WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.060 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.060 --> 00:00:04.760 align:middle line:84% Some of you would be willing to come on down to the front 00:00:04.760 --> 00:00:05.540 align:middle line:90% a little closer. 00:00:05.540 --> 00:00:07.820 align:middle line:84% Close in a little so we're not quite so spread out. 00:00:07.820 --> 00:00:11.270 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.270 --> 00:00:11.900 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:11.900 --> 00:01:00.400 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.400 --> 00:01:05.620 align:middle line:84% The Poetry Center sponsors an annual contest for students. 00:01:05.620 --> 00:01:08.560 align:middle line:84% The judge this year will be XJ Kennedy, 00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:13.540 align:middle line:84% and I brought some of the contest rules and regulations 00:01:13.540 --> 00:01:15.790 align:middle line:90% and entry blanks. 00:01:15.790 --> 00:01:17.350 align:middle line:84% There's a stack up here behind me, 00:01:17.350 --> 00:01:19.360 align:middle line:84% and there's a stack out on the refreshment table 00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:24.430 align:middle line:84% if you're interested in finding out about the contest. 00:01:24.430 --> 00:01:27.430 align:middle line:84% I also brought a stack of our newsletters. 00:01:27.430 --> 00:01:31.300 align:middle line:84% And in our newsletter, we try to announce 00:01:31.300 --> 00:01:32.740 align:middle line:84% literary events that are sponsored 00:01:32.740 --> 00:01:35.780 align:middle line:90% by other agencies in town. 00:01:35.780 --> 00:01:39.700 align:middle line:84% The next reading that sponsored by another group 00:01:39.700 --> 00:01:41.740 align:middle line:84% is this Saturday night's reading, 00:01:41.740 --> 00:01:45.490 align:middle line:84% sponsored by Among Other Things at the Central Arts Collective 00:01:45.490 --> 00:01:47.710 align:middle line:90% downtown on Congress. 00:01:47.710 --> 00:01:52.180 align:middle line:84% And it would be a poetry reading with Michael Cuddihy and Karen 00:01:52.180 --> 00:01:53.050 align:middle line:90% Brennan. 00:01:53.050 --> 00:01:54.880 align:middle line:84% And that's at 8 o'clock Saturday night. 00:01:54.880 --> 00:02:01.320 align:middle line:90% 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:05.310 align:middle line:84% Our next two readings are faculty readings next Wednesday 00:02:05.310 --> 00:02:06.660 align:middle line:90% in this auditorium. 00:02:06.660 --> 00:02:09.180 align:middle line:84% Poetry reading by Richard Shelton. 00:02:09.180 --> 00:02:12.810 align:middle line:84% And two weeks from tonight a fiction reading by a new member 00:02:12.810 --> 00:02:14.820 align:middle line:90% of the faculty, Terry McMillan. 00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:35.600 align:middle line:90% 00:02:35.600 --> 00:02:39.380 align:middle line:84% There are nine poetry and fiction readings this month. 00:02:39.380 --> 00:02:44.720 align:middle line:84% So whenever you need a fix just check the calendar. 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:46.490 align:middle line:84% And we have added one more reading 00:02:46.490 --> 00:02:51.260 align:middle line:84% to the schedule which we will be publicizing a little bit later. 00:02:51.260 --> 00:02:53.360 align:middle line:84% The non-fiction writer Vivian Gornick 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:55.610 align:middle line:84% is coming to the campus, and she'll 00:02:55.610 --> 00:02:59.900 align:middle line:84% read in the architecture auditorium on Monday the 24th. 00:02:59.900 --> 00:03:03.485 align:middle line:84% Architecture auditorium is the corner of Speedway and Olive. 00:03:03.485 --> 00:03:06.620 align:middle line:90% 00:03:06.620 --> 00:03:09.740 align:middle line:84% Richard Jackson comes to us from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where 00:03:09.740 --> 00:03:13.250 align:middle line:90% he teaches at the university. 00:03:13.250 --> 00:03:15.740 align:middle line:84% He's published two books of poetry: 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:20.090 align:middle line:84% Part of the Story and Worlds Apart. 00:03:20.090 --> 00:03:23.240 align:middle line:84% He's published two books of criticism. 00:03:23.240 --> 00:03:26.300 align:middle line:90% Acts of-- I can't read. 00:03:26.300 --> 00:03:29.450 align:middle line:84% Acts of Mind which is conversations 00:03:29.450 --> 00:03:31.190 align:middle line:90% with contemporary poets. 00:03:31.190 --> 00:03:34.580 align:middle line:90% And this Dismantling of Time. 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:38.120 align:middle line:84% He's the editor and founder of Poetry Miscellany. 00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:40.040 align:middle line:84% It's a great pleasure to have him with us. 00:03:40.040 --> 00:03:41.906 align:middle line:90% Richard Jackson. 00:03:41.906 --> 00:03:44.894 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:44.894 --> 00:03:48.160 align:middle line:90% 00:03:48.160 --> 00:03:48.660 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:03:48.660 --> 00:04:01.685 align:middle line:90% 00:04:01.685 --> 00:04:03.060 align:middle line:84% When you do one of these things I 00:04:03.060 --> 00:04:04.560 align:middle line:84% guess the first thing you want to do 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:10.680 align:middle line:84% is introduce yourself to the audience with your first poem. 00:04:10.680 --> 00:04:13.290 align:middle line:84% And I think what I'll do is have somebody else do that. 00:04:13.290 --> 00:04:14.880 align:middle line:84% I want to read a poem that's been 00:04:14.880 --> 00:04:20.279 align:middle line:84% on my mind for the last couple of weeks by Thomas Hardy. 00:04:20.279 --> 00:04:23.610 align:middle line:90% I think I'll begin with that. 00:04:23.610 --> 00:04:27.270 align:middle line:84% I think obliquely, at least, has to do with what 00:04:27.270 --> 00:04:28.710 align:middle line:90% I've been concerned with. 00:04:28.710 --> 00:04:31.091 align:middle line:84% The poem's called I Looked Up From My Writing. 00:04:31.091 --> 00:04:34.530 align:middle line:90% 00:04:34.530 --> 00:04:38.250 align:middle line:84% "I looked up from my writing and gave a start to see, as if rapt 00:04:38.250 --> 00:04:42.510 align:middle line:84% in my inditing, the moon's full gaze on me. 00:04:42.510 --> 00:04:46.980 align:middle line:84% Her meditative misty head was spectral in its air, 00:04:46.980 --> 00:04:51.510 align:middle line:84% and I involuntarily said, "What are you doing there?" 00:04:51.510 --> 00:04:53.550 align:middle line:84% Well, I've been scanning pond and hole 00:04:53.550 --> 00:04:56.760 align:middle line:84% and waterway hereabout, for the body of one 00:04:56.760 --> 00:05:01.320 align:middle line:84% with a sunken soul who has put his life light out. 00:05:01.320 --> 00:05:03.660 align:middle line:84% Did you hear his frenzied tattle? 00:05:03.660 --> 00:05:08.100 align:middle line:84% It was sorrow for his son who is slain in brutish battle 00:05:08.100 --> 00:05:10.680 align:middle line:90% though he is injured none. 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:14.760 align:middle line:84% And now I'm curious to look into the blinkered mind of one who 00:05:14.760 --> 00:05:19.080 align:middle line:84% wants to write a book in a world of such a kind. 00:05:19.080 --> 00:05:22.950 align:middle line:84% Her temper overwrought me, and I edged to shun her view. 00:05:22.950 --> 00:05:25.080 align:middle line:84% For I felt assured she thought me 00:05:25.080 --> 00:05:26.700 align:middle line:90% one who should drown him too." 00:05:26.700 --> 00:05:41.380 align:middle line:90% 00:05:41.380 --> 00:05:45.110 align:middle line:84% What I want to begin with is the latest poem that I've done. 00:05:45.110 --> 00:05:47.526 align:middle line:90% It's called My Cruelest Muse. 00:05:47.526 --> 00:05:52.190 align:middle line:90% 00:05:52.190 --> 00:05:55.370 align:middle line:84% It was written actually as I gave an assignment 00:05:55.370 --> 00:05:58.910 align:middle line:84% in a class, as I often do, to write a letter poem, 00:05:58.910 --> 00:06:01.262 align:middle line:84% and we put our names in a hat, and pick out the poem, 00:06:01.262 --> 00:06:02.720 align:middle line:84% pick out this person's name and you 00:06:02.720 --> 00:06:04.550 align:middle line:84% have to write a letter poem to the person. 00:06:04.550 --> 00:06:09.260 align:middle line:84% So this is a letter to one of my students. 00:06:09.260 --> 00:06:10.730 align:middle line:90% And also to a friend of mine. 00:06:10.730 --> 00:06:13.820 align:middle line:90% 00:06:13.820 --> 00:06:17.570 align:middle line:90% My Cruelest Muse. 00:06:17.570 --> 00:06:21.020 align:middle line:84% "If nothing else I still have this black Scripto pencil, 00:06:21.020 --> 00:06:23.840 align:middle line:84% this notebook, and this hag of a muse who 00:06:23.840 --> 00:06:26.540 align:middle line:84% hides out in the attic stirring an old hornet's nest. 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:29.930 align:middle line:84% Who lets me live everyone's life but my own. 00:06:29.930 --> 00:06:33.470 align:middle line:84% She was born years ago when my classmates were mocking Ellen, 00:06:33.470 --> 00:06:37.910 align:middle line:84% nearly blind, pockmarked, her spine twisted, but she never 00:06:37.910 --> 00:06:40.760 align:middle line:84% gave me the strength to fight for truth. 00:06:40.760 --> 00:06:42.830 align:middle line:84% She was there with her crowd of laments, 00:06:42.830 --> 00:06:46.250 align:middle line:84% tearing their shirts, holding their arms out to the sky. 00:06:46.250 --> 00:06:47.780 align:middle line:84% She was there when anyone slipped 00:06:47.780 --> 00:06:51.680 align:middle line:84% under a car, forgot to wake up, caught a bullet in some jungle. 00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:55.520 align:middle line:84% She was there carrying flowers, telling me the way to cry. 00:06:55.520 --> 00:06:57.620 align:middle line:90% Jesus, I love that pain. 00:06:57.620 --> 00:07:00.200 align:middle line:84% I love feeling bad for the murderer everyone turned on 00:07:00.200 --> 00:07:01.430 align:middle line:90% at the movies. 00:07:01.430 --> 00:07:03.200 align:middle line:84% I felt bad for the executioner, who 00:07:03.200 --> 00:07:05.930 align:middle line:90% I imagined firing reluctantly. 00:07:05.930 --> 00:07:08.440 align:middle line:90% No one else knew his loneliness. 00:07:08.440 --> 00:07:10.790 align:middle line:90% I have been calling this love. 00:07:10.790 --> 00:07:15.020 align:middle line:84% Imagine you were Caravaggio, cursing the same muse we do. 00:07:15.020 --> 00:07:17.900 align:middle line:84% In the shadows in the Church of St. Francis in Rome, 00:07:17.900 --> 00:07:20.510 align:middle line:84% I saw his Calling of St. Matthew. 00:07:20.510 --> 00:07:23.030 align:middle line:84% Saw Christ entering the dark tavern, 00:07:23.030 --> 00:07:25.760 align:middle line:84% extending a hand to the foppish saint who 00:07:25.760 --> 00:07:30.260 align:middle line:84% is surrounded by rogues who are plotting to cheat some soul. 00:07:30.260 --> 00:07:31.940 align:middle line:90% Christ could be anyone. 00:07:31.940 --> 00:07:34.310 align:middle line:84% A highwayman demanding money, and Matthew 00:07:34.310 --> 00:07:39.230 align:middle line:84% points to his own breast as if to question or accuse himself. 