WEBVTT

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This next work is called
Of Time and the Line,

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and addresses a perennial and
difficult question for poets

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about the use of the line
in contemporary work.

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And I think it really resolves
it in many ways, as you'll see.

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Of Time and the Line.

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George Burns likes to
insist that he always

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takes the straight lines.

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The cigar in his mouth
is a way of leaving space

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between the lines for a laugh.

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He weaves lines
together by means

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of a picaresque narrative.

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Not so Henny Youngman, whose
lines are strictly paratactic.

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My father pushed a line
of ladies' dresses--

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not down the street in
a pushcart, but upstairs

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in a factory office.

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My mother has been more
concerned with her hemline.

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Chairman Mao put
forward Maoist lines,

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but that has been
abandoned mostly

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for the East-West
line of malarkey so

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popular in these parts.

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The prestige of the iambic line
has recently suffered decline,

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since it's no longer so
clear who "I" am, much less

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who you are.

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When making a line, better
be sure what you're lining in

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and what you're lining out,
and which side of the line

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you're on--

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the world is made up so.

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Adam didn't so much
name as delineate.

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Every poem's got a prosodic
lining, some of which

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will unzip for summer wear.

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The lines of an imaginary are
inscribed on the social flesh

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by the knife point of history.

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Nowadays, you can often
spot a work of poetry

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by whether it's in lines or no.

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If it's in prose, there's
a good chance it's a poem.

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While there is no
lesson in the line

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more useful than that
of the picket line,

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the line that has caused
the most adversity

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is the bloodline.

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In Russia, everybody is
worried about long lines.

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Back in the USA, it's
strictly soup lines.

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Take a chisel to write.

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But for an actor, a
line's got to be cued.

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Or, as they say in
math, it takes two lines

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to make an angle, but only
one lime to make a margarita.

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