WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.860 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.860 --> 00:00:07.690 align:middle line:84% It's the anniversary of the Mosaic Readings. 00:00:07.690 --> 00:00:10.520 align:middle line:84% Mosaic Readings are held at Bentley's Coffee House 00:00:10.520 --> 00:00:13.010 align:middle line:84% on Speedway, and the readers this week 00:00:13.010 --> 00:00:16.580 align:middle line:84% will be Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Shelton, and Demetrius 00:00:16.580 --> 00:00:17.690 align:middle line:90% Davis. 00:00:17.690 --> 00:00:20.000 align:middle line:90% That's at 7:30 Sunday evening. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:21.740 align:middle line:90% 7:00. 00:00:21.740 --> 00:00:23.630 align:middle line:90% I can't read. 00:00:23.630 --> 00:00:24.650 align:middle line:90% It says here 7:00. 00:00:24.650 --> 00:00:25.400 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:00:25.400 --> 00:00:26.690 align:middle line:90% 7:00. 00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:28.220 align:middle line:84% Come at 7:30, you won't get a seat. 00:00:28.220 --> 00:00:31.610 align:middle line:90% 00:00:31.610 --> 00:00:33.710 align:middle line:84% Our next reading will be one week from tonight 00:00:33.710 --> 00:00:37.430 align:middle line:90% at 8:00 in the Terrace Lounge. 00:00:37.430 --> 00:00:41.270 align:middle line:84% We have five students reading, Andrew Crockett, 00:00:41.270 --> 00:00:48.350 align:middle line:84% Michael Knisely, Matt Sikorski, Suzanne Wade, and Gale Walden. 00:00:48.350 --> 00:00:49.595 align:middle line:90% That's Wednesday the 6th. 00:00:49.595 --> 00:00:53.330 align:middle line:90% 00:00:53.330 --> 00:00:56.180 align:middle line:84% And two weeks from tonight we'll have a fiction reading 00:00:56.180 --> 00:00:58.520 align:middle line:84% by Lawrence Clark Powell in this auditorium. 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:05.805 align:middle line:90% 00:01:05.805 --> 00:01:07.680 align:middle line:84% Hope you can stay after the reading and have, 00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:11.490 align:middle line:84% punch and cookies, talk to Stephen Dunn. 00:01:11.490 --> 00:01:13.200 align:middle line:84% Many of you have heard him read before 00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:16.500 align:middle line:90% and we have a treat tonight. 00:01:16.500 --> 00:01:21.300 align:middle line:84% Steve's teaching at Stockton College in New Jersey now. 00:01:21.300 --> 00:01:27.510 align:middle line:84% His books of poetry are Not Dancing, Work and Love, 00:01:27.510 --> 00:01:31.230 align:middle line:84% A Circus of Needs, Full of Lust and Good Usage-- 00:01:31.230 --> 00:01:33.330 align:middle line:90% I love that title-- 00:01:33.330 --> 00:01:39.030 align:middle line:84% Looking for Holes in the Ceiling, Five Impersonations. 00:01:39.030 --> 00:01:42.030 align:middle line:84% His newest book has just been selected in the National Poetry 00:01:42.030 --> 00:01:42.540 align:middle line:90% Series. 00:01:42.540 --> 00:01:47.640 align:middle line:84% It will be out in the spring, called Local Time. 00:01:47.640 --> 00:01:50.346 align:middle line:84% Very happy to introduce Stephen Dunn. 00:01:50.346 --> 00:01:52.836 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:01:52.836 --> 00:02:14.770 align:middle line:90% 00:02:14.770 --> 00:02:19.990 align:middle line:84% I've been making a habit of late in the last six months or so at 00:02:19.990 --> 00:02:25.060 align:middle line:84% readings to read the poem I've most recently written as a, 00:02:25.060 --> 00:02:28.090 align:middle line:84% I think, a kind of minor act of existential bravery. 00:02:28.090 --> 00:02:31.900 align:middle line:90% Those of you who write know. 00:02:31.900 --> 00:02:32.680 align:middle line:90% So here goes. 00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:34.285 align:middle line:84% This is called "Under the Black Oaks." 00:02:34.285 --> 00:02:38.190 align:middle line:90% 00:02:38.190 --> 00:02:40.170 align:middle line:84% "Because the mind will defend anything 00:02:40.170 --> 00:02:43.680 align:middle line:84% it has found the body doing, I tell my family 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:46.200 align:middle line:84% I'm out here because the house is cold, 00:02:46.200 --> 00:02:50.040 align:middle line:84% because it's Saturday, because I feel like it. 00:02:50.040 --> 00:02:53.010 align:middle line:84% The rock hard acorns are falling and I've 00:02:53.010 --> 00:02:55.860 align:middle line:84% placed my chair where one has just fallen, 00:02:55.860 --> 00:02:58.410 align:middle line:90% the beginnings of a theory. 00:02:58.410 --> 00:03:00.420 align:middle line:84% The family points out there are places 00:03:00.420 --> 00:03:03.570 align:middle line:84% I could sit where nothing but the sun could hit me, 00:03:03.570 --> 00:03:06.420 align:middle line:84% but of course, I know about them. 00:03:06.420 --> 00:03:09.120 align:middle line:84% It's one of those mornings when there seems so much time 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:12.420 align:middle line:84% to fill, so many correct ways to fill it, 00:03:12.420 --> 00:03:16.020 align:middle line:90% the tedium of virtuous leisure. 00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:19.470 align:middle line:84% The white sky above the oaks displays its familiar open 00:03:19.470 --> 00:03:20.670 align:middle line:90% mockery. 00:03:20.670 --> 00:03:25.650 align:middle line:84% When the wind comes up, the acorns fall like hailstones. 00:03:25.650 --> 00:03:28.650 align:middle line:84% I sit in my chair listening to how they brush leaves 00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:33.600 align:middle line:84% on the way down, a natural jazz, thud and silence, then 00:03:33.600 --> 00:03:35.670 align:middle line:90% another thud. 00:03:35.670 --> 00:03:39.810 align:middle line:84% My family shouts, 'come in, come in,' but I'm out under 00:03:39.810 --> 00:03:42.105 align:middle line:84% the black oaks and will not budge." 00:03:42.105 --> 00:03:49.510 align:middle line:90% 00:03:49.510 --> 00:03:53.660 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read some from my new book, the one 00:03:53.660 --> 00:03:55.490 align:middle line:90% that Lois mentioned. 00:03:55.490 --> 00:03:58.640 align:middle line:90% 00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:01.280 align:middle line:84% A good many of the poems in it to do with long term 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:06.560 align:middle line:84% relationships and especially about arguing and making up 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:09.370 align:middle line:90% and the rituals therein. 00:04:09.370 --> 00:04:14.180 align:middle line:84% Every couple has its own way of doing that. 00:04:14.180 --> 00:04:16.070 align:middle line:84% This is called "After the Argument." 00:04:16.070 --> 00:04:20.300 align:middle line:90% 00:04:20.300 --> 00:04:22.850 align:middle line:84% "Whoever spoke first would lose something, 00:04:22.850 --> 00:04:25.940 align:middle line:84% that was the stupid unspoken rule. 00:04:25.940 --> 00:04:29.480 align:middle line:84% The stillness would be a clamor, a capo on a nerve. 00:04:29.480 --> 00:04:32.600 align:middle line:84% He'd stare out the window, she'd put away dishes, 00:04:32.600 --> 00:04:34.970 align:middle line:90% anything for some noise. 00:04:34.970 --> 00:04:38.130 align:middle line:90% They'd sleep in different rooms. 00:04:38.130 --> 00:04:40.070 align:middle line:84% The trick was to speak as if you hadn't 00:04:40.070 --> 00:04:42.830 align:middle line:84% spoken, a comment so incidental it 00:04:42.830 --> 00:04:45.230 align:middle line:90% wouldn't be counted as speech. 00:04:45.230 --> 00:04:48.530 align:middle line:84% Or to touch while passing, an accident of clothing, 00:04:48.530 --> 00:04:52.700 align:middle line:84% billowy sleeves against rolled up cuff. 00:04:52.700 --> 00:04:56.210 align:middle line:84% They couldn't stand hating each other for more than one day. 00:04:56.210 --> 00:04:59.180 align:middle line:84% Each knew this, each knew the other's body would begin 00:04:59.180 --> 00:05:03.500 align:middle line:84% to lean, the voice yearn for the familiar confluence of breath 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:05.540 align:middle line:90% and syllable. 00:05:05.540 --> 00:05:06.230 align:middle line:90% When? 00:05:06.230 --> 00:05:07.820 align:middle line:90% Who first? 00:05:07.820 --> 00:05:10.250 align:middle line:84% It was Yalta, always on some level 00:05:10.250 --> 00:05:13.250 align:middle line:90% the future, the next time. 00:05:13.250 --> 00:05:16.580 align:middle line:84% This time there was a cardinal on the birdfeeder; one of them 00:05:16.580 --> 00:05:21.080 align:middle line:84% was shameless enough to say so, the other pleased to agree. 00:05:21.080 --> 00:05:24.290 align:middle line:84% And their sex was a knot untying itself, 00:05:24.290 --> 00:05:25.970 align:middle line:90% a prolonged coming loose." 00:05:25.970 --> 00:05:41.820 align:middle line:90% 00:05:41.820 --> 00:05:44.760 align:middle line:84% From the looks of the audience, at least a good part of you 00:05:44.760 --> 00:05:47.460 align:middle line:84% might have experienced something like this 00:05:47.460 --> 00:05:51.510 align:middle line:84% of being invited to dinner at friends, 00:05:51.510 --> 00:05:56.070 align:middle line:84% only to find that they've been hating each other all day long 00:05:56.070 --> 00:06:03.658 align:middle line:84% and not hiding it particularly well. 00:06:03.658 --> 00:06:04.200 align:middle line:90% "The Dinner." 00:06:04.200 --> 00:06:06.840 align:middle line:90% 00:06:06.840 --> 00:06:09.240 align:middle line:84% "At dinner, because our hosts had been quarreling 00:06:09.240 --> 00:06:12.840 align:middle line:84% and couldn't hide it, we felt the old need to charm, 00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:16.740 align:middle line:84% to literally enchant, which also means subdue. 00:06:16.740 --> 00:06:18.900 align:middle line:84% And they allowed us to charm them with stories 00:06:18.900 --> 00:06:22.200 align:middle line:84% from our day, which had been full of small affections 00:06:22.200 --> 00:06:28.020 align:middle line:84% and a separateness of bringing from and so meant closeness. 00:06:28.020 --> 00:06:30.450 align:middle line:84% They were kind to allow us to charm them, 00:06:30.450 --> 00:06:34.710 align:middle line:84% feeling as they were those ember like resentments, subterranean, 00:06:34.710 --> 00:06:37.890 align:middle line:84% which come from unfinished quarrels. 00:06:37.890 --> 00:06:41.100 align:middle line:84% But finally, charm wasn't equal to what they were feeling, 00:06:41.100 --> 00:06:43.890 align:middle line:90% and words slipped out, tones. 00:06:43.890 --> 00:06:47.610 align:middle line:84% Then the terrible polite talk of pass this, pass that, 00:06:47.610 --> 00:06:49.710 align:middle line:90% thank you. 00:06:49.710 --> 00:06:51.780 align:middle line:84% One year earlier we were them and knew 00:06:51.780 --> 00:06:54.120 align:middle line:84% what it would be like after we left, 00:06:54.120 --> 00:06:56.880 align:middle line:84% how evenings like this end in separate rooms 00:06:56.880 --> 00:07:00.900 align:middle line:84% over the violent, not quite cathartic lovemaking. 00:07:00.900 --> 00:07:03.030 align:middle line:84% We said goodbye as soon as we could, 00:07:03.030 --> 00:07:05.400 align:middle line:84% leaving them to what must be played out, 00:07:05.400 --> 00:07:07.620 align:middle line:90% essential as breathing. 00:07:07.620 --> 00:07:11.220 align:middle line:84% In the car, talked about it, not without pleasure. 