WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.160 align:middle line:84% One of the great pleasures of writing, I think, 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:13.350 align:middle line:84% is to fulfill one of the great duties of poetry, which 00:00:13.350 --> 00:00:18.360 align:middle line:84% is to try to restore, to despised things, some 00:00:18.360 --> 00:00:24.820 align:middle line:84% of the dignity we've taken away from them. 00:00:24.820 --> 00:00:28.155 align:middle line:90% And this is such a poem. 00:00:28.155 --> 00:00:31.920 align:middle line:90% 00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:42.600 align:middle line:84% It's a little unusual because it quotes poets, quite 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:44.100 align:middle line:90% a number of poets, maybe-- 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:48.570 align:middle line:84% I don't know, I've never counted them-- five or six poets. 00:00:48.570 --> 00:00:51.060 align:middle line:84% The way an essay does, when it finds something 00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:53.640 align:middle line:90% expressed better than-- 00:00:53.640 --> 00:00:56.070 align:middle line:84% very well, instead of trying to say it again, 00:00:56.070 --> 00:01:00.090 align:middle line:84% it just quotes the passage from-- 00:01:00.090 --> 00:01:02.200 align:middle line:90% and acknowledges the source. 00:01:02.200 --> 00:01:05.850 align:middle line:84% So that's what happens in this poem. 00:01:05.850 --> 00:01:09.350 align:middle line:90% 00:01:09.350 --> 00:01:16.880 align:middle line:84% And I should say, also, that my father spent four years 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:20.330 align:middle line:84% in the trenches in the First World War, 00:01:20.330 --> 00:01:27.315 align:middle line:84% and he appears in this poem as a soldier. 00:01:27.315 --> 00:01:30.250 align:middle line:90% 00:01:30.250 --> 00:01:33.340 align:middle line:84% But, otherwise, I hope it's intelligible. 00:01:33.340 --> 00:01:34.680 align:middle line:90% It's called "Flies." 00:01:34.680 --> 00:01:37.600 align:middle line:90% 00:01:37.600 --> 00:01:40.450 align:middle line:84% "It is reassuring about flies that they 00:01:40.450 --> 00:01:44.365 align:middle line:84% are named flies and spend much of their time flying. 00:01:44.365 --> 00:01:47.080 align:middle line:90% 00:01:47.080 --> 00:01:53.380 align:middle line:84% When Whitman sat down to work one morning, they were flying. 00:01:53.380 --> 00:01:57.340 align:middle line:84% When he looked up at sunset, he saw them still, 00:01:57.340 --> 00:02:01.180 align:middle line:84% the swarm of flies suspended, balancing 00:02:01.180 --> 00:02:04.030 align:middle line:84% in the center of the room, darting athwart, 00:02:04.030 --> 00:02:07.990 align:middle line:84% casting swift shadows and specks on the opposite wall 00:02:07.990 --> 00:02:11.220 align:middle line:90% where the shine is. 00:02:11.220 --> 00:02:15.900 align:middle line:84% Sometimes when a person sits concentrating hard in a room, 00:02:15.900 --> 00:02:20.040 align:middle line:84% the flies gather and fly through each other, 00:02:20.040 --> 00:02:26.880 align:middle line:84% in one spot in a little bunch all day, not far from the head. 00:02:26.880 --> 00:02:29.640 align:middle line:84% Often you can see them the next afternoon, 00:02:29.640 --> 00:02:35.230 align:middle line:84% in the gloom of the barn, going over the intricacies. 00:02:35.230 --> 00:02:38.650 align:middle line:84% Sometimes when they stop flying, some 00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:41.230 align:middle line:84% try to sit on my writing fingers, 00:02:41.230 --> 00:02:45.760 align:middle line:84% as I form letters that look like drawings of flies. 