WEBVTT

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I spent three years at the
University of Pittsburgh,

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half of each of those years.

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And there's very much a
Pittsburgh style of poetry.

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Possibly I'm being unkind when
I call it a point-and-aim style

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of poetry.

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It is April, I am cold,
we were at the Pit tavern

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drinking, that kind of thing.

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At its best, it's
just wonderful,

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but there's definitely a style.

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And I thought I would
sit down to try to write

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a few poems in that style.

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I did not succeed, so you're
not going to hear that.

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But what I ended up with
instead were some poems

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about the kinds of people
who live in Pittsburgh,

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a very revved up, highly
charged, blue collar

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artist for whom everything
is exactly the same level.

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So you would hear
them discussing

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Proust in the bleachers before
a hockey match, for instance.

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It was a wonderful
thing to discover.

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This is a poem called, "Lines
Written in a Pittsburgh

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Skyscraper."

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And it talks a little
bit about the students

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who're like that in Pittsburgh.

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And it takes place
in a skyscraper right

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at the edge of a ghetto area.

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I was at eye level with
a saint atop a church

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across the street.

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And I noticed that the church
had the saint facing away

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from the ghetto, which I
thought was very telling.

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And he was facing towards all
the athletic stadia, also.

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"It has taken me three
years to come to this view.

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I know now that the body is a
river whose bones and muscles

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and organs are flowing.

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I have watched the shapes in the
molded Alleghany, contained and

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onrushing, blow bridge
after bridge vertebra

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to the Ohio, a brown river that
still powers the mind, lying

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long in the trestle arms of this
city who sentences hard labor.

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Eye level atop a church across
the street, St. Benedict

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the Moor stands open
armed and giant,

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his back turned to the fuming
of a ghetto, where some evenings

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the brightest vision is
the flash of a street

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lamp on a jogger's white Nikes.

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My students are the
children of coal miners

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who watched the ground swallow
their fathers each day,

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sometimes even digesting
the trapped men,

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turning their bones back
into lime, into coal.

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It is the oldest fear:
that Earth may recall you.

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Along the top of
Mount Washington

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lies a stole of color unnatural
to sky, twilight's blue collar.

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But the mountains are
a fishing village--

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steep, hearty, and solid.

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At night, the lights
and stars from my window

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make the cityscape
an Ethiopian bride.

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As cars bolt around a
curve of street lamps,

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their shadows flash from
under them like sprung souls.

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And the river, churning
its wet, whispery thighs,

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the river pouring blood
dark under the bridges.

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In the river, I find my
astonished limbs and all

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the stateless gels within me--

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carnal, mute, holy--
flowing unburdened

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toward a distant shore."

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