00:07:11.220 --> 00:07:13.590 align:middle line:84% There was a low fog, and as we drove 00:07:13.590 --> 00:07:15.420 align:middle line:90% it parted and kept parting. 00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:16.980 align:middle line:90% What else could it do? 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:17.970 align:middle line:90% All the way home." 00:07:17.970 --> 00:07:30.630 align:middle line:90% 00:07:30.630 --> 00:07:35.580 align:middle line:84% Women argue differently than men, as you all know. 00:07:35.580 --> 00:07:38.470 align:middle line:84% Which, of course, means the opposite is true as well, 00:07:38.470 --> 00:07:40.480 align:middle line:84% that men argue differently than women. 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:45.210 align:middle line:84% And I think for as long as I've been an adult or a semi-adult, 00:07:45.210 --> 00:07:50.820 align:middle line:84% whatever I am, this has been a major issue. 00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:54.630 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about that and it's called "He/She." 00:07:54.630 --> 00:07:56.280 align:middle line:90% He slash she. 00:07:56.280 --> 00:08:01.610 align:middle line:90% 00:08:01.610 --> 00:08:03.680 align:middle line:84% "Brought up never getting punched in the mouth 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:06.800 align:middle line:84% for saying more than the situation can bear. 00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:10.310 align:middle line:84% She argues beyond winning, screams indictments 00:08:10.310 --> 00:08:12.320 align:middle line:84% after the final, and has skewered him 00:08:12.320 --> 00:08:15.830 align:middle line:90% into silence, if not agreement. 00:08:15.830 --> 00:08:17.990 align:middle line:84% The words she uses mean she's feeling 00:08:17.990 --> 00:08:20.960 align:middle line:84% something large which needs words, 00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:23.990 align:middle line:84% perhaps the way Pollock needed paint. 00:08:23.990 --> 00:08:26.510 align:middle line:84% Next day the words are unimportant to her, 00:08:26.510 --> 00:08:27.980 align:middle line:84% while all he's thinking about are 00:08:27.980 --> 00:08:30.920 align:middle line:84% the words she used, if recovering from them 00:08:30.920 --> 00:08:33.320 align:middle line:90% is possible. 00:08:33.320 --> 00:08:36.590 align:middle line:84% Years ago the schoolyard taught him one word too many 00:08:36.590 --> 00:08:39.440 align:middle line:84% meant broken fingers, missing teeth. 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:42.740 align:middle line:84% You chose carefully or you chose war. 00:08:42.740 --> 00:08:46.460 align:middle line:84% You were the last word you let live. 00:08:46.460 --> 00:08:47.810 align:middle line:90% She was in the elsewhere. 00:08:47.810 --> 00:08:50.690 align:middle line:84% Girls were learning other lessons, 00:08:50.690 --> 00:08:53.750 align:middle line:84% the ones men learned too late or not at all. 00:08:53.750 --> 00:08:55.880 align:middle line:90% You took in, cared for. 00:08:55.880 --> 00:08:59.480 align:middle line:84% Without keeping score, you shaped a living space 00:08:59.480 --> 00:09:02.960 align:middle line:90% into a kind of seriousness. 00:09:02.960 --> 00:09:05.990 align:middle line:90% Retract those words, he says. 00:09:05.990 --> 00:09:09.500 align:middle line:84% But she is only sensing his reserve, his inability 00:09:09.500 --> 00:09:13.930 align:middle line:84% to perceive that her wrong words meant so much hurt and-- 00:09:13.930 --> 00:09:22.740 align:middle line:90% [AUDIO OUT] 00:09:22.740 --> 00:09:23.340 align:middle line:90% "Long Term." 00:09:23.340 --> 00:09:28.030 align:middle line:90% 00:09:28.030 --> 00:09:30.610 align:middle line:84% "On this they were in agreement; everything 00:09:30.610 --> 00:09:34.630 align:middle line:84% that can happen between two people happens after a while 00:09:34.630 --> 00:09:36.400 align:middle line:84% or has been thought about so hard 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:40.930 align:middle line:84% there's almost no difference between desire and deed. 00:09:40.930 --> 00:09:43.600 align:middle line:84% Each day they stayed together, therefore, 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:49.060 align:middle line:84% was a day of forgiveness, tacit, no reason to say the words. 00:09:49.060 --> 00:09:53.470 align:middle line:84% It was easy to forgive, so much harder to be forgiven. 00:09:53.470 --> 00:09:57.460 align:middle line:84% The forgiven had to agree to eat dust in the house of the noble 00:09:57.460 --> 00:10:00.760 align:middle line:84% and both knew this couldn't go on for long. 00:10:00.760 --> 00:10:03.520 align:middle line:84% The forgiven would need to rise; the forgiver 00:10:03.520 --> 00:10:07.480 align:middle line:84% need to remember the cruelty in being correct. 00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:09.790 align:middle line:84% Which is why, except in crises, they 00:10:09.790 --> 00:10:11.920 align:middle line:84% spoke about the garden, what happened 00:10:11.920 --> 00:10:14.530 align:middle line:84% at work, the little ailments and aches 00:10:14.530 --> 00:10:16.690 align:middle line:84% their familiar bodies separately felt." 00:10:16.690 --> 00:10:21.420 align:middle line:90% 00:10:21.420 --> 00:10:22.620 align:middle line:90% A couple more of these. 00:10:22.620 --> 00:10:26.380 align:middle line:90% 00:10:26.380 --> 00:10:32.500 align:middle line:84% This has an epigraph from the science writer, nature writer 00:10:32.500 --> 00:10:37.870 align:middle line:84% Lewis Thomas, which of whom you know, I'm sure. 00:10:37.870 --> 00:10:42.250 align:middle line:84% It goes, "animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time. 00:10:42.250 --> 00:10:45.430 align:middle line:84% What is it that enables certain flowers to resemble 00:10:45.430 --> 00:10:48.760 align:middle line:84% nubile insects or possums to play dead? 00:10:48.760 --> 00:10:51.190 align:middle line:84% What about those animals that make their livings 00:10:51.190 --> 00:10:55.510 align:middle line:84% by deception, the biological mimics, the pretenders? 00:10:55.510 --> 00:10:58.090 align:middle line:90% 00:10:58.090 --> 00:11:01.480 align:middle line:90% Just fascinated. 00:11:01.480 --> 00:11:03.380 align:middle line:90% There was so much to lie about. 00:11:03.380 --> 00:11:06.040 align:middle line:84% So many advantages to changing a story, 00:11:06.040 --> 00:11:09.430 align:middle line:84% rearranging an afternoon, that to tell the truth 00:11:09.430 --> 00:11:14.140 align:middle line:84% was un-Darwinian, destructive as having no fear. 00:11:14.140 --> 00:11:18.280 align:middle line:84% This is what he told her, trying to be as honest as he could. 00:11:18.280 --> 00:11:21.190 align:middle line:84% Weren't people happier with something to believe than 00:11:21.190 --> 00:11:24.760 align:middle line:84% the confusions of truth could be smoothed away? 00:11:24.760 --> 00:11:29.110 align:middle line:84% How natural to behave like an opossum, a chameleon, 00:11:29.110 --> 00:11:34.240 align:middle line:84% the fox with good reasons, setting another false trail. 00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:38.020 align:middle line:84% She listened to him, amused he had picked such small animals 00:11:38.020 --> 00:11:39.820 align:middle line:90% as examples. 00:11:39.820 --> 00:11:43.840 align:middle line:84% Honesty was what she couldn't help, as unchosen as a blush. 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:47.140 align:middle line:84% Her face was a public radar screen, even now 00:11:47.140 --> 00:11:50.470 align:middle line:90% it was registering disdain. 00:11:50.470 --> 00:11:53.080 align:middle line:84% Lying as seldom as he had over the years 00:11:53.080 --> 00:11:54.580 align:middle line:90% was an accomplishment. 00:11:54.580 --> 00:12:00.550 align:middle line:84% Besides, he added, honesty is the lie that always reveals. 00:12:00.550 --> 00:12:04.270 align:middle line:84% She was smart enough to know all such discussions 00:12:04.270 --> 00:12:07.780 align:middle line:84% on some level were about sex, that this had little 00:12:07.780 --> 00:12:11.200 align:middle line:84% to do with the nuances of lives or truth. 00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:15.790 align:middle line:84% Tell me what you're really talking about, she said. 00:12:15.790 --> 00:12:18.790 align:middle line:84% He was just fascinated with how natural it was. 00:12:18.790 --> 00:12:21.100 align:middle line:90% Even some plants do it, he said. 00:12:21.100 --> 00:12:23.980 align:middle line:84% It's all these myths of the physical world. 00:12:23.980 --> 00:12:25.420 align:middle line:90% So interesting." 00:12:25.420 --> 00:12:39.540 align:middle line:90% 00:12:39.540 --> 00:12:42.110 align:middle line:84% This is called "All That We Have." 00:12:42.110 --> 00:12:45.515 align:middle line:84% It was written to a friend of mine, John Jay Osborn. 00:12:45.515 --> 00:12:51.210 align:middle line:90% 00:12:51.210 --> 00:12:53.300 align:middle line:84% "It's on ordinary days, isn't it, 00:12:53.300 --> 00:12:56.420 align:middle line:84% when they happen, those silent slippages. 00:12:56.420 --> 00:13:00.170 align:middle line:84% A man mowing the lawn, a woman reading a magazine, 00:13:00.170 --> 00:13:02.870 align:middle line:84% each thinking it can't go on like this. 00:13:02.870 --> 00:13:06.830 align:middle line:84% Then the raking, the turning of a page. 00:13:06.830 --> 00:13:10.190 align:middle line:84% The art of letting pass what must not be spoken, 00:13:10.190 --> 00:13:14.300 align:middle line:84% the art of tirade, explosion, are the marital arts, 00:13:14.300 --> 00:13:16.760 align:middle line:84% and we, their poor practitioners, 00:13:16.760 --> 00:13:20.000 align:middle line:90% are never more than apprentices. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:24.710 align:middle line:84% At night in bed the day visits us, happily or otherwise. 00:13:24.710 --> 00:13:26.810 align:middle line:84% In the-- the words 'good morning' 00:13:26.810 --> 00:13:32.630 align:middle line:84% have a history of tones; pray to say them evenly. 00:13:32.630 --> 00:13:35.990 align:middle line:84% It's so easy, those moments when affection is what the hand 00:13:35.990 --> 00:13:38.750 align:middle line:90% and voice naturally coordinate. 00:13:38.750 --> 00:13:41.300 align:middle line:84% But it's that little invisible cloud in the living 00:13:41.300 --> 00:13:43.550 align:middle line:90% room, floating like boredom. 00:13:43.550 --> 00:13:45.740 align:middle line:84% It's the odor of disappointment mixing 00:13:45.740 --> 00:13:50.870 align:middle line:84% with kitchen smells, which asks of us all that we have. 00:13:50.870 --> 00:13:53.780 align:middle line:84% The man coming in now to the woman. 00:13:53.780 --> 00:13:55.910 align:middle line:90% The woman going out to the man." 00:13:55.910 --> 00:14:13.390 align:middle line:90% 00:14:13.390 --> 00:14:17.560 align:middle line:84% Do you all get Prairie Home Companion here? 00:14:17.560 --> 00:14:18.680 align:middle line:90% Does it reach you guys? 00:14:18.680 --> 00:14:19.180 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:14:19.180 --> 00:14:22.450 align:middle line:90% 00:14:22.450 --> 00:14:25.660 align:middle line:84% Well, he's a wonderful storyteller. 00:14:25.660 --> 00:14:28.780 align:middle line:90% And last year-- 00:14:28.780 --> 00:14:32.350 align:middle line:84% I lived near Philadelphia and we also, 00:14:32.350 --> 00:14:34.900 align:middle line:84% on Thursday nights-- let's say he's on Saturday night, 00:14:34.900 --> 00:14:37.210 align:middle line:84% then Thursday nights he was reading chapters 00:14:37.210 --> 00:14:41.860 align:middle line:84% of Russell Baker's book Growing Up for a half hour around 7 00:14:41.860 --> 00:14:43.610 align:middle line:90% o'clock. 