WEBVTT

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I think most of cleverness
comes from the intellect.

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And you have to balance
it all, you know?

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The reason why Shakespeare
works in the bush

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is because it touches the
heart-- it touches something

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more than the intellect.

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We come out of what-- you know,
we come out of a wondering.

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And poetry is not about
answering questions.

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It's about asking them.

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I try to write poems trying to
understand the world I live in

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and the other live
creatures who inhabit it.

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So I've got a poem
about a raccoon--

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one of the raccoons' prayers.

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He calls his God, He Who
Finds and Cleans and Eats.

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Those could be clever.

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That one isn't as much as
the horse saying neigh.

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Yes?

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Oh.

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I see that in a
lot of your poems,

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you don't use punctuation
or capitalization.

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I was wondering what the
intention behind that is?

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I like the way it looks.

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I like to see the poem as a
whole thing, an organic thing.

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And I'm not writing essays.

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I'm not writing, you
know, prose stuff.

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I mean, sure, I write
children's books as well.

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And in children's
books poetry, I

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write iambic pentameter verse.

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I think I just do it to
show I know about that.

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At one school, I was saying
the class this afternoon

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that a teacher let a student--

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this was a little
student, a young kid--

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wanted to know why
I didn't capitalize.

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And I do sometimes,
but mostly not.

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And the teacher said,
well this is her style.

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And the kid said, no, she
didn't graduate from college,

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you know.

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And I assured him that I
learned about that long before I

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didn't graduate from college.

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We have time for
one more question.

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Who's got the question
they've been wanting

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to ask somebody forever?

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Oh.

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Christine, you scared me.

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Christine, do you have a
question to go with that flash?

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[INAUDIBLE] Someone
over here had one.

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Here we go.

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How did you start
writing poetry?

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My mother wrote--

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How did she start
writing poetry.

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--my mother wrote poetry.

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My mother didn't graduate
from eighth grade.

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And she wrote very
iambic pentameter verse.

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And she read poetry to
us, and all of that.

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And my mother was
from Rome, Georgia.

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And we-- and also, you know
the poet Coleman Barks?

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His mother was
from Rome, Georgia.

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And Rome is about the
size of this place here.

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And we always say--
our mothers, of course,

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didn't know each other.

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Somebody asked Coleman that,
and he started laughing.

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But we like to say that our
mothers met across the railroad

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track one day.

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And they said, yes, but
one day our children--

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and, indeed, one day, their
children are good friends.

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I started writing
when I was very young,

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and I didn't start
writing to publish.

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I didn't know you could
publish, and in fact,

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someone who looked
like me couldn't.

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It's been very
segregated, you know.

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But I wrote, because I had to.

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I had no choice.

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I would have written
anything, any way.

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If I can say-- my mother once--

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my mother died when she
was 44 years old, a girl.

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And when she would see me
writing poetry as a young girl,

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she would look at it and say,
oh, baby, that ain't no poem.

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Let me show you how
to write a poem.

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And then she would write, like,
iambic pentameter rhymed verse.

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And I would [INAUDIBLE].

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I have a poem called "Fury".

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Which, I don't think it's
in any of these books, but--

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it's about my mother
got a letter one day

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from someplace that wanted
to publish some of her poems.

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I don't know how this could have
happened, really, but it did.

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And she asked my father
if she could do it.

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I always tell men,
don't try this now.

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Because my-- but
my father said no.

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He said, no wife of mine
going to be a poetry writer.

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And so she burned her
poems in the coal stove.

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She does not know
that I was watching

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from the steps of the
cellar, the basement.

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And I saw her hand as she was
putting the poems in the stove.

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And after that, even when
I had several surgeries,

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I knew that I would be OK.

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Because my mother would not
allow me to not finish my work.

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She didn't finish
hers, and she wouldn't

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let me not finish mine.

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So-- and so far, so good.

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Thank you.

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Thank you very much.

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