00:07:39.230 --> 00:07:44.000 align:middle line:84% He must be Caravaggio wondering why his own work is ridiculed. 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:47.780 align:middle line:84% Imagine the artist taking his models, not from some ideal, 00:07:47.780 --> 00:07:51.530 align:middle line:84% but from the victims he robbed or cheated. 00:07:51.530 --> 00:07:53.750 align:middle line:84% I love to imagine him lurking in the shadows 00:07:53.750 --> 00:07:56.690 align:middle line:84% he painted by night, in order to extend daylight 00:07:56.690 --> 00:07:59.420 align:middle line:84% across one face or another that must have looked up 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:02.630 align:middle line:90% at him in disgust or horror. 00:08:02.630 --> 00:08:05.270 align:middle line:84% I love to see him walk in the blazing streets, first 00:08:05.270 --> 00:08:08.840 align:middle line:84% of Naples, then of Malta, where he is exiled 00:08:08.840 --> 00:08:11.450 align:middle line:90% for killing a noble in a duel. 00:08:11.450 --> 00:08:14.000 align:middle line:84% I love the way he walks through the rain that is floating, 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:15.710 align:middle line:90% not falling around him. 00:08:15.710 --> 00:08:19.490 align:middle line:84% The same rain he enters on the road back to Rome, pardoned. 00:08:19.490 --> 00:08:21.170 align:middle line:84% The rain that is filling the marshes 00:08:21.170 --> 00:08:23.300 align:middle line:84% to hide the malaria that finishes them 00:08:23.300 --> 00:08:25.530 align:middle line:90% outside the walls. 00:08:25.530 --> 00:08:30.440 align:middle line:84% This was love, this was living for the art, cursing the muse. 00:08:30.440 --> 00:08:33.200 align:middle line:84% If nothing else, this was blaming the nearest shadow 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:36.080 align:middle line:84% for our own cruelty, sitting around the tavern 00:08:36.080 --> 00:08:40.700 align:middle line:84% table unable to act, wiping the blood off the soldiers' boots, 00:08:40.700 --> 00:08:43.039 align:middle line:84% oiling his guns, locking the cell doors 00:08:43.039 --> 00:08:45.050 align:middle line:90% with each empty phrase. 00:08:45.050 --> 00:08:47.930 align:middle line:84% But this was also hoping that even in the cruelest things 00:08:47.930 --> 00:08:50.840 align:middle line:84% we say, there's something we forget. 00:08:50.840 --> 00:08:52.400 align:middle line:90% A kind of miracle. 00:08:52.400 --> 00:08:54.620 align:middle line:84% A whisper against the treacherous night. 00:08:54.620 --> 00:08:57.710 align:middle line:84% The way Matthew's companion slumped over his beer 00:08:57.710 --> 00:09:00.740 align:middle line:84% in the corner, is ready to lift his head, ready maybe 00:09:00.740 --> 00:09:02.863 align:middle line:84% to write the poem he always avoided, 00:09:02.863 --> 00:09:03.905 align:middle line:90% ready to take the blame." 00:09:03.905 --> 00:09:11.148 align:middle line:90% 00:09:11.148 --> 00:09:14.130 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:09:14.130 --> 00:09:19.600 align:middle line:90% 00:09:19.600 --> 00:09:22.120 align:middle line:84% People never know what to do between poems and a poetry 00:09:22.120 --> 00:09:22.943 align:middle line:90% reading. 00:09:22.943 --> 00:09:24.360 align:middle line:84% Fiction writers have it's so easy. 00:09:24.360 --> 00:09:25.193 align:middle line:90% You just keep going. 00:09:25.193 --> 00:09:27.310 align:middle line:84% You don't have to stop and get done, walk off. 00:09:27.310 --> 00:09:35.110 align:middle line:90% 00:09:35.110 --> 00:09:36.610 align:middle line:90% I had wanted to write a poem-- 00:09:36.610 --> 00:09:37.360 align:middle line:90% a series of poems. 00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:38.560 align:middle line:90% It was sort of self-deprecating. 00:09:38.560 --> 00:09:40.935 align:middle line:84% And I was telling someone this afternoon, that took me up 00:09:40.935 --> 00:09:43.690 align:middle line:84% to the canyon, that I had wanted to write a poem called My Worst 00:09:43.690 --> 00:09:44.970 align:middle line:90% Poem. 00:09:44.970 --> 00:09:47.500 align:middle line:84% Let's see how many of my friends would argue over it and say 00:09:47.500 --> 00:09:50.440 align:middle line:90% no, that's not your worst poem. 00:09:50.440 --> 00:09:54.315 align:middle line:90% I know worse ones than that. 00:09:54.315 --> 00:09:56.440 align:middle line:84% But then I thought, I've been writing the same poem 00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:57.107 align:middle line:90% again and again. 00:09:57.107 --> 00:09:59.770 align:middle line:90% 00:09:59.770 --> 00:10:02.350 align:middle line:84% This one's called The Other Day and it 00:10:02.350 --> 00:10:07.750 align:middle line:84% has a quote from a French critic named Georges Bataille. 00:10:07.750 --> 00:10:10.120 align:middle line:84% It says, "On the other hand, to no longer wish 00:10:10.120 --> 00:10:13.420 align:middle line:84% oneself to be everything is to put everything into question." 00:10:13.420 --> 00:10:18.070 align:middle line:90% 00:10:18.070 --> 00:10:21.810 align:middle line:84% "I just want to say a few words about the other day, a day. 00:10:21.810 --> 00:10:22.310 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:10:22.310 --> 00:10:23.350 align:middle line:90% Let me start again. 00:10:23.350 --> 00:10:25.540 align:middle line:84% I just want to say a few words about the other day, 00:10:25.540 --> 00:10:28.600 align:middle line:84% an ordinary day I happen to recall because my daughter has 00:10:28.600 --> 00:10:32.442 align:middle line:84% just given me a yellow flower, a buttercup, for no reason. 00:10:32.442 --> 00:10:33.400 align:middle line:90% Though it was important 00:10:33.400 --> 00:10:35.260 align:middle line:84% that other day, that ordinary one 00:10:35.260 --> 00:10:37.780 align:middle line:84% when the stones stayed just stones, and were not 00:10:37.780 --> 00:10:39.670 align:middle line:90% symbols for anything else. 00:10:39.670 --> 00:10:42.250 align:middle line:84% When the stars made no effort to fill the spaces 00:10:42.250 --> 00:10:43.960 align:middle line:90% we see between them. 00:10:43.960 --> 00:10:46.180 align:middle line:84% Though maybe you remember it differently. 00:10:46.180 --> 00:10:47.950 align:middle line:84% A morning when I woke to find my hand 00:10:47.950 --> 00:10:50.380 align:middle line:84% had flowered on the breast of my wife. 00:10:50.380 --> 00:10:53.440 align:middle line:84% A day so ordinary, I happened to notice the old woman 00:10:53.440 --> 00:10:56.770 align:middle line:84% across the street, hips so large it is useless to try 00:10:56.770 --> 00:10:58.060 align:middle line:90% to describe them, 00:10:58.060 --> 00:11:00.820 align:middle line:84% struggle off her sofa to pull down the shade that 00:11:00.820 --> 00:11:02.980 align:middle line:90% has separated us ever since. 00:11:02.980 --> 00:11:06.610 align:middle line:84% Her room is lonely as Keats' room on the Piazza di Spagna, 00:11:06.610 --> 00:11:09.880 align:middle line:84% where there was hardly any space for words. 00:11:09.880 --> 00:11:11.560 align:middle line:84% Where I snapped a forbidden photo 00:11:11.560 --> 00:11:13.600 align:middle line:84% that later showed nothing of his shadow, 00:11:13.600 --> 00:11:17.170 align:middle line:84% making its way to a window above Bernini's fountain. 00:11:17.170 --> 00:11:20.650 align:middle line:84% A shadow that hesitated as if to open one of Fanny Brawne's 00:11:20.650 --> 00:11:25.030 align:middle line:84% letters before deciding to take them to the grave unread. 00:11:25.030 --> 00:11:27.730 align:middle line:84% Who knew how little his own death 00:11:27.730 --> 00:11:30.910 align:middle line:84% must mean to the boys playing in the Piazza below. 00:11:30.910 --> 00:11:33.400 align:middle line:84% A shadow that I later understood as my own. 00:11:33.400 --> 00:11:34.900 align:middle line:90% Indecipherable. 00:11:34.900 --> 00:11:37.390 align:middle line:84% But I just wanted to tell you about that other day, 00:11:37.390 --> 00:11:39.880 align:middle line:84% the ordinary one, when the drunk turned over 00:11:39.880 --> 00:11:42.640 align:middle line:84% under the local papers beneath a bush in the park. 00:11:42.640 --> 00:11:45.730 align:middle line:84% When another in a t-shirt, tattooed, picked up the paper 00:11:45.730 --> 00:11:48.940 align:middle line:84% to check the lottery number then put it down, secure 00:11:48.940 --> 00:11:50.890 align:middle line:84% it was just another ordinary day. 00:11:50.890 --> 00:11:53.500 align:middle line:84% That happy day in which nothing left my shadow. 00:11:53.500 --> 00:11:56.140 align:middle line:84% That sorrowful day in which nothing ended, 00:11:56.140 --> 00:11:58.210 align:middle line:84% well I took my mother to the clinic at noon 00:11:58.210 --> 00:12:00.130 align:middle line:84% to burn away the spot in her lungs, 00:12:00.130 --> 00:12:02.920 align:middle line:84% not nearly as large as the one Keats fought. 00:12:02.920 --> 00:12:04.720 align:middle line:90% Walked along the river alone. 00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:07.990 align:middle line:84% Brought broccoli for my favorite soup, and good wine. 00:12:07.990 --> 00:12:10.960 align:middle line:84% Hummed a pitiful song unconsciously on that day 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:13.210 align:middle line:84% when a few million cells in each living thing 00:12:13.210 --> 00:12:15.700 align:middle line:84% died and were replaced perfectly. 00:12:15.700 --> 00:12:18.820 align:middle line:84% When I wrote a few words, crossed them out, wrote others. 00:12:18.820 --> 00:12:21.460 align:middle line:84% That day I can tell you now when someone 00:12:21.460 --> 00:12:24.070 align:middle line:84% left a bunch of yellow flowers, buttercups, 00:12:24.070 --> 00:12:27.850 align:middle line:84% on the grave of a nameless child burned 40 years ago in a circus 00:12:27.850 --> 00:12:28.450 align:middle line:90% fire. 00:12:28.450 --> 00:12:31.390 align:middle line:84% Leaving also the child's name, Sarah. 00:12:31.390 --> 00:12:35.000 align:middle line:84% Which is why I remember that other day because it seems 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:36.970 align:middle line:84% if her story could be known, thousands 00:12:36.970 --> 00:12:39.370 align:middle line:84% of other ordinary days that belonged to her 00:12:39.370 --> 00:12:40.810 align:middle line:90% might also be known. 00:12:40.810 --> 00:12:43.510 align:middle line:84% And I could tell my daughter why I have this sudden desire 00:12:43.510 --> 00:12:44.860 align:middle line:90% to weep all day. 00:12:44.860 --> 00:12:47.680 align:middle line:84% Why weep for the names of the dead continuing, 00:12:47.680 --> 00:12:52.060 align:middle line:84% like Samir Sayah, 16, shot in the stomach by soldiers. 00:12:52.060 --> 00:12:54.430 align:middle line:84% Amyad Nafea, 18, shot in the chest 00:12:54.430 --> 00:12:57.130 align:middle line:84% by soldiers, the moment perhaps my cat scratched 00:12:57.130 --> 00:12:59.710 align:middle line:84% the door, while the cicadas begin their afternoon 00:12:59.710 --> 00:13:00.340 align:middle line:90% thrumming. 00:13:00.340 --> 00:13:01.960 align:middle line:84% On that ordinary day where I found 00:13:01.960 --> 00:13:04.450 align:middle line:84% myself powerless and guilty once again. 