00:14:43.610 --> 00:14:47.330 align:middle line:84% I grew up in a family where my grandfather was a storyteller 00:14:47.330 --> 00:14:48.490 align:middle line:90% and told the stories. 00:14:48.490 --> 00:14:51.040 align:middle line:90% 00:14:51.040 --> 00:14:54.700 align:middle line:84% I hadn't realized how much I missed that, I think, 00:14:54.700 --> 00:15:01.210 align:middle line:84% and found myself doing what is certainly unique to most of us. 00:15:01.210 --> 00:15:04.330 align:middle line:84% Pulling up a chair in front of the radio with a drink 00:15:04.330 --> 00:15:06.010 align:middle line:90% and listening to the story. 00:15:06.010 --> 00:15:08.680 align:middle line:84% I think because of that, for a while, 00:15:08.680 --> 00:15:14.140 align:middle line:84% it keyed some storytelling, some more narrative in my own work. 00:15:14.140 --> 00:15:17.100 align:middle line:84% I'll read you a few poems that came after that. 00:15:17.100 --> 00:15:20.560 align:middle line:84% And this, in fact, is called "Stories." 00:15:20.560 --> 00:15:25.180 align:middle line:84% I suppose it's about television as much as it is about stories, 00:15:25.180 --> 00:15:26.680 align:middle line:90% the advent of television. 00:15:26.680 --> 00:15:31.960 align:middle line:90% 00:15:31.960 --> 00:15:33.490 align:middle line:84% "It was back when we used to listen 00:15:33.490 --> 00:15:36.460 align:middle line:84% to stories, our minds developing pictures 00:15:36.460 --> 00:15:39.640 align:middle line:84% as we were taken into the elsewhere of our experience 00:15:39.640 --> 00:15:43.300 align:middle line:84% or to the forbidden or under the sea. 00:15:43.300 --> 00:15:47.470 align:middle line:84% Television was wrestling: Milton Berle, believe it or not. 00:15:47.470 --> 00:15:49.720 align:middle line:84% We knelt before it like natives in front 00:15:49.720 --> 00:15:52.270 align:middle line:90% of something sent by parachute. 00:15:52.270 --> 00:15:55.060 align:middle line:84% But when grandfather said, I'll tell you a story, 00:15:55.060 --> 00:15:57.670 align:middle line:84% we stopped with pleasure, sat cross legged 00:15:57.670 --> 00:16:01.030 align:middle line:90% next to the fireplace, waited. 00:16:01.030 --> 00:16:03.700 align:middle line:84% He'd sip gin and hold us, his voice 00:16:03.700 --> 00:16:08.290 align:middle line:84% the extra truth beyond what we believed without question. 00:16:08.290 --> 00:16:11.680 align:middle line:84% When grandfather died, it changed what an evening meant. 00:16:11.680 --> 00:16:14.140 align:middle line:90% It was 1954. 00:16:14.140 --> 00:16:17.380 align:middle line:84% After supper we went to the television, innocence 00:16:17.380 --> 00:16:20.200 align:middle line:84% in a magic land getting more innocent, 00:16:20.200 --> 00:16:23.560 align:middle line:84% a thousand years away from Oswald and the shock, 00:16:23.560 --> 00:16:26.770 align:middle line:84% the end of our enormous childhood. 00:16:26.770 --> 00:16:29.170 align:middle line:84% We sat still for anything, laughed 00:16:29.170 --> 00:16:32.680 align:middle line:84% when anyone slipped or lisped or got hit with a pie. 00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:34.810 align:middle line:84% We said to friends, what the hey? 00:16:34.810 --> 00:16:37.630 align:middle line:90% And punched them in the arms. 00:16:37.630 --> 00:16:40.630 align:middle line:84% The television had arrived and was coming. 00:16:40.630 --> 00:16:43.360 align:middle line:84% Throughout the country, all the grandfathers 00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:46.600 align:middle line:84% were dying, giving their reluctant permission 00:16:46.600 --> 00:16:47.455 align:middle line:90% like Indians." 00:16:47.455 --> 00:16:54.900 align:middle line:90% 00:16:54.900 --> 00:16:56.980 align:middle line:84% We've tried to bring our children up 00:16:56.980 --> 00:17:00.070 align:middle line:84% in as secular of a way as possible, 00:17:00.070 --> 00:17:04.089 align:middle line:90% with more or less success. 00:17:04.089 --> 00:17:10.869 align:middle line:84% This poem about my youngest daughter and church of sorts, 00:17:10.869 --> 00:17:12.010 align:middle line:90% as you'll see. 00:17:12.010 --> 00:17:17.579 align:middle line:84% "At the Smithville Methodist Church 00:17:17.579 --> 00:17:20.410 align:middle line:84% it was supposed to be arts and crafts for a week. 00:17:20.410 --> 00:17:23.400 align:middle line:84% But when she came home with the Jesus Saves button, 00:17:23.400 --> 00:17:26.175 align:middle line:84% we knew what art was up, what ancient craft. 00:17:26.175 --> 00:17:29.400 align:middle line:90% 00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:31.050 align:middle line:84% She liked her little friends, she 00:17:31.050 --> 00:17:33.630 align:middle line:84% liked the songs they sang when they weren't twisting 00:17:33.630 --> 00:17:36.150 align:middle line:90% and folding paper into dolls. 00:17:36.150 --> 00:17:37.830 align:middle line:90% Be so bad. 00:17:37.830 --> 00:17:39.690 align:middle line:84% Jesus and good men was what we had 00:17:39.690 --> 00:17:44.730 align:middle line:84% to do to stay this side of cynicism, that other sadness. 00:17:44.730 --> 00:17:47.460 align:middle line:90% OK, we said, one week. 00:17:47.460 --> 00:17:50.070 align:middle line:84% But when she came home singing Jesus loves me, 00:17:50.070 --> 00:17:55.560 align:middle line:84% the Bible tells me so, it was time to talk. 00:17:55.560 --> 00:17:57.990 align:middle line:84% Could we say, Jesus doesn't love you? 00:17:57.990 --> 00:18:01.320 align:middle line:84% Could I tell her the Bible is a great book certain people use 00:18:01.320 --> 00:18:03.450 align:middle line:90% to make you feel bad? 00:18:03.450 --> 00:18:06.510 align:middle line:90% We sent her back without a word. 00:18:06.510 --> 00:18:08.760 align:middle line:84% It had been so long since we believed, 00:18:08.760 --> 00:18:12.960 align:middle line:84% so long since we needed Jesus as our nemesis and friend 00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:15.330 align:middle line:84% that we thought he was sufficiently dead, 00:18:15.330 --> 00:18:18.300 align:middle line:84% that our children would think of him like Lincoln or Thomas 00:18:18.300 --> 00:18:20.220 align:middle line:90% Jefferson. 00:18:20.220 --> 00:18:24.600 align:middle line:84% Soon it became clear to us you can't teach disbelief 00:18:24.600 --> 00:18:27.330 align:middle line:84% to a child, only wonderful stories, 00:18:27.330 --> 00:18:31.020 align:middle line:84% and we hadn't a story nearly as good. 00:18:31.020 --> 00:18:33.540 align:middle line:84% On parents' night there were the arts and crafts 00:18:33.540 --> 00:18:36.510 align:middle line:90% all spread out like appetizers. 00:18:36.510 --> 00:18:38.730 align:middle line:84% They were seats in the church and the children 00:18:38.730 --> 00:18:41.820 align:middle line:84% sang a song about the Ark and hallelujah, 00:18:41.820 --> 00:18:46.080 align:middle line:84% and one in which they had to jump up and down for Jesus. 00:18:46.080 --> 00:18:49.415 align:middle line:84% I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain about what's comic 00:18:49.415 --> 00:18:50.450 align:middle line:90% or what's serious. 00:18:50.450 --> 00:18:53.040 align:middle line:90% 00:18:53.040 --> 00:18:56.100 align:middle line:84% Evolution is magical, but devoid of heroes. 00:18:56.100 --> 00:18:59.989 align:middle line:84% You can't say to your child, evolution loves you." 00:18:59.989 --> 00:19:02.484 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:19:02.484 --> 00:19:07.480 align:middle line:90% 00:19:07.480 --> 00:19:10.830 align:middle line:84% "The story stinks of extinction and nothing exciting 00:19:10.830 --> 00:19:13.470 align:middle line:90% happens for centuries. 00:19:13.470 --> 00:19:16.050 align:middle line:84% I didn't have a wonderful story for my child 00:19:16.050 --> 00:19:17.610 align:middle line:90% and she was beaming. 00:19:17.610 --> 00:19:20.670 align:middle line:84% All the way home in the car she sang the songs, 00:19:20.670 --> 00:19:23.700 align:middle line:84% occasionally standing up for Jesus. 00:19:23.700 --> 00:19:27.870 align:middle line:84% There was nothing to do but drive, ride it out, sing along 00:19:27.870 --> 00:19:30.862 align:middle line:90% in silence." 00:19:30.862 --> 00:19:33.327 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:19:33.327 --> 00:19:40.230 align:middle line:90% 00:19:40.230 --> 00:19:46.920 align:middle line:84% Well, maybe I'll read, since you're in that mood, 00:19:46.920 --> 00:19:48.810 align:middle line:90% a poem about my oldest daughter. 00:19:48.810 --> 00:19:51.150 align:middle line:84% This is called, "The Substitute." 00:19:51.150 --> 00:19:55.170 align:middle line:84% And we know how badly we've treated substitute teachers 00:19:55.170 --> 00:19:59.340 align:middle line:84% over the years, or maybe have even been substitute teachers 00:19:59.340 --> 00:20:01.495 align:middle line:90% and know it from the other side. 00:20:01.495 --> 00:20:03.120 align:middle line:84% This is about something, as you'll see, 00:20:03.120 --> 00:20:06.660 align:middle line:90% that she tried to get away with. 00:20:06.660 --> 00:20:09.480 align:middle line:90% "The Substitute." 00:20:09.480 --> 00:20:11.970 align:middle line:84% "When the substitute asked my eighth grade daughter 00:20:11.970 --> 00:20:14.880 align:middle line:84% to read out loud she read in cockney, 00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:18.930 align:middle line:84% an accent she'd mastered listening to rock music. 00:20:18.930 --> 00:20:20.760 align:middle line:84% Her classmates laughed, of course, 00:20:20.760 --> 00:20:25.680 align:middle line:84% but she kept on, straight faced until the merciful bell. 00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:28.740 align:middle line:84% Thus began the week my daughter learned it takes more than 00:20:28.740 --> 00:20:32.610 align:middle line:84% style to be successfully disobedient. 00:20:32.610 --> 00:20:35.340 align:middle line:84% Next day her regular teacher didn't return, 00:20:35.340 --> 00:20:38.190 align:middle line:90% she had to do it again. 00:20:38.190 --> 00:20:39.570 align:middle line:90% She was from Liverpool. 00:20:39.570 --> 00:20:42.570 align:middle line:84% Her parents worked in a mill, had sent her to America 00:20:42.570 --> 00:20:44.850 align:middle line:90% to live with relatives. 00:20:44.850 --> 00:20:48.100 align:middle line:84% At night she read about England, looked at her map to place 00:20:48.100 --> 00:20:50.940 align:middle line:84% and remember exactly where she lived. 00:20:50.940 --> 00:20:53.520 align:middle line:84% Soon her classmates became used to it, 00:20:53.520 --> 00:20:57.420 align:middle line:84% just a titter from Robert who'd laugh at anything. 00:20:57.420 --> 00:21:00.510 align:middle line:84% Friday morning, exhausted from learning the manners 00:21:00.510 --> 00:21:03.120 align:middle line:84% and industry of modern England, she 00:21:03.120 --> 00:21:05.550 align:middle line:84% had a stomach ache, her ears hurt. 00:21:05.550 --> 00:21:09.900 align:middle line:84% There were pain, she said, all over. 00:21:09.900 --> 00:21:11.475 align:middle line:90% We pointed her toward the door. 00:21:11.475 --> 00:21:14.760 align:middle line:90% 00:21:14.760 --> 00:21:17.340 align:middle line:84% She left bent over like a charwoman, 00:21:17.340 --> 00:21:20.820 align:middle line:84% but near the end of the driveway we saw her right herself, 00:21:20.820 --> 00:21:24.450 align:middle line:84% become the girl who had to be another girl, a substitute 00:21:24.450 --> 00:21:27.150 align:middle line:84% of sorts, in it now for the duration. 