WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.690 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.690 --> 00:00:02.290 align:middle line:90% Thanks, Ari. 00:00:02.290 --> 00:00:04.290 align:middle line:84% You know you're screwed when the introduction is 00:00:04.290 --> 00:00:07.350 align:middle line:84% better than the poems that you're going to read. 00:00:07.350 --> 00:00:11.370 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.370 --> 00:00:14.100 align:middle line:84% And thanks to everyone at the Poetry Foundation 00:00:14.100 --> 00:00:19.480 align:middle line:84% and at the university for making this possible. 00:00:19.480 --> 00:00:21.660 align:middle line:84% And I'll begin by reading some very new work 00:00:21.660 --> 00:00:27.810 align:middle line:84% and then working my way backwards to the book. 00:00:27.810 --> 00:00:31.020 align:middle line:84% I've been spending a lot of time recently 00:00:31.020 --> 00:00:34.830 align:middle line:84% with the memoirs of Kurt Waldheim. 00:00:34.830 --> 00:00:37.200 align:middle line:84% And some of you are probably too young to know 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:38.988 align:middle line:90% who Kurt Waldheim is. 00:00:38.988 --> 00:00:40.530 align:middle line:84% I love being able to say "some of you 00:00:40.530 --> 00:00:42.120 align:middle line:90% are too young to remember." 00:00:42.120 --> 00:00:44.880 align:middle line:90% That's a new thing in my life. 00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:48.930 align:middle line:84% But Waldheim was Secretary General of the United Nations 00:00:48.930 --> 00:00:55.230 align:middle line:84% from 1971 to 1982, I think, and as Secretary General was 00:00:55.230 --> 00:01:00.090 align:middle line:84% in some way, in a certain sense the spokesperson for all 00:01:00.090 --> 00:01:03.750 align:middle line:84% of humanity, for all of the dispossessed, all the hungry, 00:01:03.750 --> 00:01:10.140 align:middle line:90% all the downtrodden. 00:01:10.140 --> 00:01:14.670 align:middle line:84% A few years after his tenure at the UN, 00:01:14.670 --> 00:01:20.340 align:middle line:84% he fell from grace because several Nazi hunters accused 00:01:20.340 --> 00:01:27.030 align:middle line:84% him of collaboration in some wartime atrocities 00:01:27.030 --> 00:01:31.380 align:middle line:84% during World War II when it was discovered Waldheim actually 00:01:31.380 --> 00:01:34.380 align:middle line:84% had been an intelligence officer in the German army. 00:01:34.380 --> 00:01:37.760 align:middle line:90% 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:44.050 align:middle line:84% So learning of this fact and becoming 00:01:44.050 --> 00:01:46.750 align:middle line:84% more and more interested in the story of Waldheim, whose 00:01:46.750 --> 00:01:51.370 align:middle line:84% voice incidentally is on board the Voyager spacecraft bearing 00:01:51.370 --> 00:01:56.740 align:middle line:84% greetings from humanity to whatever is out there. 00:01:56.740 --> 00:01:59.350 align:middle line:84% I began to read his memoirs very carefully 00:01:59.350 --> 00:02:05.920 align:middle line:84% and for complicated reasons I began to cross out language 00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:09.639 align:middle line:84% from his account of the world and of his life 00:02:09.639 --> 00:02:14.330 align:middle line:84% to try and find a hidden story inside his own words. 00:02:14.330 --> 00:02:19.330 align:middle line:84% So what I'll read to you is from my new work which is basically 00:02:19.330 --> 00:02:23.050 align:middle line:84% a series of cross outs and retrieval 00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:27.940 align:middle line:84% of language from what remains in Waldheim's memoirs. 00:02:27.940 --> 00:02:32.500 align:middle line:84% These are a series of about 400 propositions about the world. 