00:13:04.450 --> 00:13:06.250 align:middle line:84% A day so ordinary the descendants 00:13:06.250 --> 00:13:08.800 align:middle line:84% of the very lights that bothered Christ began 00:13:08.800 --> 00:13:10.870 align:middle line:84% their work in the hair of the boy trying 00:13:10.870 --> 00:13:12.370 align:middle line:90% to outrun the soldiers. 00:13:12.370 --> 00:13:14.800 align:middle line:84% An ordinary day, yes, when it was not 00:13:14.800 --> 00:13:17.080 align:middle line:84% so impossible to go looking for the dead. 00:13:17.080 --> 00:13:20.140 align:middle line:84% Though I must say that of all the deaths that inhabit me, 00:13:20.140 --> 00:13:23.020 align:middle line:84% the one the other day was the least noticed lately. 00:13:23.020 --> 00:13:26.410 align:middle line:84% So small that I imagined myself alive all day, 00:13:26.410 --> 00:13:29.710 align:middle line:84% holding a yellow flower just one just to remember. 00:13:29.710 --> 00:13:33.190 align:middle line:84% A day I can almost forget except for its likeness to today. 00:13:33.190 --> 00:13:35.830 align:middle line:84% A day I must call ordinary because if it is not 00:13:35.830 --> 00:13:39.490 align:middle line:84% so ordinary then, Christ, we are pitiful for our poor laments. 00:13:39.490 --> 00:13:42.970 align:middle line:84% The death so small we must imagine ourselves alive 00:13:42.970 --> 00:13:45.710 align:middle line:90% all day." 00:13:45.710 --> 00:13:48.650 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:13:48.650 --> 00:13:52.570 align:middle line:90% 00:13:52.570 --> 00:13:55.000 align:middle line:84% I'm going to switch back to this for a little bit. 00:13:55.000 --> 00:14:09.865 align:middle line:90% 00:14:09.865 --> 00:14:11.240 align:middle line:84% Most of the poems that I've tried 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:13.283 align:middle line:84% to do in the past year or two, I've 00:14:13.283 --> 00:14:15.200 align:middle line:84% tried to pull together as many possible things 00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:18.950 align:middle line:84% as I can in the poem and see how far afield 00:14:18.950 --> 00:14:21.590 align:middle line:84% I can go and still make sense when I come back to the end. 00:14:21.590 --> 00:14:24.260 align:middle line:90% 00:14:24.260 --> 00:14:25.700 align:middle line:90% And this poem does that. 00:14:25.700 --> 00:14:30.440 align:middle line:84% It began with a strange little situation 00:14:30.440 --> 00:14:35.120 align:middle line:84% where in a little town north of Boston called Lynn. 00:14:35.120 --> 00:14:39.230 align:middle line:84% I went in one night listening to my friend's police radio, 00:14:39.230 --> 00:14:42.955 align:middle line:84% and we went out where an old drunk had died. 00:14:42.955 --> 00:14:44.330 align:middle line:84% And what was amazing, what caught 00:14:44.330 --> 00:14:46.490 align:middle line:84% us was the police talk on the radio 00:14:46.490 --> 00:14:50.840 align:middle line:84% because he had painted and chalked incredible paintings 00:14:50.840 --> 00:14:55.197 align:middle line:84% and chalk drawings in his little alleyway that was sort of his. 00:14:55.197 --> 00:14:56.780 align:middle line:84% And so I went down and looked at those 00:14:56.780 --> 00:14:58.670 align:middle line:90% and became part of the crowd. 00:14:58.670 --> 00:15:01.060 align:middle line:90% And this poem came out of it. 00:15:01.060 --> 00:15:08.150 align:middle line:84% At the same time a friend of mine had committed suicide. 00:15:08.150 --> 00:15:10.580 align:middle line:84% And so all these things started to come together. 00:15:10.580 --> 00:15:13.340 align:middle line:84% But I really owe the poem to Bob Houston who 00:15:13.340 --> 00:15:17.270 align:middle line:84% gave me a line in here or actually a couple of lines. 00:15:17.270 --> 00:15:19.092 align:middle line:84% It's called The Promise Of Light. 00:15:19.092 --> 00:15:22.400 align:middle line:90% 00:15:22.400 --> 00:15:25.940 align:middle line:84% "In the background, steam rises from the snow patches 00:15:25.940 --> 00:15:29.330 align:middle line:84% and from the backs of horses nearly out of sight, yet making 00:15:29.330 --> 00:15:31.820 align:middle line:84% their way towards a hidden stream. 00:15:31.820 --> 00:15:32.900 align:middle line:90% For a moment. 00:15:32.900 --> 00:15:35.000 align:middle line:84% The crowd that has gathered around the man who 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.190 align:middle line:84% drank himself to death does not know 00:15:37.190 --> 00:15:39.260 align:middle line:84% whether to look at this and the other pictures 00:15:39.260 --> 00:15:42.470 align:middle line:84% he painted at the end of this alley in perfect detail 00:15:42.470 --> 00:15:44.600 align:middle line:90% or at the man. 00:15:44.600 --> 00:15:46.550 align:middle line:84% I believe the artist painted the scenes 00:15:46.550 --> 00:15:48.830 align:middle line:90% from Gustav Mahler's Pastoral. 00:15:48.830 --> 00:15:50.720 align:middle line:84% And it must be that by now the horses would 00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:52.760 align:middle line:84% have found the stream, so much do 00:15:52.760 --> 00:15:56.330 align:middle line:84% they seem to trust the artist's stroke which allows them all 00:15:56.330 --> 00:16:00.020 align:middle line:84% to turn away, perhaps some shyness. 00:16:00.020 --> 00:16:03.320 align:middle line:84% Once, north of Atlanta, I came upon two trailers 00:16:03.320 --> 00:16:05.240 align:middle line:84% in a wreck that had spilled their horses 00:16:05.240 --> 00:16:08.300 align:middle line:84% quiet and unnatural on the wet pavement. 00:16:08.300 --> 00:16:12.230 align:middle line:84% Littered intervals by the blue lights of police cruisers. 00:16:12.230 --> 00:16:15.290 align:middle line:84% No doubt these horses waiting to disappear into the wall 00:16:15.290 --> 00:16:18.560 align:middle line:84% are those horses, alive in a world we can't name. 00:16:18.560 --> 00:16:21.410 align:middle line:84% And this man who kept a photograph of a woman he never 00:16:21.410 --> 00:16:24.710 align:middle line:84% knew, cut from a magazine, as his friends explained, 00:16:24.710 --> 00:16:26.600 align:middle line:90% speaking his whole life to her. 00:16:26.600 --> 00:16:29.630 align:middle line:84% Invented whatever past, whatever future he 00:16:29.630 --> 00:16:32.390 align:middle line:90% could trust to face the dark. 00:16:32.390 --> 00:16:35.300 align:middle line:84% And surely he remembered, for the first time in years, 00:16:35.300 --> 00:16:38.030 align:middle line:84% climbing the ladder down to the bottom of a pier, 00:16:38.030 --> 00:16:41.810 align:middle line:84% the stars already fading, with a girl he hardly knew. 00:16:41.810 --> 00:16:45.710 align:middle line:84% The wooden pilings coated with barnacles and black seaweed. 00:16:45.710 --> 00:16:48.200 align:middle line:84% The tide low, the oil slicks gathering 00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:51.770 align:middle line:84% on the harbor around driftwood, paper cups, tin cans, 00:16:51.770 --> 00:16:53.090 align:middle line:90% dead fish. 00:16:53.090 --> 00:16:55.640 align:middle line:84% Gathering towards the darkness which was the other shore 00:16:55.640 --> 00:16:56.840 align:middle line:90% they swam for. 00:16:56.840 --> 00:17:00.290 align:middle line:84% Trusting luck, trusting the certainty of tides. 00:17:00.290 --> 00:17:03.890 align:middle line:84% He must have remembered how long it takes to trust anything. 00:17:03.890 --> 00:17:08.089 align:middle line:84% I remember reading how Mahler as a boy watched until dawn, not 00:17:08.089 --> 00:17:11.690 align:middle line:84% believing in the burlap bag stuffed with the hair of mice 00:17:11.690 --> 00:17:12.770 align:middle line:90% and human hair. 00:17:12.770 --> 00:17:15.170 align:middle line:84% Charms his uncle hung around the orchard 00:17:15.170 --> 00:17:19.130 align:middle line:84% because the nuisance deer couldn't stand the smell. 00:17:19.130 --> 00:17:22.670 align:middle line:84% Now, in silence, the crowd begins to break up. 00:17:22.670 --> 00:17:24.619 align:middle line:84% The artist who had seemed only to be sitting 00:17:24.619 --> 00:17:27.170 align:middle line:84% asleep on a cinder block he took from an empty lot 00:17:27.170 --> 00:17:29.330 align:middle line:90% next door is gone. 00:17:29.330 --> 00:17:31.310 align:middle line:84% And I almost believe the fog on the walls 00:17:31.310 --> 00:17:34.850 align:middle line:84% might lift revealing the scene I read once where Mahler watched, 00:17:34.850 --> 00:17:37.940 align:middle line:84% from a distance, a girl so awkwardly beautiful 00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:40.370 align:middle line:90% he couldn't trust what he saw. 00:17:40.370 --> 00:17:42.530 align:middle line:84% The man with her lifted her blouse 00:17:42.530 --> 00:17:44.330 align:middle line:90% and placed it across a branch. 00:17:44.330 --> 00:17:46.820 align:middle line:84% Its arms spread like antlers, a spread 00:17:46.820 --> 00:17:49.580 align:middle line:84% like the arms of another lover or her father. 00:17:49.580 --> 00:17:51.680 align:middle line:84% Or even Mahler, becoming too slowly 00:17:51.680 --> 00:17:54.620 align:middle line:84% the man who would finally understand that whoever you 00:17:54.620 --> 00:17:56.720 align:middle line:90% love is all of a sudden there. 00:17:56.720 --> 00:17:59.090 align:middle line:84% Promising nothing but the next day. 00:17:59.090 --> 00:18:02.540 align:middle line:84% The way fireflies would gather as they all began to leave, 00:18:02.540 --> 00:18:05.720 align:middle line:84% promising nothing but their own brief light. 00:18:05.720 --> 00:18:08.000 align:middle line:84% In those days the imprints from tie 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:10.610 align:middle line:84% beams and the shadow of a rail-bed in Bohemia 00:18:10.610 --> 00:18:13.310 align:middle line:84% would be enough to take him anywhere. 00:18:13.310 --> 00:18:16.280 align:middle line:84% Once, by tracks like those, I found and broke open 00:18:16.280 --> 00:18:17.600 align:middle line:90% a brown cocoon. 00:18:17.600 --> 00:18:19.760 align:middle line:84% Inside were hundreds of yellow spiders 00:18:19.760 --> 00:18:21.680 align:middle line:90% entangled in each other's lives. 00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:25.100 align:middle line:84% The way our own lives and the lives of so many we never knew, 00:18:25.100 --> 00:18:28.820 align:middle line:84% even this poor artist's, become entangled by whatever stories 00:18:28.820 --> 00:18:30.360 align:middle line:90% we remember. 00:18:30.360 --> 00:18:32.570 align:middle line:84% And I remember the story of Gustav Mahler 00:18:32.570 --> 00:18:36.860 align:middle line:84% writing his Pastoral symphony in a world as silent as this wall. 00:18:36.860 --> 00:18:40.070 align:middle line:84% Instructing his wife to untie the bells from cows, 00:18:40.070 --> 00:18:42.020 align:middle line:84% cut the rope to the village tower, 00:18:42.020 --> 00:18:44.060 align:middle line:90% teach singers how to mime. 00:18:44.060 --> 00:18:46.580 align:middle line:84% And how she would try to silence the birds, 00:18:46.580 --> 00:18:48.350 align:middle line:90% keep the horses from running. 00:18:48.350 --> 00:18:50.360 align:middle line:84% And how later, he would lock himself 00:18:50.360 --> 00:18:52.940 align:middle line:84% in a room waiting for his daughter to die. 00:18:52.940 --> 00:18:54.770 align:middle line:84% And how he would return to the Danube 00:18:54.770 --> 00:18:57.510 align:middle line:90% to face his own lingering death. 