00:21:27.150 --> 00:21:30.050 align:middle line:90% 00:21:30.050 --> 00:21:32.500 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:21:32.500 --> 00:21:41.320 align:middle line:90% 00:21:41.320 --> 00:21:42.010 align:middle line:90% "Corners." 00:21:42.010 --> 00:21:45.180 align:middle line:90% 00:21:45.180 --> 00:21:48.630 align:middle line:84% "I've corner bars, lived in corner houses. 00:21:48.630 --> 00:21:51.450 align:middle line:84% Like everyone else, I've reserved corner tables 00:21:51.450 --> 00:21:53.880 align:middle line:90% thinking they'd be sufficient. 00:21:53.880 --> 00:21:56.700 align:middle line:84% I've met at corners perceived as crossroads, 00:21:56.700 --> 00:21:59.940 align:middle line:84% loved to find love leaning against a lamppost 00:21:59.940 --> 00:22:02.820 align:middle line:84% but have known the abruptness of corners too, 00:22:02.820 --> 00:22:05.880 align:middle line:90% the pivot, the silence. 00:22:05.880 --> 00:22:08.100 align:middle line:84% I've sat in corners at parties hoping 00:22:08.100 --> 00:22:11.160 align:middle line:84% for someone who knew the virtue of both distance 00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:14.460 align:middle line:84% and close quarters, someone with a corner person's 00:22:14.460 --> 00:22:18.240 align:middle line:84% taste for intimacy, hard won, rising out 00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:21.060 align:middle line:90% of shyness and desire. 00:22:21.060 --> 00:22:24.030 align:middle line:84% And I've turned corners there was no going back to, 00:22:24.030 --> 00:22:28.860 align:middle line:84% corners in the middle of a room that led to Spain or solitude. 00:22:28.860 --> 00:22:32.820 align:middle line:84% And always the thin line between corner and cornered, 00:22:32.820 --> 00:22:36.270 align:middle line:84% the good corners of bodies and those severe bodies that 00:22:36.270 --> 00:22:41.280 align:middle line:84% permit no repose, the places we retreat to, the places we 00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:42.720 align:middle line:90% can't bear to be found." 00:22:42.720 --> 00:23:01.720 align:middle line:90% 00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:02.860 align:middle line:90% This one's called "Desire." 00:23:02.860 --> 00:23:06.250 align:middle line:84% I probably should mention that one 00:23:06.250 --> 00:23:08.470 align:middle line:84% of my first jobs in my early 20's was 00:23:08.470 --> 00:23:14.440 align:middle line:84% in New York City working on Park Avenue in one 00:23:14.440 --> 00:23:16.510 align:middle line:90% of those big buildings. 00:23:16.510 --> 00:23:22.760 align:middle line:84% And this is a big enough city, but I 00:23:22.760 --> 00:23:26.720 align:middle line:84% think perhaps the climate doesn't change 00:23:26.720 --> 00:23:28.620 align:middle line:90% as much as it does there. 00:23:28.620 --> 00:23:34.250 align:middle line:84% So there's something incredibly sexy about springtime 00:23:34.250 --> 00:23:39.680 align:middle line:84% at noon coming out of your office building in New York. 00:23:39.680 --> 00:23:40.410 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:23:40.410 --> 00:23:42.560 align:middle line:84% I'm sure there are sexy things everywhere, 00:23:42.560 --> 00:23:48.410 align:middle line:84% but this is a poem about that particular kind of sexiness 00:23:48.410 --> 00:23:55.340 align:middle line:84% and it's the kind of perception of sexiness, I think. 00:23:55.340 --> 00:23:59.330 align:middle line:84% And the poem is about how that changes to a certain degree 00:23:59.330 --> 00:24:02.745 align:middle line:90% because of circumstance. 00:24:02.745 --> 00:24:03.245 align:middle line:90% "Desire." 00:24:03.245 --> 00:24:06.940 align:middle line:90% 00:24:06.940 --> 00:24:11.860 align:middle line:84% "I remember how it used to be at noon, springtime, the city 00:24:11.860 --> 00:24:15.040 align:middle line:84% streets full of office workers like myself let loose 00:24:15.040 --> 00:24:18.520 align:middle line:84% from the cold glass buildings on Park and Lex, 00:24:18.520 --> 00:24:21.280 align:middle line:84% the dull swaddling of winter cast off, 00:24:21.280 --> 00:24:25.150 align:middle line:84% almost everyone wanting everyone else. 00:24:25.150 --> 00:24:28.240 align:middle line:84% It was amazing how most of us contained ourselves, 00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:30.550 align:middle line:84% bringing desire back up to the office 00:24:30.550 --> 00:24:35.320 align:middle line:84% where it existed anyway, quiet like a good engine. 00:24:35.320 --> 00:24:37.360 align:middle line:84% I'd linger a bit with the receptionist, 00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:39.940 align:middle line:84% knock on someone else's open door, 00:24:39.940 --> 00:24:43.390 align:middle line:84% ease myself, by increments, into the seriousness 00:24:43.390 --> 00:24:45.940 align:middle line:90% they paid me for. 00:24:45.940 --> 00:24:49.420 align:middle line:84% Desire was everywhere those years, so enormous 00:24:49.420 --> 00:24:53.530 align:middle line:84% it couldn't be reduced one person at a time. 00:24:53.530 --> 00:24:57.850 align:middle line:84% I don't remember when it was, though closer to now than then, 00:24:57.850 --> 00:25:02.020 align:middle line:84% walked the streets desireless, my eyes fixed on destination 00:25:02.020 --> 00:25:03.490 align:middle line:90% alone. 00:25:03.490 --> 00:25:07.450 align:middle line:84% The beautiful person across from me on bus or train 00:25:07.450 --> 00:25:09.700 align:middle line:90% looked like effort, work. 00:25:09.700 --> 00:25:13.180 align:middle line:90% I translated her into pain. 00:25:13.180 --> 00:25:16.960 align:middle line:84% For months I had the clarity the cynical survive with, 00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:20.140 align:middle line:90% their world so safely small. 00:25:20.140 --> 00:25:24.660 align:middle line:84% Today, walking 57th toward 3rd, it's all come back, 00:25:24.660 --> 00:25:27.880 align:middle line:84% the interesting, the various, the conjured life 00:25:27.880 --> 00:25:30.730 align:middle line:90% suggested by a glance. 00:25:30.730 --> 00:25:33.790 align:middle line:84% I praise how the body heals itself. 00:25:33.790 --> 00:25:36.565 align:middle line:84% I praise how, finally, it never learns." 00:25:36.565 --> 00:25:58.500 align:middle line:90% 00:25:58.500 --> 00:26:05.790 align:middle line:84% I grew up having just a brother as a sibling, which, 00:26:05.790 --> 00:26:07.970 align:middle line:84% of course, seemed normal to me most of my life. 00:26:07.970 --> 00:26:15.060 align:middle line:84% I think it was only 10 or 12 years ago, rather late, that it 00:26:15.060 --> 00:26:18.300 align:middle line:84% struck me that not having had a sister was 00:26:18.300 --> 00:26:22.120 align:middle line:84% some kind of irrevocable loss that, had I had one, 00:26:22.120 --> 00:26:26.670 align:middle line:84% I'd be different, for better or worse. 00:26:26.670 --> 00:26:29.070 align:middle line:84% The speaker of this poem is conjuring 00:26:29.070 --> 00:26:30.480 align:middle line:90% the sister he never had. 00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:36.740 align:middle line:90% 00:26:36.740 --> 00:26:38.600 align:middle line:90% It's called, "Sister." 00:26:38.600 --> 00:26:41.060 align:middle line:84% "The sister I never had enters my wife 00:26:41.060 --> 00:26:43.310 align:middle line:90% when I'm sleeping next to her. 00:26:43.310 --> 00:26:45.410 align:middle line:84% So many times I've watched my sister 00:26:45.410 --> 00:26:48.170 align:middle line:84% come from her separate room, the room that 00:26:48.170 --> 00:26:52.520 align:middle line:84% long ago in a house of brothers was an extra room down the hall 00:26:52.520 --> 00:26:56.130 align:middle line:84% from where I would dream her alive. 00:26:56.130 --> 00:26:58.370 align:middle line:84% She climbs into bed on my wife's side 00:26:58.370 --> 00:27:01.250 align:middle line:84% and I touch my wife, for now my sister 00:27:01.250 --> 00:27:04.640 align:middle line:84% and she are the woman I must talk to about 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:07.790 align:middle line:90% incompleteness and love. 00:27:07.790 --> 00:27:10.650 align:middle line:84% Awake, she doesn't know my sister is in her. 00:27:10.650 --> 00:27:14.360 align:middle line:84% She doesn't know why my embrace has so much gratefulness in it, 00:27:14.360 --> 00:27:16.520 align:middle line:84% why my questions are all whispered 00:27:16.520 --> 00:27:19.910 align:middle line:90% as a father could overhear us. 00:27:19.910 --> 00:27:22.940 align:middle line:84% She thinks I want to make love but I remove her hand 00:27:22.940 --> 00:27:25.220 align:middle line:84% and hold it, ask another question 00:27:25.220 --> 00:27:29.150 align:middle line:84% about high school and loss, the kind of loss that 00:27:29.150 --> 00:27:34.340 align:middle line:84% repeats itself every day like being born without a leg. 00:27:34.340 --> 00:27:38.300 align:middle line:84% I watch my sister leave as my wife takes me in her arms, 00:27:38.300 --> 00:27:42.800 align:middle line:84% says hush you've been talking again, sleep now, 00:27:42.800 --> 00:27:45.170 align:middle line:84% and I curl into her as if it were possible 00:27:45.170 --> 00:27:47.660 align:middle line:84% she could be everything to me, alone 00:27:47.660 --> 00:27:49.910 align:middle line:90% like this, just ourselves." 00:27:49.910 --> 00:28:03.700 align:middle line:90% 00:28:03.700 --> 00:28:10.220 align:middle line:84% When I was 11 or 12, my mother did something what seemed to me 00:28:10.220 --> 00:28:14.270 align:middle line:84% extraordinary, or certainly in retrospect seems extraordinary. 00:28:14.270 --> 00:28:19.550 align:middle line:84% And I knew ever since I've thought of myself as a writer 00:28:19.550 --> 00:28:22.910 align:middle line:84% that I would write about it and tried lots 00:28:22.910 --> 00:28:27.440 align:middle line:84% and this is the final version, I think. 00:28:27.440 --> 00:28:29.075 align:middle line:84% "The Routine Things Around the House." 00:28:29.075 --> 00:28:33.390 align:middle line:90% 00:28:33.390 --> 00:28:37.530 align:middle line:84% "When mother died I thought, now I'll have a death poem. 00:28:37.530 --> 00:28:40.830 align:middle line:84% That was unforgivable, yet I've since forgiven myself, 00:28:40.830 --> 00:28:45.120 align:middle line:84% as sons are able to do who've been loved by their mothers. 00:28:45.120 --> 00:28:48.330 align:middle line:84% I stared into the coffin knowing how long she'd live, 00:28:48.330 --> 00:28:55.290 align:middle line:84% how many lifetimes there are in the sweet revisions of memory. 00:28:55.290 --> 00:28:58.230 align:middle line:84% It's hard to know exactly how we ease ourselves back 00:28:58.230 --> 00:29:00.630 align:middle line:84% from sadness, but I remembered when 00:29:00.630 --> 00:29:06.000 align:middle line:84% I was 12, 1951, before the world unbuttoned its blouse. 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:07.320 align:middle line:90% I had asked my mother-- 00:29:07.320 --> 00:29:10.770 align:middle line:84% I was trembling-- if I could see her breasts. 00:29:10.770 --> 00:29:13.560 align:middle line:84% And she took me into her room without embarrassment 00:29:13.560 --> 00:29:19.560 align:middle line:84% or coyness and I stared at them, afraid to ask for more. 00:29:19.560 --> 00:29:21.690 align:middle line:84% Now years later, someone tells me 00:29:21.690 --> 00:29:25.350 align:middle line:84% Cancers who've never had mother love are doomed. 00:29:25.350 --> 00:29:29.220 align:middle line:84% And I, a Cancer, feel blessed again. 00:29:29.220 --> 00:29:32.250 align:middle line:84% What luck to have had a mother who showed me her breasts when 00:29:32.250 --> 00:29:35.730 align:middle line:84% girls my age were developing their separate countries, 00:29:35.730 --> 00:29:41.010 align:middle line:84% what luck she didn't doom me with too much or too little. 