WEBVTT

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Well, I don't know if this
next poem needs any explanation

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particularly.

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You know, I think
in the classroom

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they refer to poems
that are self-reflexive,

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poems that are talking about
themselves while they're

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going on.

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You know what I mean?

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This isn't one of them.

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[LAUGHTER]

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No, I mean, this
is the poem that's

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self-reflexive toward the
place I do my writing.

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You know?

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So it's a little bit
inbred, in that sense.

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It's about just sort of hanging
around a place, your place.

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It's called, "Thoughts While
Reading The Sand Reckoner."

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Um, nothing.

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"What nourishes the polar star?

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That's a story I refuse to tell.

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Bellhops lacking a pineapple,
or the secret ingredients

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of bubble bath, itself
a derailed story.

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And still, stuntmen by the
school are washed ashore.

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What would be appropriate
here is deep-fried calamares

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or the sound of a
crossbow humming.

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I've been reading for hours.

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I'm counting every
little grain of sand.

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Saturday night in Amherst,
Archimedes is my man.

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I drift toward
nightfall, renaming

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all the recent immigrants
from Antarctica.

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We shall have a good
voyage if god is willing.

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Disconsolate bunglers,
incalculable cloves,

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the ship sang, ginger scurvy.

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Then I took one of them--"

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This poem is-- [LAUGHS]
I actually like it,

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but I don't expect you to.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Then I took one of them around
to see chlorophyll working

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in the meadow, and later
brought him a porkpie hat."

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This is insane.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Night was coming on.

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Hell, night had
come and gone and I

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was still reading, reading
my way through the library.

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Night had come and gone,
leaving not a trace except me.

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And I, by necessity,
had moved on

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and was by now reading
Magellan's Voyage, a Narrative

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Account of the First
Circumnavigation,

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by Antonio Pigafetta.

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Poor mad Ferdinand died
spectacularly at the hands

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of Filipino warriors.

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1700 years before,
a fellow named

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Eratosthenes calculated the
circumference of the Earth

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to be 24,650 miles.

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Not a bad guess, only 225 off.

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Well, I was reading about
all these stargazers

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and felt this aching
desire for a newer

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world when Adventures
of a Red Sea Smuggler

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tumbled off the shelf.

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I love Henry de
Monfreid for writing,

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'I went to see the pyramids.

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What a disappointment
they were to me.'"

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[LAUGHTER]

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His reason, the majesty of the
desert could not be obscured.

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Hmm, I like that line.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Sunday morning in Amherst, I
have spotted a water buffalo.

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Emily Dickinson has decided
to purchase several mohair

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jackets.

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But it is Sunday and,
I regret to report,

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she has not been a very
good neighbor lately.

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"Tears are my angels now," she
said to me, around 4:00 AM.

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'But are they interested
in Cedar Rapids?'

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I asked.

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'I'm not qualified to
say,' was her sorry reply.

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And so I went, the sound of a
crossbow humming, my own jungle

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fever, my weary
and blossoming soul

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was passed from hand
to hand to hand.

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I was resting in the center of
some huge pageant when a human

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standing next to me said, 'There
must be more,' and set out

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to find it, against all
odds, against the known sum.

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And years later,
either came back

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or didn't, was the
biggest fool ever,

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or shines there on the horizon,
like a newly minted coin

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of hope.

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And those who stayed
and mocked, and those

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who merely read about it later,
the grains of untrammeled sand

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fall through their brains
long after the sojourner

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has begun to snore."

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