00:18:57.510 --> 00:19:00.200 align:middle line:84% And I remember Mike Connally, the sketch artist, 00:19:00.200 --> 00:19:03.280 align:middle line:84% who played left field with an old stubby glove. 00:19:03.280 --> 00:19:07.270 align:middle line:84% And whom we called Sky because of the long fly balls he'd hit. 00:19:07.270 --> 00:19:10.360 align:middle line:84% And how he turned away in the end from any sky 00:19:10.360 --> 00:19:13.420 align:middle line:84% to face the quiet of the Tennessee River for three weeks 00:19:13.420 --> 00:19:15.970 align:middle line:90% before they found him. 00:19:15.970 --> 00:19:18.580 align:middle line:84% I think he knew what the poet Delmore Schwartz meant 00:19:18.580 --> 00:19:20.860 align:middle line:90% by the deafness of solitude. 00:19:20.860 --> 00:19:23.620 align:middle line:84% The world we are never able to hear. 00:19:23.620 --> 00:19:26.720 align:middle line:84% Schwartz who wrote on a restroom wall in Syracuse, 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:29.560 align:middle line:84% New York give me $5 in the change. 00:19:29.560 --> 00:19:32.950 align:middle line:84% And I'll go where the morning and the evening can't hurt me. 00:19:32.950 --> 00:19:37.420 align:middle line:84% And who lay, finally, for three days in a New York City morgue. 00:19:37.420 --> 00:19:39.400 align:middle line:84% "We live so seldom in the real world," 00:19:39.400 --> 00:19:42.670 align:middle line:84% he said because we are so often surprised by the deaths 00:19:42.670 --> 00:19:46.210 align:middle line:84% of friends and cannot understand, even from that, 00:19:46.210 --> 00:19:48.940 align:middle line:90% the meaning of our own deaths. 00:19:48.940 --> 00:19:51.100 align:middle line:84% It may be that by now I no longer wish 00:19:51.100 --> 00:19:53.140 align:middle line:90% to tell one event from another. 00:19:53.140 --> 00:19:56.500 align:middle line:84% Believing the stars which are moving away yet reappear. 00:19:56.500 --> 00:20:00.250 align:middle line:84% Like the stories of this artist, of Mahler, of Schwartz, 00:20:00.250 --> 00:20:02.530 align:middle line:90% and of Mike Connally. 00:20:02.530 --> 00:20:04.930 align:middle line:84% On the far wall is a picture of wolves 00:20:04.930 --> 00:20:08.800 align:middle line:84% who must have stalked a caribou to death for weeks, trusting, 00:20:08.800 --> 00:20:11.770 align:middle line:84% even as the artist must have, in the terrible meaning 00:20:11.770 --> 00:20:12.880 align:middle line:90% of that event. 00:20:12.880 --> 00:20:15.650 align:middle line:84% Trusting, as we must, in the way the mind and heart. 00:20:15.650 --> 00:20:18.550 align:middle line:84% Find each other out despite our own fears. 00:20:18.550 --> 00:20:22.000 align:middle line:84% Despite whatever details we invent to divert ourselves. 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:24.910 align:middle line:84% These stories are images we make of the morning emerging 00:20:24.910 --> 00:20:27.490 align:middle line:84% from the fog where, when we look carefully, 00:20:27.490 --> 00:20:31.330 align:middle line:84% one or the other of us is also emerging, trusting whatever 00:20:31.330 --> 00:20:32.620 align:middle line:90% silence lingers. 00:20:32.620 --> 00:20:37.136 align:middle line:84% Knowing the world begins from where we are." 00:20:37.136 --> 00:20:40.130 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:20:40.130 --> 00:20:58.600 align:middle line:90% 00:20:58.600 --> 00:21:02.260 align:middle line:84% A friend of mine who teaches with me in Chattanooga 00:21:02.260 --> 00:21:08.380 align:middle line:84% bought a train set for his birthday last year. 00:21:08.380 --> 00:21:09.190 align:middle line:90% I was so jealous. 00:21:09.190 --> 00:21:12.040 align:middle line:90% 00:21:12.040 --> 00:21:14.650 align:middle line:84% Even as a kid, I only had those kind that had the three tracks 00:21:14.650 --> 00:21:17.050 align:middle line:84% and they were big and awkward as compared 00:21:17.050 --> 00:21:18.970 align:middle line:84% to the sleek little things on two tracks 00:21:18.970 --> 00:21:19.990 align:middle line:90% that everybody else got. 00:21:19.990 --> 00:21:23.770 align:middle line:90% 00:21:23.770 --> 00:21:25.616 align:middle line:90% So this poem is called Hobbies. 00:21:25.616 --> 00:21:28.740 align:middle line:90% 00:21:28.740 --> 00:21:32.310 align:middle line:84% "You have to understand this man keeps trains. 00:21:32.310 --> 00:21:34.380 align:middle line:84% This man creates whole landscapes made from 00:21:34.380 --> 00:21:37.760 align:middle line:84% papier-mâché, built on the huge plywood table that covers all 00:21:37.760 --> 00:21:40.260 align:middle line:84% of his basement except for the circle in the middle where he 00:21:40.260 --> 00:21:42.780 align:middle line:90% controls the whole show. 00:21:42.780 --> 00:21:45.450 align:middle line:84% There are hills with tiny Ponderosa Pines, that's 00:21:45.450 --> 00:21:47.220 align:middle line:90% right, down to the last detail. 00:21:47.220 --> 00:21:48.420 align:middle line:90% A hawk in one branch. 00:21:48.420 --> 00:21:50.160 align:middle line:90% A tree house behind a cabin. 00:21:50.160 --> 00:21:50.880 align:middle line:90% A wire house. 00:21:50.880 --> 00:21:53.160 align:middle line:90% A crew exploring the timberline. 00:21:53.160 --> 00:21:54.180 align:middle line:90% And ridges. 00:21:54.180 --> 00:21:57.390 align:middle line:84% Sometimes a bear, a grizzly, can be seen just 00:21:57.390 --> 00:21:59.700 align:middle line:90% emerging from his winter cave. 00:21:59.700 --> 00:22:02.520 align:middle line:84% You have to understand, this is more than a game. 00:22:02.520 --> 00:22:05.550 align:middle line:84% You have to understand that when a train passes a crossing, 00:22:05.550 --> 00:22:08.070 align:middle line:84% the gate goes down, the light comes on, 00:22:08.070 --> 00:22:10.470 align:middle line:84% and a tiny man that looks just like our man, 00:22:10.470 --> 00:22:13.530 align:middle line:84% comes out from a switch house, waving a lantern. 00:22:13.530 --> 00:22:15.330 align:middle line:90% He's asking you in. 00:22:15.330 --> 00:22:18.780 align:middle line:84% He's a great philosopher in building his own utopia. 00:22:18.780 --> 00:22:20.220 align:middle line:90% No one has to die. 00:22:20.220 --> 00:22:21.360 align:middle line:90% No one gets sick. 00:22:21.360 --> 00:22:22.890 align:middle line:90% No wars. 00:22:22.890 --> 00:22:26.310 align:middle line:84% The town lights up whenever he wants to throw a simple switch. 00:22:26.310 --> 00:22:28.020 align:middle line:90% The cars all obey traffic rules. 00:22:28.020 --> 00:22:29.910 align:middle line:84% Even the funny little man leaning out 00:22:29.910 --> 00:22:33.570 align:middle line:84% of the window of his sedan who seems to be asking directions. 00:22:33.570 --> 00:22:37.140 align:middle line:84% And, of course, everyone knows where he is. 00:22:37.140 --> 00:22:41.790 align:middle line:84% The houses are all new, and the yards are perfectly kept. 00:22:41.790 --> 00:22:46.800 align:middle line:84% Inside one of those houses is a miniature Immanuel Kant. 00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:48.900 align:middle line:90% Don't argue with me. 00:22:48.900 --> 00:22:51.990 align:middle line:84% I mean the same kind who lived his whole life in Konigsberg 00:22:51.990 --> 00:22:54.870 align:middle line:84% and never traveled more than a day by coach from his house. 00:22:54.870 --> 00:22:56.970 align:middle line:84% Those ideas snaked out suspiciously 00:22:56.970 --> 00:23:00.100 align:middle line:84% like these tracks that seemed to go on forever. 00:23:00.100 --> 00:23:01.950 align:middle line:84% There's only one problem, the man 00:23:01.950 --> 00:23:04.050 align:middle line:84% who keeps trains is worried about what happens 00:23:04.050 --> 00:23:05.760 align:middle line:90% when they enter a tunnel. 00:23:05.760 --> 00:23:07.740 align:middle line:84% He's worried that he can't verify 00:23:07.740 --> 00:23:10.500 align:middle line:90% what he can only imagine. 00:23:10.500 --> 00:23:12.750 align:middle line:84% You have to understand, there are several tunnels. 00:23:12.750 --> 00:23:14.588 align:middle line:84% But the main problem is the long one curve 00:23:14.588 --> 00:23:17.130 align:middle line:84% like a quarter moon under the mountain that covers one fourth 00:23:17.130 --> 00:23:19.440 align:middle line:90% of the basement. 00:23:19.440 --> 00:23:23.340 align:middle line:84% And that's why he's installing the mirrors. 00:23:23.340 --> 00:23:25.530 align:middle line:84% That's why he's made an awful discovery. 00:23:25.530 --> 00:23:27.810 align:middle line:84% The mirrors only reflect each other endlessly. 00:23:27.810 --> 00:23:30.600 align:middle line:84% Or maybe inside the tunnel there is no end. 00:23:30.600 --> 00:23:32.762 align:middle line:84% That's right, it just goes on and on. 00:23:32.762 --> 00:23:34.470 align:middle line:84% If you happen to be on the train and they 00:23:34.470 --> 00:23:36.900 align:middle line:84% don't even bother to punch your ticket. 00:23:36.900 --> 00:23:39.840 align:middle line:84% This is a little paradoxes this philosophy can't solve. 00:23:39.840 --> 00:23:41.620 align:middle line:84% Inside the tunnel, you don't change. 00:23:41.620 --> 00:23:43.350 align:middle line:90% So you'd better go in happy. 00:23:43.350 --> 00:23:47.130 align:middle line:84% Even the great Immanuel Kant is a little worried. 00:23:47.130 --> 00:23:50.430 align:middle line:84% Now, we'll have to see if the trains come out the other side. 00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:52.840 align:middle line:84% How long do you think we should keep observing? 00:23:52.840 --> 00:23:54.400 align:middle line:90% Where do you think we're headed? 00:23:54.400 --> 00:23:57.159 align:middle line:90% Is this is our stop?" 00:23:57.159 --> 00:24:00.610 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:24:00.610 --> 00:24:07.520 align:middle line:90% 00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:10.250 align:middle line:84% David Wojahn, who's a graduate of this program, 00:24:10.250 --> 00:24:13.280 align:middle line:84% and his wife Linda introduced me to the wonderful world 00:24:13.280 --> 00:24:15.650 align:middle line:90% of tabloids last year. 00:24:15.650 --> 00:24:20.710 align:middle line:90% 00:24:20.710 --> 00:24:25.473 align:middle line:84% But anyways a few remarks about this next poem. 00:24:25.473 --> 00:24:27.140 align:middle line:84% It just so happens that I have something 00:24:27.140 --> 00:24:29.630 align:middle line:84% to say about the origins of this next poem. 00:24:29.630 --> 00:24:32.060 align:middle line:84% "Not long ago it spent some time as a formula 00:24:32.060 --> 00:24:33.830 align:middle line:84% waiting to be translated into English 00:24:33.830 --> 00:24:35.510 align:middle line:84% by a group of scientists discussing 00:24:35.510 --> 00:24:37.850 align:middle line:84% how feeble the relationship between the mathematics 00:24:37.850 --> 00:24:41.057 align:middle line:84% and the experience of reality has become. 00:24:41.057 --> 00:24:42.890 align:middle line:84% How in some geometries the shortest distance 00:24:42.890 --> 00:24:45.290 align:middle line:84% between two points is a curve, how you can be in two 00:24:45.290 --> 00:24:47.910 align:middle line:90% places at the same time. 00:24:47.910 --> 00:24:50.750 align:middle line:84% That is why these words are like bombed out bridges between what 00:24:50.750 --> 00:24:52.670 align:middle line:90% they say and what they mean. 00:24:52.670 --> 00:24:55.820 align:middle line:84% It seems in this case, the allied B-17 Flying Fortress 00:24:55.820 --> 00:24:57.830 align:middle line:90% bombers were very accurate. 