00:29:41.010 --> 00:29:44.310 align:middle line:84% Had I asked to touch, perhaps to suck them, 00:29:44.310 --> 00:29:46.800 align:middle line:90% what would she have done? 00:29:46.800 --> 00:29:49.950 align:middle line:84% Mother, dead woman who I think permits me to love women 00:29:49.950 --> 00:29:54.060 align:middle line:84% easily, this poem is dedicated to where we stopped, 00:29:54.060 --> 00:29:56.940 align:middle line:84% to the incompleteness that was sufficient, 00:29:56.940 --> 00:30:01.005 align:middle line:84% and to how you buttoned up, began doing the routine things 00:30:01.005 --> 00:30:01.755 align:middle line:90% around the house." 00:30:01.755 --> 00:30:23.210 align:middle line:90% 00:30:23.210 --> 00:30:28.500 align:middle line:84% A couple of poems from this book, Work and Love. 00:30:28.500 --> 00:30:34.530 align:middle line:84% The book has an epigraph from Rilke, which I'll read you. 00:30:34.530 --> 00:30:36.840 align:middle line:84% "For one human being to love another, 00:30:36.840 --> 00:30:38.790 align:middle line:84% that is perhaps the most difficult 00:30:38.790 --> 00:30:42.990 align:middle line:84% of our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, 00:30:42.990 --> 00:30:48.340 align:middle line:84% the work for which all other work is but preparation." 00:30:48.340 --> 00:30:51.990 align:middle line:84% I'd been working on those twin themes of work and love 00:30:51.990 --> 00:30:55.815 align:middle line:84% before I found that quote, and it cooperated nicely. 00:30:55.815 --> 00:31:01.260 align:middle line:90% 00:31:01.260 --> 00:31:06.220 align:middle line:84% I suppose it's related in some way to the book's discovery-- 00:31:06.220 --> 00:31:08.850 align:middle line:84% though I don't mean for this to sound as a profound discovery 00:31:08.850 --> 00:31:11.190 align:middle line:84% of simply the discovery of the book-- 00:31:11.190 --> 00:31:15.900 align:middle line:84% which was how important it is for good work 00:31:15.900 --> 00:31:21.030 align:middle line:84% to precede loving, how it's almost impossible the other way 00:31:21.030 --> 00:31:26.190 align:middle line:84% around and that we need to work well in order to love well. 00:31:26.190 --> 00:31:29.265 align:middle line:84% I'll read a few of the work poems. 00:31:29.265 --> 00:31:32.235 align:middle line:90% 00:31:32.235 --> 00:31:34.110 align:middle line:84% This first one is called "My Brother's Work." 00:31:34.110 --> 00:31:37.110 align:middle line:84% My brother is someone who doesn't work well, 00:31:37.110 --> 00:31:42.270 align:middle line:90% who has a poor job background. 00:31:42.270 --> 00:31:43.320 align:middle line:90% "My Brother's Work." 00:31:43.320 --> 00:31:49.640 align:middle line:90% 00:31:49.640 --> 00:31:53.000 align:middle line:84% "My brother who knows the indignity of work rides home 00:31:53.000 --> 00:31:55.520 align:middle line:84% with the taste of it turning peptic, 00:31:55.520 --> 00:31:57.590 align:middle line:84% that odor of swallowed pride rising 00:31:57.590 --> 00:31:59.870 align:middle line:84% into his breath, his wife waiting 00:31:59.870 --> 00:32:04.940 align:middle line:84% for the kiss that's so full of the day she can't bear it. 00:32:04.940 --> 00:32:07.190 align:middle line:84% My brother who hears the shout of bosses, 00:32:07.190 --> 00:32:11.990 align:middle line:84% who is no boss himself, only shouts at home, thinks shouting 00:32:11.990 --> 00:32:13.970 align:middle line:84% is what permits the bosses to move 00:32:13.970 --> 00:32:17.630 align:middle line:84% with the easy self-fulfilled gait of leopards who've 00:32:17.630 --> 00:32:20.480 align:middle line:90% eaten all they've killed. 00:32:20.480 --> 00:32:22.400 align:middle line:84% My brother who will not leave his job 00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:24.650 align:middle line:84% wonders how Gaugin left the world 00:32:24.650 --> 00:32:27.320 align:middle line:84% and found himself on the other side of it. 00:32:27.320 --> 00:32:32.090 align:middle line:84% 'What balls,' he says; 'braver than a suicide.' 00:32:32.090 --> 00:32:35.090 align:middle line:84% My brother who is no less than anyone circumstance 00:32:35.090 --> 00:32:37.460 align:middle line:84% made to do its bidding, who wants 00:32:37.460 --> 00:32:40.130 align:middle line:84% to rise one morning against all odds 00:32:40.130 --> 00:32:42.860 align:middle line:90% and slip into his leopard body. 00:32:42.860 --> 00:32:45.710 align:middle line:84% My brother is coming home now and his wife 00:32:45.710 --> 00:32:47.105 align:middle line:90% is waiting for the kiss." 00:32:47.105 --> 00:32:58.340 align:middle line:90% 00:32:58.340 --> 00:32:59.850 align:middle line:90% "Hard Work." 00:32:59.850 --> 00:33:04.040 align:middle line:90% This is dated in 1956. 00:33:04.040 --> 00:33:07.370 align:middle line:84% "At the Coke plant toting empties and large crates 00:33:07.370 --> 00:33:11.660 align:middle line:84% to the assembly line, I envied my friends away at camp. 00:33:11.660 --> 00:33:15.050 align:middle line:84% But the money was good and hard work, my father said, 00:33:15.050 --> 00:33:17.400 align:middle line:90% was how you became a man. 00:33:17.400 --> 00:33:21.080 align:middle line:84% I saw a man, for no special reason, piss into a Coke bottle 00:33:21.080 --> 00:33:23.570 align:middle line:90% and put it back onto the line. 00:33:23.570 --> 00:33:26.000 align:middle line:84% After a while, I, too, hated the bottles 00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:28.640 align:middle line:84% enough to break some deliberately 00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:31.310 align:middle line:84% and smile and share with the other workers, 00:33:31.310 --> 00:33:34.370 align:middle line:90% a petty act of free will. 00:33:34.370 --> 00:33:37.550 align:middle line:84% When I came home at night, my body hurt with that righteous 00:33:37.550 --> 00:33:41.000 align:middle line:84% hurt men have brought home for centuries, the hurt 00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:43.850 align:middle line:84% that demands food and solicitation, that 00:33:43.850 --> 00:33:47.180 align:middle line:90% makes men separate, lost. 00:33:47.180 --> 00:33:49.970 align:middle line:84% I quit before the summer was over, exercised 00:33:49.970 --> 00:33:53.870 align:middle line:84% the prerogatives of my class by playing ball all August, 00:33:53.870 --> 00:33:56.900 align:middle line:84% and spent the money I'd earned on Barbara Winokur, who 00:33:56.900 --> 00:33:59.180 align:middle line:90% was beautiful. 00:33:59.180 --> 00:34:01.790 align:middle line:84% And now I think my job must be phased out. 00:34:01.790 --> 00:34:04.760 align:middle line:84% A machine must do it, though someone for sure 00:34:04.760 --> 00:34:07.310 align:middle line:84% still does the hard work of boredom, 00:34:07.310 --> 00:34:09.139 align:middle line:90% and that person can't escape. 00:34:09.139 --> 00:34:12.409 align:middle line:84% Goes there each morning and comes home each night 00:34:12.409 --> 00:34:14.600 align:middle line:84% and probably has no opportunity to say 00:34:14.600 --> 00:34:17.150 align:middle line:90% who he is through destruction. 00:34:17.150 --> 00:34:19.370 align:middle line:84% Some big mechanical eye watching him 00:34:19.370 --> 00:34:22.310 align:middle line:84% for some time in motion man or just something 00:34:22.310 --> 00:34:26.120 align:middle line:84% hesitant, some father or husband in himself." 00:34:26.120 --> 00:34:34.320 align:middle line:90% 00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:35.570 align:middle line:90% This is one of the love poems. 00:34:35.570 --> 00:34:40.070 align:middle line:84% Most of the love poems are, what I would call, 00:34:40.070 --> 00:34:41.210 align:middle line:90% difficult love poems. 00:34:41.210 --> 00:34:43.610 align:middle line:84% Maybe that's the only kind there are. 00:34:43.610 --> 00:34:46.219 align:middle line:90% 00:34:46.219 --> 00:34:50.540 align:middle line:84% I know many of you may know this essay. 00:34:50.540 --> 00:34:52.880 align:middle line:84% If anyone remembers who wrote it, 00:34:52.880 --> 00:34:55.790 align:middle line:84% you should tell me afterwards since I've forgotten. 00:34:55.790 --> 00:35:01.870 align:middle line:84% But it's an essay about the digger wasp 00:35:01.870 --> 00:35:04.900 align:middle line:84% being the natural enemy of the tarantula 00:35:04.900 --> 00:35:06.670 align:middle line:90% by a wonderful writer. 00:35:06.670 --> 00:35:08.440 align:middle line:90% It's terrifically detailed. 00:35:08.440 --> 00:35:10.660 align:middle line:84% I've always wanted to do something 00:35:10.660 --> 00:35:15.550 align:middle line:84% with it since it's rather bizarre, as the poem will 00:35:15.550 --> 00:35:16.780 align:middle line:90% articulate. 00:35:16.780 --> 00:35:19.060 align:middle line:84% And when I tried to write it straight on, 00:35:19.060 --> 00:35:21.730 align:middle line:90% it never quite turned out. 00:35:21.730 --> 00:35:24.460 align:middle line:84% Though one day I wanted to write a poem about a friend of mine, 00:35:24.460 --> 00:35:29.170 align:middle line:84% a woman friend whose habit it is to fall in 00:35:29.170 --> 00:35:31.870 align:middle line:84% love with the wrong man over and over again. 00:35:31.870 --> 00:35:34.450 align:middle line:90% She's remarkably consistent. 00:35:34.450 --> 00:35:41.110 align:middle line:84% And I started writing about her and the tarantula story 00:35:41.110 --> 00:35:43.480 align:middle line:90% came in. 00:35:43.480 --> 00:35:46.150 align:middle line:84% "Essay to a Friend In Love with the Wrong Man Again." 00:35:46.150 --> 00:35:50.490 align:middle line:90% 00:35:50.490 --> 00:35:54.480 align:middle line:84% "It was never meant to be sensible, fully understandable. 00:35:54.480 --> 00:35:56.610 align:middle line:84% The digger wasp, for example, goes up 00:35:56.610 --> 00:35:59.640 align:middle line:84% to the tarantula like a friend and the tarantula 00:35:59.640 --> 00:36:03.510 align:middle line:84% freezes, allows itself to be inspected. 00:36:03.510 --> 00:36:05.490 align:middle line:84% Then it digs the tarantulas grave 00:36:05.490 --> 00:36:08.100 align:middle line:90% while the tarantula watches. 00:36:08.100 --> 00:36:11.370 align:middle line:84% You, I bet, would have guessed with a name like tarantula, 00:36:11.370 --> 00:36:13.860 align:middle line:84% the tarantula would have been the villain. 00:36:13.860 --> 00:36:16.260 align:middle line:84% But it is we who named the tarantula 00:36:16.260 --> 00:36:20.910 align:middle line:84% and made the digger wasp sound honest, hardworking. 00:36:20.910 --> 00:36:23.430 align:middle line:84% And, of course, there is no villain, only the scheme 00:36:23.430 --> 00:36:26.190 align:middle line:84% of things, only horror, and occasionally 00:36:26.190 --> 00:36:28.740 align:middle line:84% the strange birth of a butterfly and 00:36:28.740 --> 00:36:33.623 align:middle line:84% its short, gorgeous, utterly careless season. 00:36:33.623 --> 00:36:35.040 align:middle line:84% I should have mentioned the digger 00:36:35.040 --> 00:36:38.910 align:middle line:84% wasp doesn't kill its victim, but stuns it, drags it 00:36:38.910 --> 00:36:43.890 align:middle line:84% to the grave, lays one egg on its stomach, and closes up. 00:36:43.890 --> 00:36:46.350 align:middle line:84% You see, the instinct is maternal. 00:36:46.350 --> 00:36:49.980 align:middle line:84% The newborn wasp feeds off the tarantula for weeks, 00:36:49.980 --> 00:36:52.260 align:middle line:84% digs itself out at the right time, 00:36:52.260 --> 00:36:56.220 align:middle line:84% and enters the odd, wonderful world. 00:36:56.220 --> 00:36:58.650 align:middle line:84% I've no advice for you, my friend. 