WEBVTT

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This next poem was
censored by the Poetry

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Society of America many years
ago, to my great surprise.

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It's always delightful
to be censored.

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I have a poem, which is called
"Baby Pictures of Famous

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Dictators," and when it was
translated in Eastern Europe,

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it was translated into "Baby
Pictures of Famous Directors."

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[LAUGHTER]

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So a vague term, directors.

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Could be movie directors.

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Anyway, so this one,
it's really nothing.

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I mean, it's a kind of poem--

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it's, again, a very New
England sort of poem,

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going to country fairs.

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And one of the
really big events--

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it's probably the
same thing over here.

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I mean, it's an
eternal human event

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that people find
very interesting is

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to have a kind of a tent where
you have the freak animals,

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where you have the various
sort of, I don't know,

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six legged dogs and cows that
have three heads or two heads

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and that sort of thing.

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You know the sort of
scene, and just sort

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of one night being there and
then just sort of watching

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a little dog who had--

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he had two extra legs, and
they made him do tricks,

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and that seemed to be sort
of the height of indignity.

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It was terrible.

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I mean, you already
should earn your living

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by having these extra
legs, and you still

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have to go around doing things
that any dumb dog can do.

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So anyway, this poem is
called "Animal Acts."

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And, I mean, I think those
people with Poetry Society

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were upset at the
title, and something

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later on in the poem
bothered them a great deal.

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But I was thinking of all almost
like a sort of Johnny Carson

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show where you have people
bring their pets or whatever.

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Tigers and-- I don't know.

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You've seen those things.

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I don't have to tell you.

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So anyway, I just make
my own little series

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of acts, vaudeville acts.

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"Animal Acts."

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A bear who eats
with a silver spoon.

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Two apes adept at grave digging.

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Rats who do calculus.

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A police dog who copulates with
a woman who takes undertaker's

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measurements.

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A bedbug who suffers, who has
doubts about his existence.

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The miraculous laughing dove.

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1,000 year old turtle
playing billiards.

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A chicken who cuts his
own throat, who bleeds.

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The trainer with his sugar
cubes, with his chair and whip,

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the evenings when they
all huddle in a cage,

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smoking cheap cigars,
lazily marking the cards

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in the new deck.

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