00:24:57.830 --> 00:24:59.562 align:middle line:84% Along each bank of the river, two armies 00:24:59.562 --> 00:25:01.145 align:middle line:84% from another age, yet to be determined 00:25:01.145 --> 00:25:03.290 align:middle line:90% are threatening each other. 00:25:03.290 --> 00:25:05.540 align:middle line:84% One group is led by someone who looks suspiciously 00:25:05.540 --> 00:25:09.500 align:middle line:84% like Hannibal, the other seems to be led by Sitting Bull. 00:25:09.500 --> 00:25:11.420 align:middle line:84% It seems that the sword of Alexander the Great 00:25:11.420 --> 00:25:14.660 align:middle line:84% is being confused with the riding croup of George Patton. 00:25:14.660 --> 00:25:16.820 align:middle line:84% There are a few more things you should know. 00:25:16.820 --> 00:25:18.260 align:middle line:84% What I'm trying to do in this poem 00:25:18.260 --> 00:25:20.570 align:middle line:90% is disguise a recent discovery. 00:25:20.570 --> 00:25:23.090 align:middle line:84% That is why as the poem pauses to meditate, 00:25:23.090 --> 00:25:25.160 align:middle line:84% you will find only the ghost of Pascal 00:25:25.160 --> 00:25:28.130 align:middle line:84% lecturing the unusually docile Thomas 00:25:28.130 --> 00:25:32.450 align:middle line:84% Aquinas about the unfathomable dangers of the absolute. 00:25:32.450 --> 00:25:35.060 align:middle line:84% Also, the poem has not forgotten the relative truth 00:25:35.060 --> 00:25:36.170 align:middle line:90% of everyday life. 00:25:36.170 --> 00:25:39.320 align:middle line:84% Quoting from the tabloid Weekly World News, 00:25:39.320 --> 00:25:43.310 align:middle line:84% legless boys somersault two miles to save dad. 00:25:43.310 --> 00:25:45.740 align:middle line:84% Describing in great detail the rocky terrain, 00:25:45.740 --> 00:25:47.810 align:middle line:84% the bloody but heroic torso of the boy, 00:25:47.810 --> 00:25:51.200 align:middle line:84% the chance and saving encounter with a motorist. 00:25:51.200 --> 00:25:54.020 align:middle line:84% While from the same source: Trick Cigar Blows Man's 00:25:54.020 --> 00:25:55.303 align:middle line:90% Head Off. 00:25:55.303 --> 00:25:56.720 align:middle line:84% Though I don't have time to pursue 00:25:56.720 --> 00:25:58.860 align:middle line:84% the interesting hypothesis concerning terrorists 00:25:58.860 --> 00:26:02.660 align:middle line:84% and the anti-tobacco lobby, there's even a place 00:26:02.660 --> 00:26:05.420 align:middle line:84% as the story begins to develop for the following, 00:26:05.420 --> 00:26:09.290 align:middle line:90% Pit bull eats mobile home. 00:26:09.290 --> 00:26:11.180 align:middle line:84% Which I use as a springboard later on 00:26:11.180 --> 00:26:13.190 align:middle line:84% to discuss the laws of probability 00:26:13.190 --> 00:26:15.860 align:middle line:84% as a function of the general theory of relativity, 00:26:15.860 --> 00:26:19.970 align:middle line:84% though the uses are really self-explanatory. 00:26:19.970 --> 00:26:21.680 align:middle line:84% You should be told also about the section 00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:23.180 align:middle line:84% where the scientists are calculating 00:26:23.180 --> 00:26:25.130 align:middle line:90% the glide paths of bombs. 00:26:25.130 --> 00:26:28.970 align:middle line:84% Where they will also engage in a rather philosophical discussion 00:26:28.970 --> 00:26:31.220 align:middle line:84% about how the joke of a few stray atoms 00:26:31.220 --> 00:26:33.800 align:middle line:84% in one part of the world will be the sad story 00:26:33.800 --> 00:26:36.770 align:middle line:84% of later generations in some other part. 00:26:36.770 --> 00:26:39.290 align:middle line:84% And that is why the poem, having seen enough sadness 00:26:39.290 --> 00:26:41.690 align:middle line:84% in his companions, does not want to mention 00:26:41.690 --> 00:26:43.880 align:middle line:90% the real story behind itself. 00:26:43.880 --> 00:26:45.680 align:middle line:84% How I found my uncle Bernard's letter 00:26:45.680 --> 00:26:49.340 align:middle line:84% to my father, the chemist who enlisted before his time. 00:26:49.340 --> 00:26:52.040 align:middle line:84% A letter from two months after my sister's birth. 00:26:52.040 --> 00:26:55.370 align:middle line:84% Two months before my uncle flew the B-17 flying fortress 00:26:55.370 --> 00:26:59.000 align:middle line:84% into a Belgium woods, letting the rest of the crew bail out. 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:02.970 align:middle line:84% A letter arriving, as it were, 40 years too late. 00:27:02.970 --> 00:27:07.040 align:middle line:84% Married too soon before he left, he says, but he'll make it up. 00:27:07.040 --> 00:27:08.840 align:middle line:84% You can gauge how important this is 00:27:08.840 --> 00:27:11.930 align:middle line:84% by how much the rest of the poem has to lie, to joke, to hang 00:27:11.930 --> 00:27:14.270 align:middle line:84% around under a streetlight, smoking, Pretending 00:27:14.270 --> 00:27:17.270 align:middle line:84% to be the ghost of René Magritte, reading the tabloids, 00:27:17.270 --> 00:27:18.470 align:middle line:90% faking the science. 00:27:18.470 --> 00:27:21.530 align:middle line:84% Using words like pi meson, neutrino, graviton, 00:27:21.530 --> 00:27:23.750 align:middle line:84% to hide behind because in the end, 00:27:23.750 --> 00:27:26.660 align:middle line:84% each of these words or ideas is only a fiction. 00:27:26.660 --> 00:27:29.330 align:middle line:84% A sign for something I shouldn't ever reveal. 00:27:29.330 --> 00:27:32.330 align:middle line:84% That Bernard signs the letter Butch, his nickname. 00:27:32.330 --> 00:27:34.310 align:middle line:90% And addresses my father as Zeke. 00:27:34.310 --> 00:27:37.610 align:middle line:84% The names I remember on the old skis I used for years. 00:27:37.610 --> 00:27:39.530 align:middle line:90% One name burned into each head. 00:27:39.530 --> 00:27:41.810 align:middle line:84% Skis they must have owned together. 00:27:41.810 --> 00:27:45.860 align:middle line:84% Names my father never revealed to anyone, not even his wife. 00:27:45.860 --> 00:27:49.340 align:middle line:84% But used mysteriously every once in a while I couldn't tell. 00:27:49.340 --> 00:27:53.420 align:middle line:84% Whenever the talk turned to the war, to science, to the science 00:27:53.420 --> 00:27:56.270 align:middle line:84% he and Bernard would spend their poor lives on. 00:27:56.270 --> 00:28:01.214 align:middle line:84% As a curse, as a blessing, or as a kind of a joke." 00:28:01.214 --> 00:28:04.700 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:28:04.700 --> 00:28:30.130 align:middle line:90% 00:28:30.130 --> 00:28:31.840 align:middle line:90% This is a pretty simple poem. 00:28:31.840 --> 00:28:34.926 align:middle line:90% It's just called Web. 00:28:34.926 --> 00:28:37.210 align:middle line:90% "I think he wanted to kill me. 00:28:37.210 --> 00:28:40.650 align:middle line:84% The brown spider that had spun all night across the doorway. 00:28:40.650 --> 00:28:42.960 align:middle line:84% But he retreated along the tangle of silk 00:28:42.960 --> 00:28:45.240 align:middle line:84% I made with my thrashing, clenching himself 00:28:45.240 --> 00:28:47.910 align:middle line:84% into a ball that look no different than the pods he 00:28:47.910 --> 00:28:51.780 align:middle line:84% suspended in storage between the dog berry bushes in the house. 00:28:51.780 --> 00:28:53.370 align:middle line:90% I never saw him. 00:28:53.370 --> 00:28:55.530 align:middle line:90% Never heard your warning 00:28:55.530 --> 00:28:57.330 align:middle line:84% Once, as a child, I saw my father 00:28:57.330 --> 00:29:00.030 align:middle line:84% emerge from the crawlspace beneath the porch, covered 00:29:00.030 --> 00:29:03.690 align:middle line:84% with webs, dead bees, pods, tiny black spiders that 00:29:03.690 --> 00:29:06.750 align:middle line:84% made my mother scream so that my father understood what 00:29:06.750 --> 00:29:09.300 align:middle line:90% it would mean for him to die. 00:29:09.300 --> 00:29:11.700 align:middle line:90% I never really saw that, either. 00:29:11.700 --> 00:29:14.010 align:middle line:84% Only imagined from what they told me. 00:29:14.010 --> 00:29:17.010 align:middle line:84% That scene that took place before my own birth. 00:29:17.010 --> 00:29:20.340 align:middle line:84% As any child will do, trying to connect itself with the lives 00:29:20.340 --> 00:29:23.100 align:middle line:90% beyond its own life and moment. 00:29:23.100 --> 00:29:26.220 align:middle line:84% That is why our everyday details become so valuable. 00:29:26.220 --> 00:29:29.040 align:middle line:84% A silver watch, a GI compass, old maps. 00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:30.690 align:middle line:90% The wood burning of a farm. 00:29:30.690 --> 00:29:33.000 align:middle line:84% A simple touch repeated beyond the stories 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:34.770 align:middle line:90% we have found them in. 00:29:34.770 --> 00:29:37.470 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I can see you as a girl learning to ride 00:29:37.470 --> 00:29:39.240 align:middle line:90% the horse that is too large. 00:29:39.240 --> 00:29:41.970 align:middle line:84% Letting it guide you both from barrel to barrel. 00:29:41.970 --> 00:29:45.360 align:middle line:84% And suddenly, I cannot imagine not letting your hair tangle 00:29:45.360 --> 00:29:47.700 align:middle line:84% gently across the backs of my fingers. 00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:51.120 align:middle line:84% Not drawing you closer, and then, after a little while, 00:29:51.120 --> 00:29:53.850 align:middle line:84% feeling you rise above me, lifting the sheets 00:29:53.850 --> 00:29:57.250 align:middle line:84% with your back, my palms moving from the sides of your breast 00:29:57.250 --> 00:29:58.260 align:middle line:90% to your hips. 00:29:58.260 --> 00:30:01.620 align:middle line:84% Cannot imagine not holding you closer than our past. 00:30:01.620 --> 00:30:03.810 align:middle line:90% Not loving you this way forever. 00:30:03.810 --> 00:30:05.910 align:middle line:84% Or to think you would not be there at all. 00:30:05.910 --> 00:30:09.750 align:middle line:84% One or both of us caught in the invisible webbing of a moment 00:30:09.750 --> 00:30:13.110 align:middle line:90% we never saw." 00:30:13.110 --> 00:30:16.554 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:30:16.554 --> 00:30:25.410 align:middle line:90% 00:30:25.410 --> 00:30:27.060 align:middle line:84% One of the things that I think has 00:30:27.060 --> 00:30:32.730 align:middle line:84% made a difference in the last couple of years 00:30:32.730 --> 00:30:37.230 align:middle line:84% is trying to include as much as I can in poems. 00:30:37.230 --> 00:30:41.190 align:middle line:84% And then also making the drama of writing the poem 00:30:41.190 --> 00:30:43.440 align:middle line:84% become part of the subject of the poem. 00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:46.090 align:middle line:84% And that's what happens with this poem. 00:30:46.090 --> 00:30:48.150 align:middle line:90% It's called Raspberries. 00:30:48.150 --> 00:30:50.970 align:middle line:90% And it has an epigraph from-- 00:30:50.970 --> 00:30:54.420 align:middle line:84% well, epigraphs can be so pretentious, can't they? 00:30:54.420 --> 00:30:56.700 align:middle line:90% This is from Parmenides. 