the water. 00:42:27.220 --> 00:42:31.240 align:middle line:84% Breath popping like steam valves on old boilers. 00:42:31.240 --> 00:42:35.860 align:middle line:84% Black and white they were, like a giant string quartet. 00:42:35.860 --> 00:42:40.570 align:middle line:84% Not vicious as we'd thought but teamable and captive. 00:42:40.570 --> 00:42:43.060 align:middle line:90% Aiming only to please. 00:42:43.060 --> 00:42:46.930 align:middle line:84% Once lonely sailors rocked by their music 00:42:46.930 --> 00:42:51.520 align:middle line:84% through a ship's hull, mistook them for mermaids. 00:42:51.520 --> 00:42:54.220 align:middle line:84% Now, if you put your ear to the water, 00:42:54.220 --> 00:42:57.130 align:middle line:84% you might listen to the hiss of electrons. 00:42:57.130 --> 00:43:01.060 align:middle line:84% The turbines deep nuclear hum and pulse 00:43:01.060 --> 00:43:03.700 align:middle line:84% of propellers at each revolution. 00:43:03.700 --> 00:43:08.020 align:middle line:84% Whispering no to the hope of cities. 00:43:08.020 --> 00:43:10.690 align:middle line:84% The morning I saw my first poseidon, 00:43:10.690 --> 00:43:14.050 align:middle line:84% I forgot the salmon I had come to fish for 00:43:14.050 --> 00:43:16.510 align:middle line:90% and rammed the throttle open. 00:43:16.510 --> 00:43:20.560 align:middle line:84% Closing at 20 knots, quartering on its bow. 00:43:20.560 --> 00:43:25.240 align:middle line:84% My puny band the trident flag, unfurled. 00:43:25.240 --> 00:43:28.300 align:middle line:84% From their high place surrounded by periscopes 00:43:28.300 --> 00:43:31.210 align:middle line:84% the curious officers looked down. 00:43:31.210 --> 00:43:33.010 align:middle line:90% I was no Bogart. 00:43:33.010 --> 00:43:35.800 align:middle line:90% My boat no African queen. 00:43:35.800 --> 00:43:38.230 align:middle line:84% I only wished to keep this poseidon 00:43:38.230 --> 00:43:41.770 align:middle line:84% safe in some post-nuclear museum. 00:43:41.770 --> 00:43:46.180 align:middle line:84% A tame knows we might pat, disarming as the whales. 00:43:46.180 --> 00:43:51.070 align:middle line:84% But for now it holds course, which is darkened by its pace. 00:43:51.070 --> 00:43:55.750 align:middle line:84% Staining the scenery it slips through like grease. 00:43:55.750 --> 00:43:59.890 align:middle line:84% Tacking from that wake, a bar toward a reef of gulls 00:43:59.890 --> 00:44:01.090 align:middle line:90% and chocolates. 00:44:01.090 --> 00:44:04.600 align:middle line:90% Candle fish and rising salmon. 00:44:04.600 --> 00:44:09.070 align:middle line:84% White sand cliffs were Moderna start and whisper. 00:44:09.070 --> 00:44:13.420 align:middle line:84% Blue sky of red bell hanging on slack tide. 00:44:13.420 --> 00:44:18.940 align:middle line:84% The only black exposed rock, the whale's dorsal. 00:44:18.940 --> 00:44:23.380 align:middle line:84% Once there was a city-state that promised everything. 00:44:23.380 --> 00:44:27.310 align:middle line:84% White is the sand cliffs with olive trees. 00:44:27.310 --> 00:44:33.850 align:middle line:84% Promenades, framed in marble and statues of the old cruel gods. 00:44:33.850 --> 00:44:35.920 align:middle line:90% Poseidon was one. 00:44:35.920 --> 00:44:38.380 align:middle line:90% His weapon the trident. 00:44:38.380 --> 00:44:42.205 align:middle line:84% Names we thought we could use because they meant nothing. 00:44:42.205 --> 00:44:45.870 align:middle line:90% 00:44:45.870 --> 00:44:50.910 align:middle line:84% You know and finally with a poem titled, The Four Seasons. 00:44:50.910 --> 00:44:54.030 align:middle line:90% I've loved Vivaldi's music. 00:44:54.030 --> 00:44:59.580 align:middle line:84% This poem may not have that much to do with Vivaldi really. 00:44:59.580 --> 00:45:05.710 align:middle line:84% It started just one day looking out a window at a view 00:45:05.710 --> 00:45:09.295 align:middle line:84% and it begins instead of in spring, in the winter. 00:45:09.295 --> 00:45:11.950 align:middle line:90% 00:45:11.950 --> 00:45:16.000 align:middle line:84% Somehow, this is not an intentional reference 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:18.910 align:middle line:84% to go from a submarine poem to a submarine metaphor. 00:45:18.910 --> 00:45:23.620 align:middle line:84% It's really the way the frost looked on the window. 