WEBVTT

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And [INAUDIBLE] and I want
to thank you all for coming.

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I'd like to end with the
title poem, "American Smooth."

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And American Smooth
is technically

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a definition of a certain
kind of folk dancing.

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It's the smooth dances--

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the tangos, the
waltzes, the foxtrots,

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the ones that [INAUDIBLE] but
with an American difference.

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And that is that, in the
international and European way,

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the woman is never allowed
to leave the man's embrace.

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They have to [INAUDIBLE]
these things.

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Rib to rib.

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In the American Smooth version,
a woman is allowed to--

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allowed to-- may whirl, come
back in, and do that Ginger

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Rogers thing, you know.

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A little bit more freedom, a
little bit more [INAUDIBLE]..

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But it means more
than that, of course.

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It's dealing with the poem.

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"American Smooth."

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We were dancing-- it must
have been foxtrot or a waltz,

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something romantic but requiring
restraint, rise and fall,

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precise execution as we moved
into the next song without

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stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league stride--

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such perfect agony, one
learns to smile through,

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ecstatic mimicry being the sine
qua non of American Smooth.

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And because I was
distracted by the effort

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of keeping my frame--

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the leftward lean, head
turned just enough to gaze out

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past your ear and always
smiling, smiling--

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I didn't notice how still you'd
become until we had done it--

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for two measures?

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Four?-- achieved flight, that
swift and serene magnificence,

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before the earth remembered who
we were and brought us down.

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[APPLAUSE]

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