00:30:56.700 --> 00:30:59.303 align:middle line:90% Nobody reads Parmenides. 00:30:59.303 --> 00:31:00.720 align:middle line:84% But anyways it has something to do 00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:04.320 align:middle line:84% with the notion that thinking and being are the same. 00:31:04.320 --> 00:31:09.600 align:middle line:84% What you imagine and what you can name is what's real. 00:31:09.600 --> 00:31:12.000 align:middle line:84% And the poem starts off in one direction then gets 00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:13.080 align:middle line:90% interrupted. 00:31:13.080 --> 00:31:16.620 align:middle line:84% And actually it was a stupid little poem 00:31:16.620 --> 00:31:18.158 align:middle line:90% that I wrote about an owl. 00:31:18.158 --> 00:31:20.700 align:middle line:84% And I thought it was good at the time, but after a few weeks, 00:31:20.700 --> 00:31:22.300 align:middle line:90% I thought better of it. 00:31:22.300 --> 00:31:23.790 align:middle line:90% So did my friends. 00:31:23.790 --> 00:31:28.660 align:middle line:84% And so I didn't want to quite throw it away. 00:31:28.660 --> 00:31:31.050 align:middle line:84% And so it gets used again in here. 00:31:31.050 --> 00:31:33.690 align:middle line:90% It's called Raspberries. 00:31:33.690 --> 00:31:36.390 align:middle line:84% "The old man knows the Earth is not a dream. 00:31:36.390 --> 00:31:38.880 align:middle line:84% He is not going to read my poem about the tiny brown 00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:41.640 align:middle line:84% and yellow saw-whet owl, silent as it often 00:31:41.640 --> 00:31:44.460 align:middle line:84% is by day behind the flute sounds of my daughter's 00:31:44.460 --> 00:31:45.660 align:middle line:90% practice. 00:31:45.660 --> 00:31:47.760 align:middle line:84% Nor will he listen to any self-indulgence 00:31:47.760 --> 00:31:50.580 align:middle line:84% about whether it cares if I'm here. 00:31:50.580 --> 00:31:53.820 align:middle line:84% Instead, he's stockpiling old painkillers 00:31:53.820 --> 00:31:56.740 align:middle line:84% to prescribe the time of his own death. 00:31:56.740 --> 00:32:00.150 align:middle line:84% This morning the old man showed me his palm, stained like a map 00:32:00.150 --> 00:32:02.010 align:middle line:90% by raspberries he was selling. 00:32:02.010 --> 00:32:03.900 align:middle line:84% And I remembered how I used to believe 00:32:03.900 --> 00:32:07.440 align:middle line:84% that the souls of suicides wanted a geography, not even 00:32:07.440 --> 00:32:09.660 align:middle line:90% Parmenides could name. 00:32:09.660 --> 00:32:11.700 align:middle line:84% He wasn't going to say what he believed. 00:32:11.700 --> 00:32:15.420 align:middle line:84% He wasn't going to tell his wife when the pain became too great. 00:32:15.420 --> 00:32:18.510 align:middle line:84% Behind him, the cracks in the window frames of his shack 00:32:18.510 --> 00:32:22.140 align:middle line:84% were stuffed with wads of paper to keep the hornets and wasps 00:32:22.140 --> 00:32:24.000 align:middle line:90% from going after the berries. 00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:26.040 align:middle line:84% And I could see still my own father, 00:32:26.040 --> 00:32:28.260 align:middle line:84% how he'd protect the preserves in our cellar. 00:32:28.260 --> 00:32:31.170 align:middle line:84% Peach, strawberry, grape, raspberry, blueberry, 00:32:31.170 --> 00:32:34.020 align:middle line:84% holding the whole summer by stockpiling the sunlight, 00:32:34.020 --> 00:32:38.640 align:middle line:84% he'd say, for the winter's dark cold, the winter's silence. 00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:42.000 align:middle line:84% But this old man, he wasn't going to hold on to the past. 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:44.910 align:middle line:84% He only wanted to talk about how the Earth had fallen apart 00:32:44.910 --> 00:32:46.170 align:middle line:90% along that coast. 00:32:46.170 --> 00:32:48.570 align:middle line:84% The glaciers rotted from the insides, 00:32:48.570 --> 00:32:51.930 align:middle line:84% trailing the long gravel beds down the sides of hills. 00:32:51.930 --> 00:32:54.420 align:middle line:84% How the walls of those cliffs tell us the life 00:32:54.420 --> 00:32:58.680 align:middle line:84% we have is only a few centimeters in rock. 00:32:58.680 --> 00:33:00.330 align:middle line:90% He wasn't going to read my poem. 00:33:00.330 --> 00:33:03.300 align:middle line:84% But I've left him in here sitting with a few wooden boxes 00:33:03.300 --> 00:33:05.220 align:middle line:90% at his roadside stand. 00:33:05.220 --> 00:33:06.570 align:middle line:90% And why not? 00:33:06.570 --> 00:33:09.630 align:middle line:84% I don't know any longer what will be important. 00:33:09.630 --> 00:33:12.180 align:middle line:84% Tonight my daughter rushed in here from practicing, 00:33:12.180 --> 00:33:13.200 align:middle line:90% with news of her-- 00:33:13.200 --> 00:33:16.380 align:middle line:84% that her friend's heart had suddenly failed. 00:33:16.380 --> 00:33:18.120 align:middle line:84% I wanted the stain of a father's love 00:33:18.120 --> 00:33:20.470 align:middle line:84% to hold her longer than I knew it would. 00:33:20.470 --> 00:33:22.210 align:middle line:90% And what could I tell her? 00:33:22.210 --> 00:33:25.780 align:middle line:84% A few years ago, when legend and not geography held us, 00:33:25.780 --> 00:33:28.420 align:middle line:84% I would tell her the Indian stories for death. 00:33:28.420 --> 00:33:31.120 align:middle line:84% How the father of shining waters was the sun, 00:33:31.120 --> 00:33:33.610 align:middle line:84% how her young lover saved her father's home, 00:33:33.610 --> 00:33:37.330 align:middle line:84% dispelling the birds of darkness by his own death. 00:33:37.330 --> 00:33:39.220 align:middle line:84% I'd forgotten until now how we have 00:33:39.220 --> 00:33:42.160 align:middle line:90% to invent a life for the dead. 00:33:42.160 --> 00:33:44.740 align:middle line:84% I had doubted when I began, that Parmenides 00:33:44.740 --> 00:33:46.360 align:middle line:84% was right to say that what we thought 00:33:46.360 --> 00:33:48.340 align:middle line:90% became the world we lived. 00:33:48.340 --> 00:33:50.920 align:middle line:84% But when you look carefully, marking set 00:33:50.920 --> 00:33:55.360 align:middle line:84% by men or time and rocks, objects and legends or poems, 00:33:55.360 --> 00:33:58.462 align:middle line:84% tell you whatever story you want them to. 00:33:58.462 --> 00:33:59.920 align:middle line:84% This morning I believed it was only 00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:03.310 align:middle line:84% a question of not using such a tired symbol of loneliness 00:34:03.310 --> 00:34:05.860 align:middle line:90% and despair as that owl. 00:34:05.860 --> 00:34:07.660 align:middle line:84% Now, as my daughter reads the notes 00:34:07.660 --> 00:34:10.510 align:middle line:84% they passed in school, their children's jokes, 00:34:10.510 --> 00:34:13.330 align:middle line:84% the message to remember Jennifer whenever she played, 00:34:13.330 --> 00:34:16.449 align:middle line:84% she is trying to find the words to hold her close. 00:34:16.449 --> 00:34:17.770 align:middle line:90% Do you know what I'm saying? 00:34:17.770 --> 00:34:20.260 align:middle line:84% I'm trying to find for her which secret words preserve 00:34:20.260 --> 00:34:21.310 align:middle line:90% our pasts. 00:34:21.310 --> 00:34:24.340 align:middle line:84% Which secret brings the owl back again to these lines 00:34:24.340 --> 00:34:26.860 align:middle line:90% where it doesn't seem to belong. 00:34:26.860 --> 00:34:28.540 align:middle line:90% I'd seen it before. 00:34:28.540 --> 00:34:31.630 align:middle line:84% Years ago, the woman across the unpaved street that 00:34:31.630 --> 00:34:33.219 align:middle line:84% would be covered late that summer. 00:34:33.219 --> 00:34:35.920 align:middle line:84% The same woman who was beating the old Persian rug she'd 00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:39.070 align:middle line:84% strung across the cast iron bars, the clothesline, 00:34:39.070 --> 00:34:42.250 align:middle line:84% looked up and saw the small owl that must have entangled itself 00:34:42.250 --> 00:34:43.900 align:middle line:90% in the rope lines. 00:34:43.900 --> 00:34:46.330 align:middle line:84% She looked up and knew the cancer deep in her liver. 00:34:46.330 --> 00:34:49.300 align:middle line:84% Knew, I believe, it would take her in a week. 00:34:49.300 --> 00:34:52.060 align:middle line:84% In those days, when we ate bread soaked in milk, 00:34:52.060 --> 00:34:54.310 align:middle line:84% when we bottled root beer and sarsaparilla bottles 00:34:54.310 --> 00:34:56.920 align:middle line:84% and waited for the street to be paved or tarred. 00:34:56.920 --> 00:34:59.770 align:middle line:84% While the neighborhood grew and the owls disappeared, 00:34:59.770 --> 00:35:03.610 align:middle line:84% I held my mother, afraid that she too might die. 00:35:03.610 --> 00:35:05.920 align:middle line:84% It was a summer we walked along the railroad tracks 00:35:05.920 --> 00:35:08.740 align:middle line:84% picking raspberries for miles of happiness. 00:35:08.740 --> 00:35:12.460 align:middle line:84% Hearing my father scratch a song on the harmonica. 00:35:12.460 --> 00:35:16.150 align:middle line:84% Trying to make us forget all the faces that returned now faster 00:35:16.150 --> 00:35:18.260 align:middle line:90% than I want them to. 00:35:18.260 --> 00:35:19.660 align:middle line:90% So this is it. 00:35:19.660 --> 00:35:21.160 align:middle line:84% This is why I'm going to include all 00:35:21.160 --> 00:35:23.470 align:middle line:84% this in that old poem for another summer, 00:35:23.470 --> 00:35:25.120 align:middle line:90% as Parmenides would. 00:35:25.120 --> 00:35:27.280 align:middle line:84% Why I'm going to let the owl then or now 00:35:27.280 --> 00:35:30.100 align:middle line:84% speak for whatever future rises from the trees, 00:35:30.100 --> 00:35:33.010 align:middle line:84% itself rising as Parmenides does in the fragments 00:35:33.010 --> 00:35:34.510 align:middle line:90% of his own lost poem. 00:35:34.510 --> 00:35:37.990 align:middle line:84% To escape the geography of grief, the dark that gathers 00:35:37.990 --> 00:35:38.920 align:middle line:90% anyways. 00:35:38.920 --> 00:35:40.730 align:middle line:84% Feeling what we had hoped for it. 00:35:40.730 --> 00:35:42.190 align:middle line:84% Why I'm going to tell the old man 00:35:42.190 --> 00:35:46.072 align:middle line:84% how any breath, however pained, is what Jennifer would choose. 00:35:46.072 --> 00:35:48.280 align:middle line:84% Why I'm going to listen to the sound of my daughter's 00:35:48.280 --> 00:35:50.560 align:middle line:84% flute rising like the old legends, 00:35:50.560 --> 00:35:52.840 align:middle line:90% setting like a stain on the air. 00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:54.880 align:middle line:84% As the owl lifts the wing, as we all 00:35:54.880 --> 00:35:57.760 align:middle line:84% move off becoming a few lines in the rock. 00:35:57.760 --> 00:36:00.010 align:middle line:84% Holding whatever stories, keep us safe 00:36:00.010 --> 00:36:04.915 align:middle line:84% and to the silent worlds we hold so dear." 00:36:04.915 --> 00:36:07.885 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:36:07.885 --> 00:36:26.700 align:middle line:90% 00:36:26.700 --> 00:36:31.237 align:middle line:84% I think I want to read two more poems, and one of them 00:36:31.237 --> 00:36:32.070 align:middle line:90% is a little longish. 