00:36:58.650 --> 00:37:01.320 align:middle line:84% You, who would take it-- as all of us would-- 00:37:01.320 --> 00:37:04.190 align:middle line:84% and offer it up to the heart, like a sacrifice." 00:37:04.190 --> 00:37:24.095 align:middle line:90% 00:37:24.095 --> 00:37:25.470 align:middle line:84% I don't know how many of you have 00:37:25.470 --> 00:37:28.140 align:middle line:90% had a chance to go to Aspen. 00:37:28.140 --> 00:37:30.630 align:middle line:84% I've been there a few times, mostly 00:37:30.630 --> 00:37:32.540 align:middle line:90% to do with poetry things. 00:37:32.540 --> 00:37:37.830 align:middle line:84% And if you have a reasonable taste for decadence, as I do, 00:37:37.830 --> 00:37:40.770 align:middle line:90% you can have a lot of fun there. 00:37:40.770 --> 00:37:43.620 align:middle line:84% Though everyone seems to be between 18 and 30 00:37:43.620 --> 00:37:47.305 align:middle line:84% and beautiful and handsome, so the likelihood 00:37:47.305 --> 00:37:48.555 align:middle line:90% is that you feel out of place. 00:37:48.555 --> 00:37:51.510 align:middle line:90% 00:37:51.510 --> 00:37:56.040 align:middle line:84% There's a bar there, a hotel and a bar, Hotel Jerome. 00:37:56.040 --> 00:37:57.750 align:middle line:84% And in the back, a Middle Eastern 00:37:57.750 --> 00:38:01.200 align:middle line:84% restaurant where they have belly dancers. 00:38:01.200 --> 00:38:04.380 align:middle line:84% Some of the belly dancers are a little more authentic than some 00:38:04.380 --> 00:38:07.110 align:middle line:90% of the other belly dancers. 00:38:07.110 --> 00:38:10.110 align:middle line:90% It's about one of them. 00:38:10.110 --> 00:38:11.700 align:middle line:84% "Belly Dancer at the Hotel Jerome." 00:38:11.700 --> 00:38:15.330 align:middle line:90% 00:38:15.330 --> 00:38:18.300 align:middle line:84% "Disguised as an Arab, the bouzouki player 00:38:18.300 --> 00:38:22.650 align:middle line:84% introduces her as Fatima but she's blond, Midwestern, 00:38:22.650 --> 00:38:25.110 align:middle line:84% learned to move, we suspect, in Continuing 00:38:25.110 --> 00:38:30.420 align:middle line:84% Education, Tuesdays, some hip college town. 00:38:30.420 --> 00:38:32.940 align:middle line:84% We laugh, this is Aspen, Colorado, 00:38:32.940 --> 00:38:36.660 align:middle line:84% cocaine and blue valium, the local hard liquor, and we 00:38:36.660 --> 00:38:39.210 align:middle line:84% with snifter of Metaxa in our hands, 00:38:39.210 --> 00:38:44.100 align:middle line:84% part of the incongruous that passes for harmony here. 00:38:44.100 --> 00:38:45.090 align:middle line:90% But she's good. 00:38:45.090 --> 00:38:48.120 align:middle line:84% When she lets her hair loose, beautiful. 00:38:48.120 --> 00:38:51.720 align:middle line:84% So we revise; summer vacations, perhaps in Morocco 00:38:51.720 --> 00:38:54.990 align:middle line:90% or an Egyptian lover, or both. 00:38:54.990 --> 00:38:58.650 align:middle line:84% This much we know; no Protestant has moved like this 00:38:58.650 --> 00:39:01.080 align:middle line:84% since the flames stopped licking their ankles." 00:39:01.080 --> 00:39:04.980 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:39:04.980 --> 00:39:07.890 align:middle line:84% "Men rise from dinner tables to stick dollar bills 00:39:07.890 --> 00:39:09.450 align:middle line:90% where their eyes have been. 00:39:09.450 --> 00:39:12.360 align:middle line:84% One slips a five in her cleavage. 00:39:12.360 --> 00:39:14.760 align:middle line:84% When she gets to us, she's dangling money 00:39:14.760 --> 00:39:17.100 align:middle line:84% with a carelessness so vast, it's 00:39:17.100 --> 00:39:22.440 align:middle line:84% art, something perfected, all her bones floating in milk. 00:39:22.440 --> 00:39:26.700 align:middle line:84% The fake Arabs on bongos and bouzouki are real musicians, 00:39:26.700 --> 00:39:31.980 align:middle line:84% urging her, whispering 'Fatima, Fatima,' into the mike. 00:39:31.980 --> 00:39:33.315 align:middle line:90% And it's true, she's-- 00:39:33.315 --> 00:39:36.930 align:middle line:84% mockery out of that wrong name in this unlikely place. 00:39:36.930 --> 00:39:40.890 align:middle line:84% She's Fatima and the cheap, conspicuous dreams 00:39:40.890 --> 00:39:44.010 align:middle line:84% are ours, rising now, as bravos." 00:39:44.010 --> 00:40:07.465 align:middle line:90% 00:40:07.465 --> 00:40:07.965 align:middle line:90% "Two Women." 00:40:07.965 --> 00:40:13.040 align:middle line:90% 00:40:13.040 --> 00:40:15.470 align:middle line:84% "This time I wasn't looking to look. 00:40:15.470 --> 00:40:18.800 align:middle line:84% I was waiting for a friend and for all I chose to see, 00:40:18.800 --> 00:40:23.390 align:middle line:84% the park could have been an immense, desolate beach. 00:40:23.390 --> 00:40:26.270 align:middle line:84% A wedding party was taking place near the fountain. 00:40:26.270 --> 00:40:30.920 align:middle line:84% I noticed it at first, heard it, but I was tired of celebrations 00:40:30.920 --> 00:40:32.330 align:middle line:90% not mine. 00:40:32.330 --> 00:40:37.520 align:middle line:84% I turned away, blue sky, the discipline whirling. 00:40:37.520 --> 00:40:40.670 align:middle line:84% To my left was a small building, a powerhouse, 00:40:40.670 --> 00:40:42.800 align:middle line:84% and two young women from the wedding party 00:40:42.800 --> 00:40:45.260 align:middle line:90% had come to pee behind it. 00:40:45.260 --> 00:40:46.610 align:middle line:90% They didn't see me. 00:40:46.610 --> 00:40:50.180 align:middle line:84% It was the redness of their dresses that caught my eye. 00:40:50.180 --> 00:40:53.900 align:middle line:84% They pulled down their panty hose, squatted in unison, 00:40:53.900 --> 00:40:55.970 align:middle line:90% all the while talking. 00:40:55.970 --> 00:40:59.660 align:middle line:84% It was like watching Degas' ballerinas resting languidly 00:40:59.660 --> 00:41:01.760 align:middle line:90% at a rehearsal. 00:41:01.760 --> 00:41:05.540 align:middle line:84% I was careful not to move, careful to keep the scene as I 00:41:05.540 --> 00:41:09.680 align:middle line:84% wish to remember it because by now it had become mine, 00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:13.130 align:middle line:84% and I saw their wrist corsages and that one's dress was 00:41:13.130 --> 00:41:16.370 align:middle line:84% ruffled where the others was plain. 00:41:16.370 --> 00:41:19.880 align:middle line:84% 15 seconds, 16, they must have drunk 00:41:19.880 --> 00:41:23.060 align:middle line:84% the same amount of champagne, raised the glasses 00:41:23.060 --> 00:41:27.290 align:middle line:84% to their lips at exactly the same time. 00:41:27.290 --> 00:41:29.300 align:middle line:84% I think it was Apollinaire who said 00:41:29.300 --> 00:41:33.740 align:middle line:84% it's necessary to see, to drink, to piss as well as crickets 00:41:33.740 --> 00:41:35.930 align:middle line:90% in order to sing like them. 00:41:35.930 --> 00:41:39.110 align:middle line:84% Two women practicing to be crickets. 00:41:39.110 --> 00:41:41.570 align:middle line:84% I was sorry to see it all end, the hitching 00:41:41.570 --> 00:41:45.200 align:middle line:84% up of the pantyhose, then each of them touching their hair out 00:41:45.200 --> 00:41:48.440 align:middle line:84% of habit as if the air were a mirror and beauty 00:41:48.440 --> 00:41:50.690 align:middle line:90% something conscious again. 00:41:50.690 --> 00:41:54.140 align:middle line:84% They returned to the party, my friend arrived. 00:41:54.140 --> 00:41:57.140 align:middle line:84% The rest of the day was bright yellows, greens, 00:41:57.140 --> 00:42:00.635 align:middle line:84% every little thing coming out of its hiding place to be seen." 00:42:00.635 --> 00:42:06.730 align:middle line:90% 00:42:06.730 --> 00:42:08.550 align:middle line:84% That's another one of the poems in my story 00:42:08.550 --> 00:42:10.560 align:middle line:90% section of the new book. 00:42:10.560 --> 00:42:12.660 align:middle line:90% This is another one. 00:42:12.660 --> 00:42:17.810 align:middle line:90% 00:42:17.810 --> 00:42:21.500 align:middle line:84% Again, more narrative than my poems usually are. 00:42:21.500 --> 00:42:22.550 align:middle line:90% "On the Greyhound." 00:42:22.550 --> 00:42:26.480 align:middle line:90% 00:42:26.480 --> 00:42:29.330 align:middle line:84% "On the Greyhound from Paducah to Memphis, 00:42:29.330 --> 00:42:31.730 align:middle line:84% a blonde woman asked the driver to stop 00:42:31.730 --> 00:42:34.130 align:middle line:90% so she can call her little boy. 00:42:34.130 --> 00:42:37.220 align:middle line:84% He may be kind of worried since his father got all burnt up 00:42:37.220 --> 00:42:40.370 align:middle line:90% in a fire last week and died. 00:42:40.370 --> 00:42:42.950 align:middle line:84% Against the rules, we stop at the home diner, 00:42:42.950 --> 00:42:47.150 align:middle line:84% wait while the boy is assured his mother's coming home. 00:42:47.150 --> 00:42:49.220 align:middle line:84% 'It was my ex-husband, she says to us, 00:42:49.220 --> 00:42:51.800 align:middle line:84% 'so I didn't care, but the boy kind of worries. 00:42:51.800 --> 00:42:56.780 align:middle line:84% You know?' None of us knows, but we hear and the bus starts up 00:42:56.780 --> 00:43:00.800 align:middle line:84% again, taking us deeper into the foreign country our country can 00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:02.120 align:middle line:90% be. 00:43:02.120 --> 00:43:05.300 align:middle line:84% The landscape is autumn pale, hog farms 00:43:05.300 --> 00:43:08.360 align:middle line:84% and white shingled houses, billboards as we're 00:43:08.360 --> 00:43:11.330 align:middle line:90% approaching a big town. 00:43:11.330 --> 00:43:14.720 align:middle line:84% If the blond woman were traveling the Jersey turnpike, 00:43:14.720 --> 00:43:19.610 align:middle line:84% smokestacks and absence of life suggestive of some final error, 00:43:19.610 --> 00:43:21.875 align:middle line:84% no doubt she'd wonder, where am I? 00:43:21.875 --> 00:43:23.930 align:middle line:90% What caused this? 00:43:23.930 --> 00:43:25.700 align:middle line:84% No doubt someone on that bus would 00:43:25.700 --> 00:43:30.260 align:middle line:84% be talking to himself, more crazy than different, too lost 00:43:30.260 --> 00:43:34.760 align:middle line:84% in his own world to be considered regional. 00:43:34.760 --> 00:43:39.140 align:middle line:84% We pass Ripley and Hopewell, Glimp, Mumford. 00:43:39.140 --> 00:43:41.090 align:middle line:90% The woman is silent now. 00:43:41.090 --> 00:43:43.100 align:middle line:84% All this is familiar to her, she just 00:43:43.100 --> 00:43:45.800 align:middle line:84% wants to get home to her little boy. 00:43:45.800 --> 00:43:49.910 align:middle line:84% Just outside of Memphis, a man sitting across from her leans 00:43:49.910 --> 00:43:54.410 align:middle line:84% her way, says, 'You know, during Elvis' death week this year I 00:43:54.410 --> 00:43:56.630 align:middle line:90% never saw it so crowded.' 00:43:56.630 --> 00:44:00.275 align:middle line:84% And they talk about the weeping, from how far the people came." 00:44:00.275 --> 00:44:10.680 align:middle line:90% 00:44:10.680 --> 00:44:15.060 align:middle line:84% This is a bit longer than the poems I've read so far. 00:44:15.060 --> 00:44:16.005 align:middle line:90% It's in seven parts. 00:44:16.005 --> 00:44:19.150 align:middle line:90% 00:44:19.150 --> 00:44:22.270 align:middle line:84% It's called "Round Trip," and in many ways, 00:44:22.270 --> 00:44:27.070 align:middle line:84% it's companionable with those early poems I read 00:44:27.070 --> 00:44:29.320 align:middle line:90% about long term relationships. 