00:02:32.500 --> 00:02:34.720 align:middle line:84% I won't read 400, I'll only read a few. 00:02:34.720 --> 00:02:37.890 align:middle line:90% 00:02:37.890 --> 00:02:44.570 align:middle line:84% War interests the attention distracted by war 00:02:44.570 --> 00:02:48.710 align:middle line:84% is disinclined to view the failure of form as the issue. 00:02:48.710 --> 00:02:51.360 align:middle line:90% 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:55.815 align:middle line:84% Thus, sink each day's dead softly in the hearth. 00:02:55.815 --> 00:02:58.790 align:middle line:90% 00:02:58.790 --> 00:03:01.070 align:middle line:90% "The world, the world," he said. 00:03:01.070 --> 00:03:03.760 align:middle line:90% 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:08.290 align:middle line:84% Moral law is the field of gestures open to formal rule. 00:03:08.290 --> 00:03:11.150 align:middle line:90% 00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:16.190 align:middle line:84% Some suffer within flagrant circles. 00:03:16.190 --> 00:03:19.565 align:middle line:84% Some take refuge in the avenues of the cross. 00:03:19.565 --> 00:03:22.130 align:middle line:90% 00:03:22.130 --> 00:03:25.970 align:middle line:84% He was seeking an interpretation of arms and the man 00:03:25.970 --> 00:03:28.820 align:middle line:84% that would not further legitimize the regime. 00:03:28.820 --> 00:03:31.870 align:middle line:90% 00:03:31.870 --> 00:03:36.980 align:middle line:84% Autumn was in pieces all across America. 00:03:36.980 --> 00:03:41.300 align:middle line:84% Death may be a change of style but surely not of substance. 00:03:41.300 --> 00:03:47.050 align:middle line:90% 00:03:47.050 --> 00:03:53.680 align:middle line:84% Human means weakening vehicle, his countrymen have forgiven 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:57.520 align:middle line:90% him his mistakes, of course. 00:03:57.520 --> 00:04:01.390 align:middle line:90% He considers evil in the world. 00:04:01.390 --> 00:04:07.600 align:middle line:84% He's convinced himself that evil is a number. 00:04:07.600 --> 00:04:10.180 align:middle line:84% There's a school of thought that sees constraint 00:04:10.180 --> 00:04:14.080 align:middle line:84% as the basis of relations with other people. 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:16.435 align:middle line:90% Believe facts, not myths. 00:04:16.435 --> 00:04:19.360 align:middle line:90% 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:24.580 align:middle line:84% Facts may be formally demonstrated by every citizen. 00:04:24.580 --> 00:04:28.780 align:middle line:84% The book of the is taken apart and put together again 00:04:28.780 --> 00:04:32.530 align:middle line:90% with relation to a. 00:04:32.530 --> 00:04:38.230 align:middle line:84% Over the centuries, the oceans have remained unshattered. 00:04:38.230 --> 00:04:40.900 align:middle line:84% The good interpreter shifts ever on. 00:04:40.900 --> 00:04:47.730 align:middle line:90% 00:04:47.730 --> 00:04:52.920 align:middle line:84% The world is a world, constraints on the self 00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:56.100 align:middle line:90% and in faith. 00:04:56.100 --> 00:05:02.030 align:middle line:84% It would be tragic if the line were to disintegrate. 00:05:02.030 --> 00:05:04.130 align:middle line:84% Everybody watches the wheel as it turns. 00:05:04.130 --> 00:05:06.850 align:middle line:90% 00:05:06.850 --> 00:05:10.360 align:middle line:84% There is, on the outskirts of a small town in Vienna, 00:05:10.360 --> 00:05:13.390 align:middle line:90% the gutted remains of a house. 00:05:13.390 --> 00:05:14.515 align:middle line:90% It was built of desire. 00:05:14.515 --> 00:05:17.240 align:middle line:90% 00:05:17.240 --> 00:05:20.840 align:middle line:90% Overcome all emotion. 00:05:20.840 --> 00:05:23.855 align:middle line:84% Wherever possible alleviate the misery of others. 00:05:23.855 --> 00:05:26.450 align:middle line:90% 00:05:26.450 --> 00:05:27.955 align:middle line:90% There is nothing in victory. 00:05:27.955 --> 00:05:30.960 align:middle line:90% 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:34.250 align:middle line:90% The silent alone lie united.