00:36:32.070 --> 00:36:45.510 align:middle line:90% 00:36:45.510 --> 00:36:48.810 align:middle line:90% The poem is called Wishbone. 00:36:48.810 --> 00:36:50.910 align:middle line:90% The first one. 00:36:50.910 --> 00:36:52.275 align:middle line:90% And it has an epigraph. 00:36:52.275 --> 00:36:55.230 align:middle line:90% 00:36:55.230 --> 00:36:58.590 align:middle line:84% It's from Stevens really, from one of his notebook entries. 00:36:58.590 --> 00:37:00.180 align:middle line:84% And it says, "Perhaps poetry, instead 00:37:00.180 --> 00:37:03.540 align:middle line:84% of being the rather meaningless transmutation of reality, 00:37:03.540 --> 00:37:05.330 align:middle line:90% is a combat with it. 00:37:05.330 --> 00:37:06.780 align:middle line:84% And perhaps, the thing to do when 00:37:06.780 --> 00:37:09.090 align:middle line:84% one keeps saying that life is a dull life 00:37:09.090 --> 00:37:10.545 align:middle line:84% is to pick a fight with reality." 00:37:10.545 --> 00:37:25.337 align:middle line:90% 00:37:25.337 --> 00:37:27.420 align:middle line:84% "This could be the poem you picked from the ruins, 00:37:27.420 --> 00:37:30.870 align:middle line:84% the day the air was so thick in the must of the past. 00:37:30.870 --> 00:37:34.200 align:middle line:84% One word as simple as love could have changed the story. 00:37:34.200 --> 00:37:36.900 align:middle line:84% This is a poem so reluctant to reveal how it arrived there 00:37:36.900 --> 00:37:38.490 align:middle line:90% to face the outside world. 00:37:38.490 --> 00:37:40.878 align:middle line:90% It tries to talk only to itself. 00:37:40.878 --> 00:37:42.420 align:middle line:84% In fact, this sentence is telling you 00:37:42.420 --> 00:37:44.640 align:middle line:84% that its hero is really Cervantes, 00:37:44.640 --> 00:37:47.790 align:middle line:84% the poor son of a noble doctor who visited court each time 00:37:47.790 --> 00:37:49.560 align:middle line:90% a swordsman needed mending. 00:37:49.560 --> 00:37:51.660 align:middle line:84% Cervantes, the soldier of fortune, 00:37:51.660 --> 00:37:54.540 align:middle line:84% wounded at Lepanto, taken prisoner by pirates. 00:37:54.540 --> 00:37:56.670 align:middle line:84% Who knew his own hero Don Quixote, 00:37:56.670 --> 00:37:59.310 align:middle line:84% not by the comic surface, but by his desire 00:37:59.310 --> 00:38:02.490 align:middle line:84% to avoid the tragic pain just underneath. 00:38:02.490 --> 00:38:04.680 align:middle line:84% He would like to reflect on the way Don Quixote, 00:38:04.680 --> 00:38:07.260 align:middle line:84% later in his own fiction, must play the role 00:38:07.260 --> 00:38:09.530 align:middle line:90% his early story has made. 00:38:09.530 --> 00:38:11.250 align:middle line:84% Well, this could be the poem I handed you 00:38:11.250 --> 00:38:14.130 align:middle line:84% when we visited the ruined church tower, its library 00:38:14.130 --> 00:38:16.110 align:middle line:84% shelves covered with bird droppings. 00:38:16.110 --> 00:38:19.590 align:middle line:84% A scene you said that was written for Cervantes. 00:38:19.590 --> 00:38:23.310 align:middle line:84% This was the tiny wishbone of a sparrow you found in the ruins. 00:38:23.310 --> 00:38:26.520 align:middle line:90% I kept it for luck and for love. 00:38:26.520 --> 00:38:29.520 align:middle line:84% Later, I intend to tell you where I lost it. 00:38:29.520 --> 00:38:33.480 align:middle line:84% To tell you the far places I've been, the stories I've heard. 00:38:33.480 --> 00:38:36.660 align:middle line:84% But now there's something I can no longer avoid. 00:38:36.660 --> 00:38:40.020 align:middle line:84% For a while, this poem began with Rodrigo Rojas, who 00:38:40.020 --> 00:38:41.860 align:middle line:84% was caught in the streets of Santiago, 00:38:41.860 --> 00:38:44.370 align:middle line:84% Chile, beaten to the ground with rifle stocks 00:38:44.370 --> 00:38:46.920 align:middle line:84% along with his companion, doused with gasoline 00:38:46.920 --> 00:38:49.890 align:middle line:84% and burned, then covered with a blanket, dumped in a ditch 00:38:49.890 --> 00:38:53.080 align:middle line:84% so that death would come more slowly. 00:38:53.080 --> 00:38:55.800 align:middle line:84% This is not the story the poem wanted to face. 00:38:55.800 --> 00:38:58.260 align:middle line:84% It does not want to see Rodrigo, a bystander, 00:38:58.260 --> 00:39:00.930 align:middle line:84% does not want to focus on his eyes and that first puzzle 00:39:00.930 --> 00:39:01.890 align:middle line:90% of dying. 00:39:01.890 --> 00:39:04.080 align:middle line:84% Does not want to feel the fire in his throat, 00:39:04.080 --> 00:39:08.070 align:middle line:84% unable to talk for the few bad days in the local hospital. 00:39:08.070 --> 00:39:10.740 align:middle line:84% It would rather skip a few lines at the cafe, when 00:39:10.740 --> 00:39:12.657 align:middle line:90% no one has yet heard the news. 00:39:12.657 --> 00:39:14.490 align:middle line:84% It would rather argue that when you were not 00:39:14.490 --> 00:39:18.150 align:middle line:84% reading them none of these lines remembers him anyways. 00:39:18.150 --> 00:39:20.100 align:middle line:84% The girls in the bar are laughing. 00:39:20.100 --> 00:39:22.770 align:middle line:84% 'Include me in one of your poems,' one says, 00:39:22.770 --> 00:39:25.020 align:middle line:90% 'but do not mention my name.' 00:39:25.020 --> 00:39:29.100 align:middle line:84% 'If I were you,' another laughs, 'who would be saying this? 00:39:29.100 --> 00:39:31.000 align:middle line:90% If I were you.' 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:33.810 align:middle line:84% The poem is having trouble thinking only of itself. 00:39:33.810 --> 00:39:35.610 align:middle line:84% At the funeral of Rodrigo Rojas it 00:39:35.610 --> 00:39:38.550 align:middle line:84% took four militiamen of President Augusto Pinochet 00:39:38.550 --> 00:39:41.505 align:middle line:84% to hold the water cannon that would dissolve the procession. 00:39:41.505 --> 00:39:43.380 align:middle line:84% It would take hours for the frightened people 00:39:43.380 --> 00:39:46.200 align:middle line:84% to flee the safety of the church like swifts pouring out 00:39:46.200 --> 00:39:48.780 align:middle line:90% from the bell tower at evening. 00:39:48.780 --> 00:39:50.400 align:middle line:84% From the tower of our own church, 00:39:50.400 --> 00:39:53.130 align:middle line:84% we could see far mountains through the greasy windows, 00:39:53.130 --> 00:39:55.470 align:middle line:84% and a yellow bird, a warbler I believe, 00:39:55.470 --> 00:39:59.580 align:middle line:84% blurred on the maple branch, wondering at our silence. 00:39:59.580 --> 00:40:01.620 align:middle line:84% The poem fumbles here awkwardly to tell you 00:40:01.620 --> 00:40:04.080 align:middle line:84% how one night, the next week, I swore 00:40:04.080 --> 00:40:05.940 align:middle line:84% it was the same bird song that lit 00:40:05.940 --> 00:40:08.550 align:middle line:90% the far darkness of Belgrad. 00:40:08.550 --> 00:40:11.580 align:middle line:84% So that I woke dreaming of you and went down to the street 00:40:11.580 --> 00:40:14.970 align:middle line:84% and found an old man from the hospital in a bathrobe also 00:40:14.970 --> 00:40:16.080 align:middle line:90% unable to sleep. 00:40:16.080 --> 00:40:18.600 align:middle line:84% And for a long time we watched the water trucks spray 00:40:18.600 --> 00:40:22.440 align:middle line:84% the street drowning out of the saddle that lonely bird. 00:40:22.440 --> 00:40:25.920 align:middle line:84% 'We are here,' he said, 'because we know that memory must stop 00:40:25.920 --> 00:40:28.650 align:middle line:90% inviting guests from the past.' 00:40:28.650 --> 00:40:30.990 align:middle line:84% You have to forget, as his truck does, 00:40:30.990 --> 00:40:34.320 align:middle line:84% all the scraps of the day, the gum wrappers, popsicle sticks, 00:40:34.320 --> 00:40:35.640 align:middle line:90% straws. 00:40:35.640 --> 00:40:38.220 align:middle line:84% We will look at anything, a street worker, a building 00:40:38.220 --> 00:40:41.130 align:middle line:84% project, a traffic policeman, anything mindless 00:40:41.130 --> 00:40:43.380 align:middle line:90% to stop from remembering. 00:40:43.380 --> 00:40:46.770 align:middle line:84% Even so, there is a scene or two that escapes. 00:40:46.770 --> 00:40:48.360 align:middle line:90% It returns like a prisoner. 00:40:48.360 --> 00:40:50.730 align:middle line:84% It remembers one night the rain endless, 00:40:50.730 --> 00:40:53.370 align:middle line:84% the artillery flashes beyond the ridges. 00:40:53.370 --> 00:40:56.430 align:middle line:84% The difficulty in raising your boots out of the mud. 00:40:56.430 --> 00:40:58.620 align:middle line:84% It remembers the old comrade, the blankets 00:40:58.620 --> 00:41:01.890 align:middle line:84% rolled like seashells where no sea sounded. 00:41:01.890 --> 00:41:04.290 align:middle line:84% The next day the Germans entered Kragujevac, 00:41:04.290 --> 00:41:06.510 align:middle line:84% the old battleground against the Turks, 00:41:06.510 --> 00:41:10.620 align:middle line:90% to shoot the 7,000 men and boys. 00:41:10.620 --> 00:41:13.620 align:middle line:84% After a while, the old man was all pipe smoke, and silence, 00:41:13.620 --> 00:41:16.650 align:middle line:84% and leaned into the past of Kragujevac which was also 00:41:16.650 --> 00:41:18.300 align:middle line:90% the past of his own son. 00:41:18.300 --> 00:41:21.810 align:middle line:84% Leaned into the wall as his own son must have. 00:41:21.810 --> 00:41:25.020 align:middle line:84% But the truth is he must have imagined the 1,000 ways 00:41:25.020 --> 00:41:26.250 align:middle line:90% death could come. 00:41:26.250 --> 00:41:28.740 align:middle line:90% What the boy must have thought. 00:41:28.740 --> 00:41:30.540 align:middle line:84% This poem would like to report Kragujevac 00:41:30.540 --> 00:41:32.130 align:middle line:90% as the only place that happened. 00:41:32.130 --> 00:41:34.620 align:middle line:84% Though he remembers another town, nameless, where 00:41:34.620 --> 00:41:36.960 align:middle line:84% still out of respect in Yugoslavia, 00:41:36.960 --> 00:41:39.540 align:middle line:90% no men are allowed to enter. 00:41:39.540 --> 00:41:41.520 align:middle line:84% Instead it will tell you we watched 00:41:41.520 --> 00:41:44.970 align:middle line:84% the truck disappear across the scraps of two languages. 00:41:44.970 --> 00:41:47.370 align:middle line:84% The men lit by the red light in the cab, 00:41:47.370 --> 00:41:50.100 align:middle line:84% and by the light of their own cigarettes. 00:41:50.100 --> 00:41:53.540 align:middle line:84% If Quixote were there, the old man could have been Cervantes 00:41:53.540 --> 00:41:55.290 align:middle line:84% and the truck would have stood for dragons 00:41:55.290 --> 00:41:57.030 align:middle line:84% of everything he feared, everything 00:41:57.030 --> 00:41:59.340 align:middle line:90% he couldn't understand. 00:41:59.340 --> 00:42:01.350 align:middle line:84% I showed him the wishbone then, and I 00:42:01.350 --> 00:42:04.290 align:middle line:84% remembered the stories you could imagine for how it came there. 00:42:04.290 --> 00:42:06.900 align:middle line:84% For what lovers had stolen off to that tower, 00:42:06.900 --> 00:42:08.940 align:middle line:90% hiding behind the books. 