00:44:29.320 --> 00:44:32.980 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about home and what 00:44:32.980 --> 00:44:39.280 align:middle line:84% that means, what coming home, leaving home, all of that 00:44:39.280 --> 00:44:40.930 align:middle line:90% means. 00:44:40.930 --> 00:44:46.930 align:middle line:84% I grew up in the east and lived mostly an urban life 00:44:46.930 --> 00:44:47.560 align:middle line:90% near New York. 00:44:47.560 --> 00:44:51.580 align:middle line:84% And my first teaching job at age 30 00:44:51.580 --> 00:44:57.910 align:middle line:84% was in Southern Minnesota on the prairie. 00:44:57.910 --> 00:45:02.870 align:middle line:84% I lived in a town of 717 people and was undergoing 00:45:02.870 --> 00:45:06.910 align:middle line:84% that enormous cultural change and shock, much of which 00:45:06.910 --> 00:45:10.730 align:middle line:84% was pleasurable and lovely, but nevertheless, different. 00:45:10.730 --> 00:45:14.710 align:middle line:84% And the poem begins leaving there 00:45:14.710 --> 00:45:18.610 align:middle line:84% after having been there for a few years, and it's about-- 00:45:18.610 --> 00:45:21.370 align:middle line:84% at least the logistics of the poem-- 00:45:21.370 --> 00:45:23.320 align:middle line:90% are moving back eastward. 00:45:23.320 --> 00:45:26.280 align:middle line:90% 00:45:26.280 --> 00:45:27.440 align:middle line:90% It's in seven parts. 00:45:27.440 --> 00:45:28.730 align:middle line:90% One, "Round Trip." 00:45:28.730 --> 00:45:32.440 align:middle line:90% 00:45:32.440 --> 00:45:34.690 align:middle line:84% "I watched the prairie repeat itself 00:45:34.690 --> 00:45:38.140 align:middle line:84% until it got beautiful, the geometry of farms, 00:45:38.140 --> 00:45:40.180 align:middle line:84% the flatness that made interesting 00:45:40.180 --> 00:45:42.280 align:middle line:90% the slightest undulation. 00:45:42.280 --> 00:45:46.030 align:middle line:84% Never had the sky touched so far down. 00:45:46.030 --> 00:45:48.400 align:middle line:84% Then because mood invents landscape, 00:45:48.400 --> 00:45:50.570 align:middle line:84% the flatness turned irredeemable. 00:45:50.570 --> 00:45:54.490 align:middle line:84% I felt it go on and on, something lush and vacant in me 00:45:54.490 --> 00:45:59.140 align:middle line:84% wished for an edge again, a city, an ocean. 00:45:59.140 --> 00:46:02.500 align:middle line:84% I returned east, began to revise my childhood, 00:46:02.500 --> 00:46:05.470 align:middle line:84% wanted women with sharp tongues, my evening 00:46:05.470 --> 00:46:09.190 align:middle line:84% walk shadowy and open to possibility. 00:46:09.190 --> 00:46:11.140 align:middle line:84% And because the mind gets what gets 00:46:11.140 --> 00:46:13.900 align:middle line:84% what it wants but rarely the way it wants it, 00:46:13.900 --> 00:46:16.180 align:middle line:84% I got mugged on a street corner, fear 00:46:16.180 --> 00:46:18.640 align:middle line:84% brought home in a real cold sweat 00:46:18.640 --> 00:46:20.920 align:middle line:90% on a real November evening. 00:46:20.920 --> 00:46:25.300 align:middle line:84% And city life began to insist, like jazz, like dream, 00:46:25.300 --> 00:46:28.600 align:middle line:84% it would be nothing but what it was. 00:46:28.600 --> 00:46:32.170 align:middle line:84% In a rented cabin up north, Christmas vacation, 00:46:32.170 --> 00:46:34.510 align:middle line:84% I closed the door and gave whatever 00:46:34.510 --> 00:46:36.940 align:middle line:84% in me wanted to be alone and pitied 00:46:36.940 --> 00:46:40.240 align:middle line:90% its hard, uncomfortable chair. 00:46:40.240 --> 00:46:43.000 align:middle line:84% But after a while, the light I didn't believe in shone 00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:45.700 align:middle line:90% in anyway through the windows. 00:46:45.700 --> 00:46:48.370 align:middle line:84% The walls I'd pulled in closer and closer 00:46:48.370 --> 00:46:51.790 align:middle line:90% returned to their proper places. 00:46:51.790 --> 00:46:55.150 align:middle line:84% One day I opened the doors and quite overcast little pieces 00:46:55.150 --> 00:46:57.760 align:middle line:84% of sun reached the tip of my shoe, 00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:00.520 align:middle line:84% and it was if I touched a breast for the first time 00:47:00.520 --> 00:47:04.450 align:middle line:84% and touched it and touched it until having touched it enough 00:47:04.450 --> 00:47:06.370 align:middle line:90% I finally saw the blue vein." 00:47:06.370 --> 00:47:09.080 align:middle line:90% 00:47:09.080 --> 00:47:09.580 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:47:09.580 --> 00:47:12.820 align:middle line:90% 00:47:12.820 --> 00:47:15.760 align:middle line:84% "Ever since I've been trying to build a house of cards 00:47:15.760 --> 00:47:16.900 align:middle line:90% amid a house of-- 00:47:16.900 --> 00:47:20.530 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] to do, and so be pleased with each card I 00:47:20.530 --> 00:47:23.590 align:middle line:84% add, each moment short of collapse." 00:47:23.590 --> 00:47:26.700 align:middle line:90% 00:47:26.700 --> 00:47:28.140 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:47:28.140 --> 00:47:30.060 align:middle line:84% "There's been a cricket in the living room. 00:47:30.060 --> 00:47:32.280 align:middle line:84% A male, because only the male is built 00:47:32.280 --> 00:47:36.420 align:middle line:84% to sing, or to produce what passes for song. 00:47:36.420 --> 00:47:38.250 align:middle line:84% It's a mating call, high sound that 00:47:38.250 --> 00:47:42.870 align:middle line:84% comes from rubbing forewing against forewing, plaintive, 00:47:42.870 --> 00:47:47.220 align:middle line:84% like someone scared blowing a little whistle in the dark. 00:47:47.220 --> 00:47:49.320 align:middle line:84% Day and night it's been making that sound 00:47:49.320 --> 00:47:51.420 align:middle line:90% from somewhere in the room. 00:47:51.420 --> 00:47:53.490 align:middle line:84% I've opened drawers, I've pulled chairs 00:47:53.490 --> 00:47:56.310 align:middle line:84% away from the wall, ready with two paper cups 00:47:56.310 --> 00:47:59.430 align:middle line:90% to catch it and take it outside. 00:47:59.430 --> 00:48:02.970 align:middle line:84% It came in, I suppose, in a confusion of warmth, 00:48:02.970 --> 00:48:07.230 align:middle line:84% doomed to sing its song to those who wouldn't understand. 00:48:07.230 --> 00:48:09.240 align:middle line:90% Now the song grows more faint. 00:48:09.240 --> 00:48:10.460 align:middle line:90% Why care? 00:48:10.460 --> 00:48:13.260 align:middle line:84% The end of summer when crickets die and come 00:48:13.260 --> 00:48:16.590 align:middle line:90% back in great anonymous force. 00:48:16.590 --> 00:48:18.900 align:middle line:84% And pulling back the rug, listening 00:48:18.900 --> 00:48:21.690 align:middle line:84% for what it withholds when anyone gets close." 00:48:21.690 --> 00:48:24.600 align:middle line:90% 00:48:24.600 --> 00:48:29.280 align:middle line:84% Part four has an epigraph, at the risk 00:48:29.280 --> 00:48:32.070 align:middle line:84% of being insufferable about saying too many things 00:48:32.070 --> 00:48:36.510 align:middle line:84% about my children, from something my daughter said 00:48:36.510 --> 00:48:37.560 align:middle line:90% when she was 10. 00:48:37.560 --> 00:48:40.450 align:middle line:84% We were playing a little imagine game. 00:48:40.450 --> 00:48:44.020 align:middle line:84% And I asked her, I think, where the dark comes from. 00:48:44.020 --> 00:48:46.590 align:middle line:84% And she said real fast, or wrote, 00:48:46.590 --> 00:48:51.090 align:middle line:84% the dark comes from the weakness of the infinity of numbers. 00:48:51.090 --> 00:48:53.490 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:48:53.490 --> 00:48:58.300 align:middle line:90% 00:48:58.300 --> 00:49:00.430 align:middle line:84% She's never said anything nearly so smart since. 00:49:00.430 --> 00:49:02.805 align:middle line:84% I don't know what that means, but I know it's very smart. 00:49:02.805 --> 00:49:08.560 align:middle line:90% 00:49:08.560 --> 00:49:10.210 align:middle line:90% "How to Leave and Come Back." 00:49:10.210 --> 00:49:13.090 align:middle line:84% "The school bus instructs my daughter it's easy, 00:49:13.090 --> 00:49:15.250 align:middle line:90% and that for now is good. 00:49:15.250 --> 00:49:17.660 align:middle line:84% She's off again into numbers, words, 00:49:17.660 --> 00:49:20.110 align:middle line:90% all the necessary confusions. 00:49:20.110 --> 00:49:23.530 align:middle line:84% History, she believes, is what happens to others. 00:49:23.530 --> 00:49:27.880 align:middle line:84% Biology is what she lives with, but hasn't had. 00:49:27.880 --> 00:49:30.070 align:middle line:84% I'm watching from the window, the father who 00:49:30.070 --> 00:49:33.700 align:middle line:84% knows education is all about departures, 00:49:33.700 --> 00:49:38.350 align:middle line:84% who knows when things are right, nobody comes home the same. 00:49:38.350 --> 00:49:41.230 align:middle line:84% The school bus has left a hole in the landscape. 00:49:41.230 --> 00:49:46.630 align:middle line:84% Air fills it now, the line we don't call sky for some reason. 00:49:46.630 --> 00:49:49.090 align:middle line:84% How to paint a landscape where children once 00:49:49.090 --> 00:49:52.450 align:middle line:90% played, swirls and smudges. 00:49:52.450 --> 00:49:56.050 align:middle line:84% My daughter knows where the dark comes from and I believe her. 00:49:56.050 --> 00:50:00.850 align:middle line:84% She's growing breasts, she closes the door to her room. 00:50:00.850 --> 00:50:04.660 align:middle line:84% I paint the trees blue because the low sky is in them. 00:50:04.660 --> 00:50:06.580 align:middle line:84% I paint the area white where she once 00:50:06.580 --> 00:50:09.610 align:middle line:84% did a cartwheel, maybe with a hint of yellow in it 00:50:09.610 --> 00:50:11.590 align:middle line:90% for the school bus. 00:50:11.590 --> 00:50:15.370 align:middle line:84% Off to the side, lots of red seemingly out of control, 00:50:15.370 --> 00:50:18.010 align:middle line:90% yet orderly like wildflowers." 00:50:18.010 --> 00:50:20.960 align:middle line:90% 00:50:20.960 --> 00:50:21.460 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:50:21.460 --> 00:50:24.750 align:middle line:90% 00:50:24.750 --> 00:50:28.110 align:middle line:84% "Nothing's happening but the wind, the ferry rocking its way 00:50:28.110 --> 00:50:31.740 align:middle line:84% toward Delaware, and Delaware Bay full of big tankers 00:50:31.740 --> 00:50:34.770 align:middle line:90% that anchor, seemingly poised. 00:50:34.770 --> 00:50:39.180 align:middle line:84% It's two hours across the talk to give one night away then two 00:50:39.180 --> 00:50:43.020 align:middle line:84% hours back, the kind of minor traveling which tests nothing 00:50:43.020 --> 00:50:46.020 align:middle line:90% at home, nothing in self. 00:50:46.020 --> 00:50:49.770 align:middle line:84% Travel is the saddest pleasure, a friend once said. 00:50:49.770 --> 00:50:53.850 align:middle line:84% He meant all those hours that exist outside of work and play 00:50:53.850 --> 00:50:55.830 align:middle line:90% and love. 00:50:55.830 --> 00:50:59.010 align:middle line:84% The boredom of sailors must be enormous, as great 00:50:59.010 --> 00:51:01.740 align:middle line:84% as the boredom of those on land who hope for weather 00:51:01.740 --> 00:51:04.200 align:middle line:90% to change their lives. 00:51:04.200 --> 00:51:07.170 align:middle line:84% We're bored too, the few of us making this trip 00:51:07.170 --> 00:51:10.890 align:middle line:84% off season, the specter of necessity evident in how 00:51:10.890 --> 00:51:13.560 align:middle line:90% we sit and stare. 00:51:13.560 --> 00:51:15.780 align:middle line:84% Later I'm thinking each of us will 00:51:15.780 --> 00:51:19.320 align:middle line:84% have a story to tell about the bay and the ships. 