00:45:23.620 --> 00:45:25.800 align:middle line:90% The Four Seasons. 00:45:25.800 --> 00:45:30.360 align:middle line:84% In the shape of a submarine, frost lengthens on a window. 00:45:30.360 --> 00:45:35.700 align:middle line:84% Outside, winter sparrows perch in rhinoceros colored trees. 00:45:35.700 --> 00:45:40.410 align:middle line:84% Mare's tails chase Whiteley past brick chimneys. 00:45:40.410 --> 00:45:43.110 align:middle line:90% I have seen those lights before. 00:45:43.110 --> 00:45:47.130 align:middle line:84% Small, rectangular eyes of far buildings. 00:45:47.130 --> 00:45:50.565 align:middle line:84% One church steeple, darkening the blue sky. 00:45:50.565 --> 00:45:54.200 align:middle line:90% 00:45:54.200 --> 00:45:57.290 align:middle line:84% Looks like a stopped gray heart, if heart sport 00:45:57.290 --> 00:46:02.640 align:middle line:84% such delicate scallops and trees wear hearts on their sleeves. 00:46:02.640 --> 00:46:05.990 align:middle line:84% Now, the first swaths of spring emerges. 00:46:05.990 --> 00:46:09.620 align:middle line:84% Its wings a transparency of fish scales. 00:46:09.620 --> 00:46:13.220 align:middle line:84% Old eyes and glass or vein fretted windows. 00:46:13.220 --> 00:46:16.850 align:middle line:84% Wings of the first untranscendent angel, 00:46:16.850 --> 00:46:20.270 align:middle line:84% sentenced to death by the God frost. 00:46:20.270 --> 00:46:24.140 align:middle line:84% How can some later spring reclaim this paper city 00:46:24.140 --> 00:46:27.440 align:middle line:84% or repair its walls damaged in the long drop 00:46:27.440 --> 00:46:31.820 align:middle line:84% from the 120th odd year of a tree. 00:46:31.820 --> 00:46:34.280 align:middle line:84% The sky wears that color through which 00:46:34.280 --> 00:46:37.520 align:middle line:84% you expect the tornado's black drill. 00:46:37.520 --> 00:46:40.490 align:middle line:90% Only cicadas try the air. 00:46:40.490 --> 00:46:44.150 align:middle line:84% The scratching that cannon could not silence. 00:46:44.150 --> 00:46:47.240 align:middle line:84% Beyond the barn with three silos and the wind 00:46:47.240 --> 00:46:50.000 align:middle line:90% pump stopped like a 10 Daisy. 00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:53.580 align:middle line:84% Carp lit the surface of reflection 00:46:53.580 --> 00:46:58.940 align:middle line:84% in this paper city of repair its walls, damaged in the long drop 00:46:58.940 --> 00:47:03.230 align:middle line:84% from the 120th odd year of a tree. 00:47:03.230 --> 00:47:05.690 align:middle line:84% The sky wears that color through which 00:47:05.690 --> 00:47:08.870 align:middle line:84% you expect the tornado's black drill. 00:47:08.870 --> 00:47:11.780 align:middle line:90% Only cicadas try the air. 00:47:11.780 --> 00:47:15.350 align:middle line:84% The scratching that cannon could not silence. 00:47:15.350 --> 00:47:18.410 align:middle line:84% Beyond the barn with three silos and the wind 00:47:18.410 --> 00:47:21.110 align:middle line:90% pump stopped like a 10 Daisy. 00:47:21.110 --> 00:47:24.950 align:middle line:84% Carp lit the surface of reflected sky. 00:47:24.950 --> 00:47:26.240 align:middle line:90% The promised violence. 00:47:26.240 --> 00:47:30.630 align:middle line:90% 00:47:30.630 --> 00:47:35.160 align:middle line:84% I always imagined that place as an orchard on a mountain top. 00:47:35.160 --> 00:47:39.810 align:middle line:84% It's summer delicious freckling to a sunset by Sara. 00:47:39.810 --> 00:47:42.270 align:middle line:90% But the last time it was fall. 00:47:42.270 --> 00:47:45.660 align:middle line:84% This year grass bent one way toward a gate. 00:47:45.660 --> 00:47:47.880 align:middle line:84% Is though a great wind had swept down 00:47:47.880 --> 00:47:50.640 align:middle line:90% stones of the garden walls. 00:47:50.640 --> 00:47:53.970 align:middle line:84% Two posts bent where the orchard had been. 00:47:53.970 --> 00:47:58.320 align:middle line:84% Their purpose obscure they stood, I think. 00:47:58.320 --> 00:48:01.230 align:middle line:84% Where flowers had rivaled, deepest 00:48:01.230 --> 00:48:03.700 align:middle line:90% in their colors and sense. 00:48:03.700 --> 00:48:05.930 align:middle line:90% Thank you, very much. 00:48:05.930 --> 00:48:20.000 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