00:02:45.760 --> 00:02:49.690 align:middle line:84% Especially that morning, I have parted the thicket hair 00:02:49.690 --> 00:02:52.750 align:middle line:84% of my beloved and dipped my fingers 00:02:52.750 --> 00:02:57.160 align:middle line:84% into the well of sharp scented love fluid. 00:02:57.160 --> 00:03:00.130 align:middle line:84% Or they land on the typewriter and watch 00:03:00.130 --> 00:03:04.000 align:middle line:84% the keys hit, perhaps with a little of the apprehension 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:05.650 align:middle line:90% of my mother. 00:03:05.650 --> 00:03:11.200 align:middle line:84% At the sound like that of many fly swatters at work 00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:12.370 align:middle line:90% of the steady-- 00:03:12.370 --> 00:03:16.590 align:middle line:90% of the steady--" Sorry. 00:03:16.590 --> 00:03:19.170 align:middle line:84% "Or they land on the typewriter and watch 00:03:19.170 --> 00:03:22.710 align:middle line:84% the keys hit, perhaps with a little of the apprehension 00:03:22.710 --> 00:03:27.090 align:middle line:84% of my mother at the steady clacking of my typewriter 00:03:27.090 --> 00:03:29.340 align:middle line:84% when I should have been doing something. 00:03:29.340 --> 00:03:31.920 align:middle line:90% 00:03:31.920 --> 00:03:36.870 align:middle line:84% If I swat and miss, the flies sometimes 00:03:36.870 --> 00:03:39.540 align:middle line:84% settles on the fly swatter, getting out 00:03:39.540 --> 00:03:42.990 align:middle line:84% of striking range by venturing deeper inside it, 00:03:42.990 --> 00:03:47.790 align:middle line:84% like a boxer hugging or a child clinging to the person who 00:03:47.790 --> 00:03:50.940 align:middle line:90% has just struck her. 00:03:50.940 --> 00:03:53.880 align:middle line:90% Sometimes it alights on my head. 00:03:53.880 --> 00:03:57.750 align:middle line:84% Miroslav Holub said that at the Battle of Crécy, 00:03:57.750 --> 00:04:04.180 align:middle line:84% a fly alighted on the blue tongue of the Duke of Clervaux. 00:04:04.180 --> 00:04:07.330 align:middle line:84% When Emily Dickinson's dying person dies, 00:04:07.330 --> 00:04:12.550 align:middle line:84% she takes a fly's blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz 00:04:12.550 --> 00:04:17.620 align:middle line:84% into death as far as it can come. 00:04:17.620 --> 00:04:22.270 align:middle line:84% If you fire the stoves in a closed-up house in late fall, 00:04:22.270 --> 00:04:25.900 align:middle line:84% the cluster flies will creep from their chinks and sleeping 00:04:25.900 --> 00:04:28.450 align:middle line:90% holes out of seeming death. 00:04:28.450 --> 00:04:31.780 align:middle line:84% And soon, if the sun is out, hundreds of them 00:04:31.780 --> 00:04:35.620 align:middle line:84% will seem to generate right there on the windows, 00:04:35.620 --> 00:04:40.440 align:middle line:84% jostling each other, looking cheerful and sociable. 00:04:40.440 --> 00:04:42.330 align:middle line:84% Christopher Smart called the murmur 00:04:42.330 --> 00:04:45.540 align:middle line:90% of flies the honey of the air. 00:04:45.540 --> 00:04:48.630 align:middle line:84% When so many vibrate together on the glass, 00:04:48.630 --> 00:04:51.810 align:middle line:90% the murmur can become a howl. 00:04:51.810 --> 00:04:54.450 align:middle line:84% Yesterday I killed a fly that had been trying 00:04:54.450 --> 00:04:57.810 align:middle line:90% to enter one of my nostrils. 00:04:57.810 --> 00:05:00.840 align:middle line:84% Karl Shapiro called a fly, Oh hideous 00:05:00.840 --> 00:05:02.775 align:middle line:90% little bat the size of a snot. 00:05:02.775 --> 00:05:06.690 align:middle line:90% 00:05:06.690 --> 00:05:11.490 align:middle line:84% This fly was intent on usurping a snot snitch. 