00:51:19.320 --> 00:51:22.950 align:middle line:84% We'll leave out all we can, all that's travelers life 00:51:22.950 --> 00:51:24.870 align:middle line:90% for a sailor's life. 00:51:24.870 --> 00:51:27.420 align:middle line:84% We'll make our friends wish they were us. 00:51:27.420 --> 00:51:30.240 align:middle line:84% We'll replace experience with what we say." 00:51:30.240 --> 00:51:32.875 align:middle line:90% 00:51:32.875 --> 00:51:33.375 align:middle line:90% Six. 00:51:33.375 --> 00:51:36.220 align:middle line:90% 00:51:36.220 --> 00:51:39.375 align:middle line:84% "This is one of those stories, Minnesota to New Jersey, 00:51:39.375 --> 00:51:43.990 align:middle line:84% a return home in search of home, regular departures 00:51:43.990 --> 00:51:50.050 align:middle line:84% to find the limits of home, impulses finding reasons. 00:51:50.050 --> 00:51:53.740 align:middle line:84% The great decisions that change a life, hardly decisions 00:51:53.740 --> 00:51:58.270 align:middle line:84% at all, a wild hunch or avoidance, the unknown agent 00:51:58.270 --> 00:52:03.250 align:middle line:84% X coursing through the body like a bastard gene. 00:52:03.250 --> 00:52:05.470 align:middle line:84% I'm only sure that collapse waits just 00:52:05.470 --> 00:52:09.370 align:middle line:84% beyond standing still, the next complacency. 00:52:09.370 --> 00:52:13.015 align:middle line:84% Even now, my day off, I'm thinking I'll get in my car 00:52:13.015 --> 00:52:17.020 align:middle line:84% and get out of here, no rhyme accept internal rhyme, 00:52:17.020 --> 00:52:20.860 align:middle line:84% the clicks and bells that go off when the body has hurt itself 00:52:20.860 --> 00:52:22.900 align:middle line:90% and acted. 00:52:22.900 --> 00:52:27.190 align:middle line:84% I know where I'll go, ballfield, casino, deserted beach, 00:52:27.190 --> 00:52:30.850 align:middle line:84% some not home place where I can pivot at suppertime, 00:52:30.850 --> 00:52:33.310 align:middle line:84% make my way back as if I'd made a choice." 00:52:33.310 --> 00:52:36.430 align:middle line:90% 00:52:36.430 --> 00:52:36.930 align:middle line:90% Seven. 00:52:36.930 --> 00:52:39.520 align:middle line:90% 00:52:39.520 --> 00:52:41.890 align:middle line:84% "Last week at this time, Canada geese 00:52:41.890 --> 00:52:46.000 align:middle line:84% flapping overhead heading south, impossible to warn them 00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:49.060 align:middle line:90% of hunters up since dawn. 00:52:49.060 --> 00:52:51.640 align:middle line:84% A few hours later, three separate phone calls 00:52:51.640 --> 00:52:54.010 align:middle line:84% told me the same person was dead. 00:52:54.010 --> 00:52:56.560 align:middle line:84% By the third, my voice had nothing in it. 00:52:56.560 --> 00:52:59.710 align:middle line:84% It was days before the letting go. 00:52:59.710 --> 00:53:03.400 align:middle line:84% I watched the jays in the yard chasing smaller birds, 00:53:03.400 --> 00:53:06.280 align:middle line:84% taking all the seed for themselves. 00:53:06.280 --> 00:53:09.640 align:middle line:84% That's where the dark comes from, I thought, some weakness 00:53:09.640 --> 00:53:13.540 align:middle line:84% in the motive or of the heart, a bunch of jays exercising 00:53:13.540 --> 00:53:15.400 align:middle line:90% their muscle, and poof. 00:53:15.400 --> 00:53:18.460 align:middle line:90% Nothing is left but jays. 00:53:18.460 --> 00:53:20.590 align:middle line:84% I should have called the dead man's wife. 00:53:20.590 --> 00:53:23.350 align:middle line:84% I should have reread his poems, made him 00:53:23.350 --> 00:53:28.780 align:middle line:84% a good ghost and myself sorrow's perfectly correct man. 00:53:28.780 --> 00:53:32.770 align:middle line:84% I put on my running shoes, ran the full circle of the park, 00:53:32.770 --> 00:53:36.250 align:middle line:84% showered, turned on the important game. 00:53:36.250 --> 00:53:39.610 align:middle line:84% The whole season was on the line, the announcer said, 00:53:39.610 --> 00:53:41.410 align:middle line:90% and it was. 00:53:41.410 --> 00:53:45.340 align:middle line:84% In a nearby room, the noise of others, a child's whine, 00:53:45.340 --> 00:53:50.830 align:middle line:84% my wife saying no, mixed with my noise to form the familiar. 00:53:50.830 --> 00:53:53.305 align:middle line:84% For a while, nothing tumbled down." 00:53:53.305 --> 00:53:58.926 align:middle line:90% 00:53:58.926 --> 00:54:00.040 align:middle line:90% I'll read two more. 00:54:00.040 --> 00:54:13.540 align:middle line:90% 00:54:13.540 --> 00:54:17.890 align:middle line:84% Since I know so many of you are writers in the audience 00:54:17.890 --> 00:54:22.600 align:middle line:84% or if not writers, maybe even people who just think of making 00:54:22.600 --> 00:54:28.330 align:middle line:84% things, this a poem, I think, about making things, 00:54:28.330 --> 00:54:30.640 align:middle line:90% which those of us who write do. 00:54:30.640 --> 00:54:32.910 align:middle line:84% It's called "Parable of the Fictionist." 00:54:32.910 --> 00:54:38.180 align:middle line:90% 00:54:38.180 --> 00:54:41.660 align:middle line:84% "He wanted to own his own past, be able to manage it 00:54:41.660 --> 00:54:43.910 align:middle line:90% more than it managed him. 00:54:43.910 --> 00:54:48.740 align:middle line:84% He wanted all the unfair advantages of the charmed. 00:54:48.740 --> 00:54:51.770 align:middle line:84% He selected his childhood, told only those stories 00:54:51.770 --> 00:54:54.920 align:middle line:84% that mixed loneliness with rebellion, a boy's 00:54:54.920 --> 00:54:59.450 align:middle line:84% locked heart with the wildness, inside a playing field. 00:54:59.450 --> 00:55:03.020 align:middle line:84% And after he invented himself and those he wished to know him 00:55:03.020 --> 00:55:05.660 align:middle line:84% knew him as he wished to be known, 00:55:05.660 --> 00:55:09.020 align:middle line:84% he turned toward the world with the world that was within him 00:55:09.020 --> 00:55:14.090 align:middle line:84% and shapes resulted, versions, enlargement. 00:55:14.090 --> 00:55:17.390 align:middle line:84% In his leisure he invented women, then spoke to them 00:55:17.390 --> 00:55:20.480 align:middle line:84% about his inventions, the wish just slightly ahead 00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:24.050 align:middle line:84% of the truth, making it possible. 00:55:24.050 --> 00:55:27.050 align:middle line:84% All around him he heard the unforgivable stories 00:55:27.050 --> 00:55:32.450 align:middle line:84% of the sincere, the boring, and knew his way was righteous. 00:55:32.450 --> 00:55:36.230 align:middle line:84% Though in the evenings, alone with the world he'd created, 00:55:36.230 --> 00:55:39.530 align:middle line:84% he sometimes longed for what he'd dare not alter 00:55:39.530 --> 00:55:42.860 align:middle line:84% or couldn't, something immutable or so lovely 00:55:42.860 --> 00:55:46.280 align:middle line:84% he might be changed by it, nameless 00:55:46.280 --> 00:55:49.760 align:middle line:84% but with a name he feared waits until you're worthy, 00:55:49.760 --> 00:55:51.020 align:middle line:90% then chooses you." 00:55:51.020 --> 00:56:02.640 align:middle line:90% 00:56:02.640 --> 00:56:03.630 align:middle line:90% I'll finish with this. 00:56:03.630 --> 00:56:08.040 align:middle line:90% This is called "Instead of You." 00:56:08.040 --> 00:56:09.100 align:middle line:90% It's a love poem. 00:56:09.100 --> 00:56:09.600 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 00:56:09.600 --> 00:56:14.080 align:middle line:84% It's one of those poems that you begin with a different motive 00:56:14.080 --> 00:56:20.640 align:middle line:84% and turns out to be a love poem or a different kind of poem. 00:56:20.640 --> 00:56:21.510 align:middle line:90% "Instead of You." 00:56:21.510 --> 00:56:24.330 align:middle line:90% 00:56:24.330 --> 00:56:27.220 align:middle line:84% "I place a dead butterfly on the page. 00:56:27.220 --> 00:56:30.690 align:middle line:84% This is called starting with an image from real life. 00:56:30.690 --> 00:56:34.440 align:middle line:84% It is gold and black and, as if in some embalmer's dream, 00:56:34.440 --> 00:56:37.350 align:middle line:90% a dusting of talc on its wing. 00:56:37.350 --> 00:56:39.300 align:middle line:90% I have plans for these wings. 00:56:39.300 --> 00:56:42.510 align:middle line:84% I'll not let them slip through my hand. 00:56:42.510 --> 00:56:45.360 align:middle line:84% And if anyone is worried about how the butterfly died, 00:56:45.360 --> 00:56:48.390 align:middle line:84% I'll tell them my cat swatted it out of the air, 00:56:48.390 --> 00:56:50.760 align:middle line:84% I just picked it up and brought it to this page 00:56:50.760 --> 00:56:53.790 align:middle line:84% with a notion of breathing a different life into it. 00:56:53.790 --> 00:56:59.520 align:middle line:84% And I confess; the cat's gesture was more innocent than mine. 00:56:59.520 --> 00:57:02.640 align:middle line:84% The wings suggest nothing I want, they're so lovely. 00:57:02.640 --> 00:57:06.150 align:middle line:84% I like the way they distract, how my eye turns away 00:57:06.150 --> 00:57:07.770 align:middle line:84% from the living room, and the mind 00:57:07.770 --> 00:57:11.760 align:middle line:84% spins into the silliness of spring. 00:57:11.760 --> 00:57:12.960 align:middle line:90% I don't want much. 00:57:12.960 --> 00:57:16.230 align:middle line:84% Just for certain private places to remain open to me, 00:57:16.230 --> 00:57:17.910 align:middle line:90% that's all. 00:57:17.910 --> 00:57:20.400 align:middle line:84% But this is no time to get ethereal. 00:57:20.400 --> 00:57:22.860 align:middle line:84% Already, in a far corner of the page, 00:57:22.860 --> 00:57:26.490 align:middle line:84% something dark is tempting me to pull it into the poem. 00:57:26.490 --> 00:57:31.095 align:middle line:84% One tug and it's a bat trapped in sunlight, rabid with fear. 00:57:31.095 --> 00:57:33.850 align:middle line:90% 00:57:33.850 --> 00:57:36.970 align:middle line:84% There's no way to keep the ugliness out, ever. 00:57:36.970 --> 00:57:41.110 align:middle line:84% Drops of blood, beautiful, say, on the snow, 00:57:41.110 --> 00:57:43.990 align:middle line:90% always lead to a wound. 00:57:43.990 --> 00:57:46.210 align:middle line:84% Can this still turn out to be a love poem? 00:57:46.210 --> 00:57:48.040 align:middle line:84% Can I still pull you from the wreckage 00:57:48.040 --> 00:57:51.610 align:middle line:84% and kiss your bruises, so black and gold? 00:57:51.610 --> 00:57:53.500 align:middle line:84% Is it too late to introduce you who 00:57:53.500 --> 00:57:58.720 align:middle line:84% were always here, the watermark, the poem's secret? 00:57:58.720 --> 00:58:00.910 align:middle line:84% From the start all I wanted to explain 00:58:00.910 --> 00:58:04.450 align:middle line:84% was how things go wrong, how the heart's an empty place 00:58:04.450 --> 00:58:07.360 align:middle line:84% until it's filled, and how the darkness is forever 00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:10.210 align:middle line:90% waiting for its chance. 00:58:10.210 --> 00:58:11.860 align:middle line:84% If I have failed, know that I was 00:58:11.860 --> 00:58:14.620 align:middle line:84% trying to get to you in my own way, 00:58:14.620 --> 00:58:17.530 align:middle line:84% know that my cat never swatted a butterfly. 00:58:17.530 --> 00:58:21.760 align:middle line:84% It was I who invented and killed it, something to talk about 00:58:21.760 --> 00:58:24.480 align:middle line:90% instead of you." 00:58:24.480 --> 00:58:25.380 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:58:25.380 --> 00:58:28.130 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:58:28.130 --> 00:59:02.048 align:middle line:90%