WEBVTT

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OK.

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Some of the poems in this
new book are in forms

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but I also teach a
forms of poetry class.

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And as soon as I teach my
student friends the form

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I immediately try and suggest
ways to start bending the form.

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And I happen to rather
enjoy the pantoum which

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is-- how many of you guys
know what a pantoum is?

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Oh, please help us.

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Come on.

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Who can say it?

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So the first and the
second letter come from--

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the second and third stanza
have the question for--

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Close.

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Yeah.

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The pantoum is, actually it's
a Malayan repeating form;

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it's written in quatrains,
four line stanzas.

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And the second and fourth
line of each stanza

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becomes the first and third line
of the subsequent stanza right

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through the end stanza
and in the end stanza,

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additionally, the
second and fourth line

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turn out to be the first and
third line of the first stanza,

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usually in reverse order.

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OK.

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There will be a quiz.

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But it seemed to me
because repetition is not

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so interesting
unless it's varied,

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it seemed to me not so
interesting to repeat

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entire lines.

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So in this poem, I repeat
only parts of lines or indeed

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sometimes only parts of words.

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Yeah who cares?

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But it seems to me to be a
very kind of jittery form,

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so this poem is called Jittery.

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Nancy takes me to a
coffee shop called

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Jitters, which is I'm thinking
like naming a bar drunk.

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What you get when you
get too much of what it

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is they've got to
give you though,

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that's just me of
course going off.

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I'm feeling kind of drunk
on talk and too much

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coffee and Nancy's laughing
easy like she maybe thinks, OK.

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Me, I mean, though I'm reading
into things of course, talk,

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laughter, speed
reading into things,

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what with all the
coffee and little sleep

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I'm running on of late.

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Things, their course,
have not been great

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though I'm feeling not unhappy
to be alive and not asleep

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and here with Nancy
blabbing out my life

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like some black and
white Karl Malden

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movie tough guy grateful
to finally confess.

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And yes, I'll obsess on
splitting that infinitive since

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Nancy knows syntax (syn-,
together, plus tassein,

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to arrange).

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Nancy knows yoga,
Neruda, dogs, and yes,

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to the body's thoughtless
crush on the world

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and her smile flies open
like a sun flushed dove.

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And right, I know I talk too
much and think too much about

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what I'm thinking and not
enough about what I say,

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and simmer too long in
the crock of myself,

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which is right where I get when
I get this way and want to say

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shut up Simmerman,
just shut up...

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Nancy takes me to a coffee shop.

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