00:05:11.490 --> 00:05:18.150 align:middle line:84% And being swatted, it jettisoned itself into my cup of coffee. 00:05:18.150 --> 00:05:24.180 align:middle line:84% Seiki observed in himself, what is true of me too? 00:05:24.180 --> 00:05:31.230 align:middle line:84% Once I kill a fly, I find I want to massacre them all. 00:05:31.230 --> 00:05:37.920 align:middle line:84% Then I heard Antonio Machado say, but, but they 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:42.300 align:middle line:84% have rested upon the enchanted toy, upon the closed book, 00:05:42.300 --> 00:05:47.520 align:middle line:84% upon the love letter, upon the rigid eyelids of the dead. 00:05:47.520 --> 00:05:50.970 align:middle line:84% John Clare came like the baptist to prepare us 00:05:50.970 --> 00:05:55.830 align:middle line:84% for Origin of Species, the book that teaches that we 00:05:55.830 --> 00:06:00.000 align:middle line:84% and flies our cousins, and tells us, 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:07.500 align:middle line:84% after dancing on the window all day, from sunrise to sunset, 00:06:07.500 --> 00:06:10.650 align:middle line:84% they would sip of the tea, drink of the beer, 00:06:10.650 --> 00:06:14.400 align:middle line:84% and eat of the sugar, and be welcome all summer long. 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:20.340 align:middle line:84% They look like things of mind or fairies 00:06:20.340 --> 00:06:24.480 align:middle line:84% and seem pleased or dull, as the weather permits. 00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:27.700 align:middle line:84% In many clean cottages and genteel houses, 00:06:27.700 --> 00:06:31.200 align:middle line:84% they are allowed every liberty, to creep, fly, 00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:34.900 align:middle line:84% or do as they like and seldom or ever do wrong. 00:06:34.900 --> 00:06:38.520 align:middle line:84% In fact, they are the small or dwarfish portion 00:06:38.520 --> 00:06:39.630 align:middle line:90% of our own family. 00:06:39.630 --> 00:06:42.520 align:middle line:90% 00:06:42.520 --> 00:06:47.090 align:middle line:84% How could Clare know that tsetse fly spittles 00:06:47.090 --> 00:06:52.120 align:middle line:84% into its bite, the trypanosome that releases a lifetime 00:06:52.120 --> 00:06:55.450 align:middle line:84% supply of sleep, even some extra, 00:06:55.450 --> 00:07:00.400 align:middle line:84% or that the flashy, green, meat-eating botfly needs 00:07:00.400 --> 00:07:04.420 align:middle line:84% flesh to lay its eggs in, living flesh will do. 00:07:04.420 --> 00:07:08.440 align:middle line:84% Or that all the members of this dwarfish portion 00:07:08.440 --> 00:07:12.400 align:middle line:84% shake bits of manure from their hairy tarsi, 00:07:12.400 --> 00:07:15.910 align:middle line:84% on the lips of our babies, on children who hardly 00:07:15.910 --> 00:07:20.340 align:middle line:90% notice if they were once-- 00:07:20.340 --> 00:07:24.690 align:middle line:84% Thee, art not thou a man like me? 00:07:24.690 --> 00:07:29.940 align:middle line:84% The fly might have said with some shame, yes. 00:07:29.940 --> 00:07:34.560 align:middle line:90% And with some pride, no. 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:38.850 align:middle line:84% The wanton among us, who kill flies for sport, 00:07:38.850 --> 00:07:43.680 align:middle line:84% don't mind if we think we are doing God's work. 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:47.010 align:middle line:84% When Christopher Smart tells us the fly 00:07:47.010 --> 00:07:50.670 align:middle line:84% feeds upon the thing strangled and perishes 00:07:50.670 --> 00:07:53.730 align:middle line:84% as if especially deserving to die, 00:07:53.730 --> 00:07:56.970 align:middle line:90% we swat with more pleasure. 