WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.430 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to read you some new poems. 00:00:02.430 --> 00:00:05.520 align:middle line:84% I might read one from a previous collection, 00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:08.370 align:middle line:84% but I've been working on this new book that's 00:00:08.370 --> 00:00:10.800 align:middle line:84% actually about my neighborhood in New York City. 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:15.080 align:middle line:84% And if you're going to choose a microcosm, 00:00:15.080 --> 00:00:16.830 align:middle line:84% that's a pretty interesting one to look at 00:00:16.830 --> 00:00:17.997 align:middle line:90% to see what it might reveal. 00:00:17.997 --> 00:00:20.983 align:middle line:90% 00:00:20.983 --> 00:00:22.400 align:middle line:84% When I started writing these poems 00:00:22.400 --> 00:00:25.200 align:middle line:84% I didn't know that's what I was doing, 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:28.070 align:middle line:84% and this one sort of opened the door. 00:00:28.070 --> 00:00:32.525 align:middle line:84% It's about a dog named George who-- 00:00:32.525 --> 00:00:33.025 align:middle line:90% hmm. 00:00:33.025 --> 00:00:36.400 align:middle line:84% I forgot how to do this without making it spill. 00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:39.460 align:middle line:84% George entered my life as part of a new relationship 00:00:39.460 --> 00:00:42.220 align:middle line:84% and left when that relationship ended. 00:00:42.220 --> 00:00:44.500 align:middle line:84% The first-- the title of the poem 00:00:44.500 --> 00:00:46.300 align:middle line:84% is the beginning of the first line. 00:00:46.300 --> 00:00:47.398 align:middle line:90% It simply flows right in. 00:00:47.398 --> 00:00:48.565 align:middle line:90% It's called "Little George." 00:00:48.565 --> 00:00:52.292 align:middle line:90% 00:00:52.292 --> 00:00:54.500 align:middle line:84% And I have to figure out the right distance for this. 00:00:54.500 --> 00:00:58.700 align:middle line:84% Little George looks-- little George barks at whatever is not 00:00:58.700 --> 00:01:02.840 align:middle line:84% the world as he pretends to know it: trash sacks, hand trucks, 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:05.209 align:middle line:84% black hats, canes and hoods, shovels, 00:01:05.209 --> 00:01:07.250 align:middle line:84% someone smoking a joint beneath the Haitian 00:01:07.250 --> 00:01:09.680 align:middle line:90% Evangelicals' overhang, anyone-- 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:12.440 align:middle line:90% how dare they-- walking a dog. 00:01:12.440 --> 00:01:13.820 align:middle line:90% George barks. 00:01:13.820 --> 00:01:18.470 align:middle line:84% The tense, white comma of himself arced in alarm. 00:01:18.470 --> 00:01:21.200 align:middle line:84% At home, he floats in the creaturely domestic: 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:24.110 align:middle line:84% curled in the warm triangle behind a sleeper's knees, 00:01:24.110 --> 00:01:27.560 align:middle line:84% wiggling on his back on the sofa, all jelly and sighs, 00:01:27.560 --> 00:01:30.320 align:middle line:84% requesting/receiving a belly rub. 00:01:30.320 --> 00:01:32.000 align:middle line:90% No worries. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.310 align:middle line:84% But outside the apartment's metal door, 00:01:34.310 --> 00:01:39.230 align:middle line:84% the unmanageable day assumes its blurred and infinite disguises. 00:01:39.230 --> 00:01:40.850 align:middle line:90% Best to bark. 00:01:40.850 --> 00:01:43.730 align:middle line:84% No matter that he's slightly larger than a toaster, 00:01:43.730 --> 00:01:46.940 align:middle line:84% he proceeds as if he rules a rectangle two blocks deep, 00:01:46.940 --> 00:01:50.540 align:middle line:84% bounded West and East by 7th Avenue and Union Square. 00:01:50.540 --> 00:01:53.480 align:middle line:84% Whatever's there is there by his consent, 00:01:53.480 --> 00:01:56.120 align:middle line:84% and subject to the rebuke of his refusal-- 00:01:56.120 --> 00:02:00.290 align:middle line:84% though when he asserts his will, he trembles. 00:02:00.290 --> 00:02:03.800 align:middle line:84% If only he were not solely responsible for raising outcry 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:06.830 align:middle line:84% at any premonition of trouble on West 16th Street, 00:02:06.830 --> 00:02:11.360 align:middle line:84% and right on the pavement, might lay down the clanking armor 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:13.190 align:middle line:90% of his bluster. 00:02:13.190 --> 00:02:15.230 align:middle line:84% Some evening when he's climbed the stairs 00:02:15.230 --> 00:02:19.850 align:middle line:84% after our last walk and whines and rounds the landing turn, 00:02:19.850 --> 00:02:22.380 align:middle line:84% and turns his way toward his steady sleep, 00:02:22.380 --> 00:02:25.190 align:middle line:84% I wish he might be visited by a dream of the world 00:02:25.190 --> 00:02:28.190 align:middle line:84% as kind, how any looming unreadable 00:02:28.190 --> 00:02:29.600 align:middle line:90% might turn out to hold-- 00:02:29.600 --> 00:02:33.020 align:middle line:84% the April green of an unsullied tennis ball? 00:02:33.020 --> 00:02:37.230 align:middle line:84% Dear one, surely the future is not entirely out to get us? 00:02:37.230 --> 00:02:40.740 align:middle line:84% And if it is, barking won't help much. 00:02:40.740 --> 00:02:42.950 align:middle line:90% But no such luck Not yet. 00:02:42.950 --> 00:02:45.680 align:middle line:84% He takes umbrage, this morning, at a stone image 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:49.340 align:middle line:84% serene in a neighbor's garden, and stiffens and fixes 00:02:49.340 --> 00:02:52.790 align:middle line:84% and sounds his wild alarm: damn you, Buddha, get out of here, 00:02:52.790 --> 00:02:53.300 align:middle line:90% go away. 00:02:53.300 --> 00:02:56.960 align:middle line:90% 00:02:56.960 --> 00:03:01.550 align:middle line:84% I read that poem a summer ago in London at the London Buddhist 00:03:01.550 --> 00:03:04.160 align:middle line:84% Institute, and had forgotten that I 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:06.470 align:middle line:84% was standing next to a nine foot golden Buddha. 00:03:06.470 --> 00:03:09.725 align:middle line:84% Happily, the Buddhists were very tolerant. 00:03:09.725 --> 00:03:11.000 align:middle line:90%