WEBVTT

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So I don't really
write clappers.

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And it's OK to
wait until the end,

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really, because I know
not every poem evokes

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clapping, hollering,
whooping, floor stamping.

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No.

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So you don't-- please
don't feel obliged.

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I take silence as
a high compliment

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whether it's deserved or not.

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So I thought, again, both
in honor of National Poetry

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Month and the lineage of
poets that the Tucson Poetry

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Center honors so deeply and
that we are all part of,

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I'm going to start with a
few of the translated poems

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from the Japanese women
a thousand years ago.

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I could spend the whole
evening talking about them

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and reading their work,
and I must not do that.

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So The Ink Dark Moon is
the name of the book.

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If you want to know more
about the background and more

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of their poems, it's,
I'm sure, in the library.

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So this first set of
poems is by Ono no Komachi

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who lived in the ninth
century and served

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at the court of Heian era Japan.

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The only example we
have in world history

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until recently a great golden
age created by women writers.

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They wrote much of love.

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They wrote much of loss.

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And there is an underpinning
of Buddhist worldview

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in their work.

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All the poems are
five lines long,

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tanka form, older than haiku,
31 syllables in the Japanese,

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but not in the English.

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"Did he appear because I
fell asleep thinking of him?

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If only I'd known
I was dreaming,

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I'd never have wakened."

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"This pine tree by the rock
must have its memories too.

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After a thousand years,
see how its branches

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lean toward the ground."

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"How invisibly it changes
color in this world,

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the flower of the human heart."

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And the last one of hers--

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I'm sorry I'm skipping
all the stories.

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The stories help,
but this one is

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thought to have been
from her old age

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when she was long gone from the
court, an unrecognized crone

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living in a thatched roof
leaking hut outside the city

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walls.

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But they sort of thought
the old lady knew something

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about poetry.

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And meanwhile, Ono no Komachi,
as a poet, was quite famous,

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but nobody knew it was her.

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"This abandoned house shining
in the mountain village,

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how many nights has the
autumn moon spent here?"

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