00:07:56.970 --> 00:08:01.020 align:middle line:84% Is this thy play, Edward Taylor frowns. 00:08:01.020 --> 00:08:03.450 align:middle line:90% For why? 00:08:03.450 --> 00:08:08.580 align:middle line:84% I think I kill flies because I have a fly inside me. 00:08:08.580 --> 00:08:13.440 align:middle line:84% It drones through me, at 3:00 AM waking me, 00:08:13.440 --> 00:08:18.570 align:middle line:84% looking and looking for what stinks, some humiliation, 00:08:18.570 --> 00:08:20.100 align:middle line:90% old or new. 00:08:20.100 --> 00:08:22.050 align:middle line:90% The more stinking the better. 00:08:22.050 --> 00:08:24.810 align:middle line:84% The more ancient, the more putrid. 00:08:24.810 --> 00:08:30.660 align:middle line:84% And finding it lands and feeds, then I suffer it all again. 00:08:30.660 --> 00:08:36.240 align:middle line:84% Then, with an effort of will almost as large as my mother's, 00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:39.179 align:middle line:84% when I came too late to her deathbed 00:08:39.179 --> 00:08:46.700 align:middle line:84% and she broke back through the last coma a moment and spoke. 00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:50.830 align:middle line:84% I swat at it, brush it away, and, again, 00:08:50.830 --> 00:08:55.450 align:middle line:84% it flies, droning through me, looking for the next filth 00:08:55.450 --> 00:08:57.610 align:middle line:90% heap. 00:08:57.610 --> 00:09:00.670 align:middle line:84% I do not believe this fly will ever leave. 00:09:00.670 --> 00:09:02.780 align:middle line:90% It feels like part of me. 00:09:02.780 --> 00:09:04.570 align:middle line:90% It is like my own soul. 00:09:04.570 --> 00:09:09.580 align:middle line:84% Probably it will not go until a last sigh utters 00:09:09.580 --> 00:09:13.360 align:middle line:84% a burden of regret, sufficient to the cause, 00:09:13.360 --> 00:09:18.340 align:middle line:84% and closes the account, then it might come out. 00:09:18.340 --> 00:09:22.690 align:middle line:84% And if the stove is lit and the October sun bright, 00:09:22.690 --> 00:09:25.570 align:middle line:84% go to the same window above the desk, 00:09:25.570 --> 00:09:28.090 align:middle line:90% where I may have swatted it. 00:09:28.090 --> 00:09:33.220 align:middle line:84% Or if it is cold, crawl up my upper lip and creep 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:36.070 align:middle line:90% into that nostril at last. 00:09:36.070 --> 00:09:42.100 align:middle line:84% So I swat, hitting the windows, stunning a dozen 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:45.310 align:middle line:90% flies to death with each stroke. 00:09:45.310 --> 00:09:49.390 align:middle line:84% Soon the window sills and the tables are cluttered 00:09:49.390 --> 00:09:52.720 align:middle line:84% and the dictionary speckled and the floor 00:09:52.720 --> 00:09:55.900 align:middle line:84% strewn with their pitiful remains, 00:09:55.900 --> 00:10:00.070 align:middle line:84% thick as the human dead in the Great War. 00:10:00.070 --> 00:10:02.680 align:middle line:84% Every so often, one of them rights 00:10:02.680 --> 00:10:08.680 align:middle line:84% itself and walks around and seems to feel OK and flies. 00:10:08.680 --> 00:10:12.130 align:middle line:84% My father righted himself out of the muck, 00:10:12.130 --> 00:10:17.230 align:middle line:84% where many thousands of dead men stuck out their blue tongues. 00:10:17.230 --> 00:10:20.410 align:middle line:84% The preacher said, dead flies cause 00:10:20.410 --> 00:10:26.370 align:middle line:84% the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking saber. 