WEBVTT

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But now I'm going
to read a couple

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of more recent poems
though published

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and so part of the past.

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I was hiding out in a cabin
a couple of years ago,

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trying to get some writing
done in an uninterrupted way

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and I was only appearing
in the evening.

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And a person I knew asked
me what I did for breakfast?

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And I said, well, I eat
oatmeal for breakfast.

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And he gave me a piercing
look and said, alone?

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So thinking over the
implications of his question,

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I wrote the next
morning the first draft

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of a poem called "Oatmeal."

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There's a word in here
that everybody knows,

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but perhaps not everybody knows.

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Amnion, the sac in which
the fetus lives in the womb.

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"I eat oatmeal for breakfast.

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I make it on the hot plate
and put skimmed milk on it.

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I eat it alone.

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I am aware it is not good
to eat oatmeal alone.

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Its consistency
as such that it is

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better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.

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That is why I often think
up an imaginary companion

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to have breakfast with.

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Possibly it is even
worse to eat oatmeal

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with an imaginary companion.

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Nevertheless,
yesterday morning I

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ate my oatmeal porridge as
he called it with John Keats.

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Keats said I was
absolutely right to invite

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him due to its glutinous
texture, gluey lumpishness,

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hint of slime, and unusual
willingness to disintegrate,

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oatmeal must never
be eaten alone.

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He said that in his
opinion, however,

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it is perfectly OK to eat it
with an imaginary companion.

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And he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridge

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with Edmund Spenser
and John Milton.

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Even if eating oatmeal
with an imaginary companion

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is not as wholesome
as Keats claimed,

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still you can learn
something from it.

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Yesterday morning,
for instance, he

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told me about writing the
"Ode to a Nightingale."

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He told me about writing
the "Ode to a Nightingale."

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He had a heck of a
time finishing it.

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Those were his words.

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Oi 'ad a 'eck of
a toime, he said,

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speaking through his porridge.

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He wrote it quickly on
scraps of paper which he then

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stuck in his pocket.

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And the trouble was when he
got home he couldn't figure out

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the order of the stanzas.

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And he and a friend spread
the papers on a table

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and they made some
sense of them.

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But he isn't sure to this
day if they got it right.

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An entire stanza
may have slipped

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into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in the pocket.

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He still wonders about the
sense of drift between some

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of the stanzas and the
way certain lines go

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into the configuration
of a Moslem at prayer,

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then raise themselves up and
peer about, then lay themselves

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down slightly off the
mark causing the poem

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to move forward with
God's reckless wobble.

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He said that someone told them
that later in life Wordsworth

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heard about the scraps
of paper on the table

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and tried shuffling
some stanzas of his own

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but only made matters worse.

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I would not have known
about any of this

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if I-- but for my reluctance
to eat oatmeal alone.

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When breakfast was over,
John recited "To Autumn."

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He recited it slowly
with much feeling

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and he articulated
the words lovingly,

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and his odd accent
sounded sweet.

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He didn't offer the story
of writing "To Autumn."

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I doubt if there is
much of one, but he

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did say the sight of a
just harvested oat field

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got him started.

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And two of the
lines, "for summer

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has o'er brimmed
their clammy cells,"

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and "thou watchest to the
last oozings, hours by hours"

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came to him while
eating oatmeal alone.

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I can see him drawing a
spoon through the stuff,

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staring into the glimmering
furrows muttering.

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And it occurs to me maybe
there is no sublime, only

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the shining of the
amnion's tatters.

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For supper tonight, I'm
going to have a baked potato

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leftover from lunch.

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I am aware that a leftover
baked potato is damp, slippery,

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and simultaneously
gummy and crumbly

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and therefore I'm
going to invite

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Patrick Kavanagh to join me."

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