00:10:26.370 --> 00:10:29.370 align:middle line:84% Might not the muck be the ointment 00:10:29.370 --> 00:10:34.170 align:middle line:84% of our heavenly apothecary, oozing up almost immediately 00:10:34.170 --> 00:10:36.990 align:middle line:84% in so many of the earth's sorest places. 00:10:36.990 --> 00:10:39.710 align:middle line:90% 00:10:39.710 --> 00:10:42.920 align:middle line:84% No one who rights himself out of the muck 00:10:42.920 --> 00:10:48.530 align:middle line:84% and walks and shakes himself and feels OK is OK. 00:10:48.530 --> 00:10:53.690 align:middle line:84% He knows something about the human for the rest of his days, 00:10:53.690 --> 00:10:56.850 align:middle line:84% and he must keep others from smelling it on him 00:10:56.850 --> 00:11:02.540 align:middle line:84% and knowing that he is the fly in the ointment, wherever 00:11:02.540 --> 00:11:03.090 align:middle line:90% he flies. 00:11:03.090 --> 00:11:05.660 align:middle line:90% 00:11:05.660 --> 00:11:11.240 align:middle line:84% When the treetop's shadow spreads up the window, 00:11:11.240 --> 00:11:14.120 align:middle line:84% the flies creep up just ahead of it. 00:11:14.120 --> 00:11:16.850 align:middle line:84% Sometimes they lose their grip and fumble 00:11:16.850 --> 00:11:19.640 align:middle line:84% to the bottom and creep up again. 00:11:19.640 --> 00:11:23.750 align:middle line:84% They often collide and appear anxious and confused, 00:11:23.750 --> 00:11:26.090 align:middle line:84% as though they have come here for something 00:11:26.090 --> 00:11:29.660 align:middle line:84% and have forgotten what but keep looking anyway, 00:11:29.660 --> 00:11:33.760 align:middle line:84% like my father on coming to America. 00:11:33.760 --> 00:11:37.630 align:middle line:84% Walking on the windows, they sight down between their four 00:11:37.630 --> 00:11:41.050 align:middle line:84% legs, with the lowest facets of their eye, 00:11:41.050 --> 00:11:44.290 align:middle line:90% and see the outdoors. 00:11:44.290 --> 00:11:48.460 align:middle line:84% Federico García Lorca said that when a fly buzzes inside 00:11:48.460 --> 00:11:56.070 align:middle line:84% a window, I think of people in chains and I let it out. 00:11:56.070 --> 00:11:59.850 align:middle line:84% A fly may not always want to go out. 00:11:59.850 --> 00:12:01.770 align:middle line:90% It is rough and cold out there. 00:12:01.770 --> 00:12:04.770 align:middle line:84% Perhaps only the presence of glass 00:12:04.770 --> 00:12:07.740 align:middle line:90% lets it imagine that it does. 00:12:07.740 --> 00:12:10.320 align:middle line:84% In this, it would be like my mother, 00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:13.320 align:middle line:84% in the attitude she had toward poetry, 00:12:13.320 --> 00:12:18.480 align:middle line:84% until she found out that it was what I was up to in my life, 00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:22.860 align:middle line:84% though not in her attitude toward love in her own life. 00:12:22.860 --> 00:12:27.270 align:middle line:84% I am sure that when she looked with her blue eye, 00:12:27.270 --> 00:12:33.000 align:middle line:84% it seemed wild and fiery out there and she wanted to go. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:36.570 align:middle line:84% I find it hard to think that she did not, 00:12:36.570 --> 00:12:39.450 align:middle line:84% at some point with her heavy feet, 00:12:39.450 --> 00:12:43.040 align:middle line:90% tread hard and break through. 00:12:43.040 --> 00:12:47.520 align:middle line:84% More than once I felt the drafts of icy air, 00:12:47.520 --> 00:12:49.460 align:middle line:90% but my sisters say, no." 00:12:49.460 --> 00:12:53.360 align:middle line:90% 00:12:53.360 --> 00:12:56.110 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:12:56.110 --> 00:13:04.000 align:middle line:90%