00:42:08.940 --> 00:42:10.830 align:middle line:84% There was a young girl, just married, 00:42:10.830 --> 00:42:14.270 align:middle line:84% who hid there, fearing love, collapsing into the wide hoops 00:42:14.270 --> 00:42:15.650 align:middle line:90% of her gown. 00:42:15.650 --> 00:42:16.860 align:middle line:90% I believed you. 00:42:16.860 --> 00:42:19.040 align:middle line:84% And I believe that the bird, whatever it was, 00:42:19.040 --> 00:42:21.860 align:middle line:84% breaking that Belgrad night has never stopped. 00:42:21.860 --> 00:42:24.770 align:middle line:84% That the poem takes the persistent song as an elegy. 00:42:24.770 --> 00:42:27.710 align:middle line:84% Wonders what birds sang about the crowds in Santiago, 00:42:27.710 --> 00:42:28.910 align:middle line:90% the day of the burning. 00:42:28.910 --> 00:42:30.620 align:middle line:84% Remembers the birds of the tower. 00:42:30.620 --> 00:42:32.690 align:middle line:84% The signal birds Quixote woke to. 00:42:32.690 --> 00:42:35.870 align:middle line:84% The birds of every elegy continuing. 00:42:35.870 --> 00:42:38.582 align:middle line:84% The poem though, does not want to be an elegy. 00:42:38.582 --> 00:42:40.040 align:middle line:84% It is, however, to become impatient 00:42:40.040 --> 00:42:41.810 align:middle line:90% with its theory of place. 00:42:41.810 --> 00:42:44.780 align:middle line:84% How a church tower in Tennessee, a few months ago, 00:42:44.780 --> 00:42:48.590 align:middle line:84% can become also a tower in Belgrad almost any time. 00:42:48.590 --> 00:42:51.410 align:middle line:84% It wants instead to deal only with single things. 00:42:51.410 --> 00:42:53.390 align:middle line:84% The yellow bird on the branch balancing 00:42:53.390 --> 00:42:58.280 align:middle line:84% the wind, unable to decide to fling out its soul and to whom. 00:42:58.280 --> 00:43:00.710 align:middle line:84% Waiting five years in a prison for ransom, 00:43:00.710 --> 00:43:04.610 align:middle line:84% Cervantes too would listen to the birds that sang of freedom. 00:43:04.610 --> 00:43:08.270 align:middle line:84% On the walls of the cell, he would etch a few poems. 00:43:08.270 --> 00:43:10.460 align:middle line:84% I don't have to tell you the poems of Rodrigo 00:43:10.460 --> 00:43:12.620 align:middle line:90% Rojas are written everywhere. 00:43:12.620 --> 00:43:15.530 align:middle line:90% They are poems we find in ruins. 00:43:15.530 --> 00:43:17.300 align:middle line:90% Even in Belgrad. 00:43:17.300 --> 00:43:19.700 align:middle line:84% I stood in the rain at the great fort's tower. 00:43:19.700 --> 00:43:21.200 align:middle line:90% I stood with the Roman legions. 00:43:21.200 --> 00:43:24.470 align:middle line:84% Watched the barbarians gather on the plains across the Danube. 00:43:24.470 --> 00:43:27.200 align:middle line:84% I stood with the partisans, watched the German Stukas 00:43:27.200 --> 00:43:29.270 align:middle line:90% dive unannounced from the sky. 00:43:29.270 --> 00:43:31.730 align:middle line:84% I stood in the rain that came from Chernobyl, 00:43:31.730 --> 00:43:34.550 align:middle line:84% and I fingered the wishbone for luck. 00:43:34.550 --> 00:43:37.280 align:middle line:84% The next day I would head for Zagreb, where years ago, 00:43:37.280 --> 00:43:39.590 align:middle line:84% in the first light of St Mark's Square, 00:43:39.590 --> 00:43:43.130 align:middle line:84% watching a few women hugging the sills of houses along the walk 00:43:43.130 --> 00:43:44.120 align:middle line:90% to the bakery. 00:43:44.120 --> 00:43:45.530 align:middle line:90% The trees scorched. 00:43:45.530 --> 00:43:47.390 align:middle line:90% Hearing the rail cars begin. 00:43:47.390 --> 00:43:50.600 align:middle line:84% The traitor Pavelić offered to his German friends 00:43:50.600 --> 00:43:53.390 align:middle line:84% another basket full of human eyes. 00:43:53.390 --> 00:43:54.900 align:middle line:90% No one wanted to look. 00:43:54.900 --> 00:43:57.530 align:middle line:84% No one wanted to glance up from the tasks of finding 00:43:57.530 --> 00:43:59.870 align:middle line:90% eggs or cleaning the streets. 00:43:59.870 --> 00:44:01.700 align:middle line:90% Pavelić only smiled. 00:44:01.700 --> 00:44:03.410 align:middle line:90% The gray coat and trousers. 00:44:03.410 --> 00:44:06.680 align:middle line:84% The gray muddy boots said nothing was unusual. 00:44:06.680 --> 00:44:09.410 align:middle line:84% Nothing unusual, the poem says, where 00:44:09.410 --> 00:44:11.810 align:middle line:84% centuries earlier in that same square, 00:44:11.810 --> 00:44:17.150 align:middle line:84% a hero of the peasant revolt was awarded a red hot iron crown, 00:44:17.150 --> 00:44:19.520 align:middle line:90% dismembered and burned. 00:44:19.520 --> 00:44:22.440 align:middle line:84% So now the poem does not know who to trust. 00:44:22.440 --> 00:44:24.380 align:middle line:84% I could trust the old man in Belgrad. 00:44:24.380 --> 00:44:26.390 align:middle line:84% And perhaps he really was Cervantes 00:44:26.390 --> 00:44:29.300 align:middle line:84% who admitted in the end the failure of all dreams. 00:44:29.300 --> 00:44:31.340 align:middle line:84% And who is now going back to his room 00:44:31.340 --> 00:44:34.970 align:middle line:84% to take a little mandarina and crackers with the dawn. 00:44:34.970 --> 00:44:37.310 align:middle line:84% Somewhere in Belgrad, the gypsy children 00:44:37.310 --> 00:44:39.440 align:middle line:84% are washing windows at intersections. 00:44:39.440 --> 00:44:41.960 align:middle line:84% One hand stuffed with rags, the other holding 00:44:41.960 --> 00:44:44.000 align:middle line:90% out for a few dinars. 00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:46.550 align:middle line:84% The old women, kerchiefs tied around their heads, 00:44:46.550 --> 00:44:49.010 align:middle line:84% are dreaming for the huge sides of lamb and the butcher 00:44:49.010 --> 00:44:49.730 align:middle line:90% windows. 00:44:49.730 --> 00:44:51.590 align:middle line:90% And it's not raining. 00:44:51.590 --> 00:44:55.400 align:middle line:84% The young men walk the promenade, stopping for beer. 00:44:55.400 --> 00:44:59.120 align:middle line:84% This is where the poem too wants to linger, lifting a glass. 00:44:59.120 --> 00:45:02.510 align:middle line:84% It wants to tell you Don Quixote's episode in the end. 00:45:02.510 --> 00:45:06.140 align:middle line:84% Instead it recalls the cafe in Santiago. 00:45:06.140 --> 00:45:07.850 align:middle line:84% A little girl is carrying an apron 00:45:07.850 --> 00:45:10.550 align:middle line:84% full of flowers which she sells for nearly as much 00:45:10.550 --> 00:45:11.870 align:middle line:90% as they cost. 00:45:11.870 --> 00:45:14.180 align:middle line:84% Her straight black hair hangs unevenly 00:45:14.180 --> 00:45:15.800 align:middle line:90% and needs to be combed. 00:45:15.800 --> 00:45:18.140 align:middle line:84% It is expected that she has no shoes. 00:45:18.140 --> 00:45:19.940 align:middle line:84% That her parents have been taken. 00:45:19.940 --> 00:45:22.460 align:middle line:84% But the poem is too polite to ask. 00:45:22.460 --> 00:45:25.980 align:middle line:84% Behind her a troop carrier clatters past. 00:45:25.980 --> 00:45:27.620 align:middle line:90% The poem's getting nervous. 00:45:27.620 --> 00:45:30.920 align:middle line:84% It wants to find a home for you in one of its sentences. 00:45:30.920 --> 00:45:35.390 align:middle line:84% It wants to tell a story with a few touching mementos. 00:45:35.390 --> 00:45:37.370 align:middle line:84% I begin tonight by trying to tell you 00:45:37.370 --> 00:45:38.870 align:middle line:90% I still have the wishbone. 00:45:38.870 --> 00:45:41.870 align:middle line:84% To tell you about this river, however moonless the night. 00:45:41.870 --> 00:45:44.390 align:middle line:84% The surface touched by skaters, or what 00:45:44.390 --> 00:45:46.970 align:middle line:84% they call in your Texas Jesus bugs, 00:45:46.970 --> 00:45:50.435 align:middle line:84% walking the simple miracles on water. 00:45:50.435 --> 00:45:52.310 align:middle line:84% For what I've taken to be skaters 00:45:52.310 --> 00:45:55.310 align:middle line:84% might be the reflection of a plane's light on the surface 00:45:55.310 --> 00:45:58.730 align:middle line:84% or cars or the few expected stars. 00:45:58.730 --> 00:46:01.860 align:middle line:84% The poem doesn't care, finally, what we call them. 00:46:01.860 --> 00:46:03.860 align:middle line:84% Does not want the unexpected, though it 00:46:03.860 --> 00:46:07.070 align:middle line:84% makes me remember because of the skaters, another season when 00:46:07.070 --> 00:46:09.650 align:middle line:84% my friend followed the sled tracks of his daughter 00:46:09.650 --> 00:46:14.298 align:middle line:84% to a ponds edge, early thaw, and drowned going after her. 00:46:14.298 --> 00:46:16.340 align:middle line:84% I think it has to do with the way the heart tries 00:46:16.340 --> 00:46:20.060 align:middle line:84% to understand its own losses by the losses of others. 00:46:20.060 --> 00:46:23.060 align:middle line:84% It has to invent those lives to live. 00:46:23.060 --> 00:46:25.850 align:middle line:84% I remember my own daughter chasing pigeons, opening 00:46:25.850 --> 00:46:29.120 align:middle line:84% her arms as if to gather them all in as they rose around her, 00:46:29.120 --> 00:46:30.560 align:middle line:90% dozens of them. 00:46:30.560 --> 00:46:35.000 align:middle line:84% Even now, she too embraces most what flies away. 00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:37.850 align:middle line:84% For a few hours now, we have stood where the Annisquam 00:46:37.850 --> 00:46:39.260 align:middle line:90% River becomes the sea. 00:46:39.260 --> 00:46:41.870 align:middle line:84% And she is watching a harbor seal bring its secrets 00:46:41.870 --> 00:46:44.870 align:middle line:90% to the surface every few yards. 00:46:44.870 --> 00:46:48.410 align:middle line:84% I must tell you that I've cast the wishbone, as the Portuguese 00:46:48.410 --> 00:46:51.680 align:middle line:84% fisherman here do, on this tidal river for luck. 00:46:51.680 --> 00:46:54.920 align:middle line:84% Hoping to keep a while a few friends from the sky. 00:46:54.920 --> 00:46:58.903 align:middle line:84% For the old man in Belgrad, for the memory of Rodrigo Rojas, 00:46:58.903 --> 00:47:00.320 align:middle line:84% I must tell you that this poem has 00:47:00.320 --> 00:47:02.300 align:middle line:90% put no boats upon that water. 00:47:02.300 --> 00:47:04.910 align:middle line:84% No lobster boats with this light signaling, 00:47:04.910 --> 00:47:09.880 align:middle line:84% redeeming what the sea will take [AUDIO OUT] 00:47:09.880 --> 00:47:14.110 align:middle line:84% it's scaling from the sides, the oars too loud in anticipation. 00:47:14.110 --> 00:47:17.110 align:middle line:84% Not because they do not belong there but because remembering 00:47:17.110 --> 00:47:19.570 align:middle line:84% all these, remembering how you knew the lives that 00:47:19.570 --> 00:47:21.760 align:middle line:84% haunted the tower, surely you too 00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:23.950 align:middle line:84% would have suffered the losses this poem has 00:47:23.950 --> 00:47:25.300 align:middle line:90% failed to replace. 00:47:25.300 --> 00:47:28.510 align:middle line:84% And surely you too have already imagined those boats." 00:47:28.510 --> 00:47:31.340 align:middle line:90% 00:47:31.340 --> 00:47:34.840 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:47:34.840 --> 00:47:43.340 align:middle line:90% 00:47:43.340 --> 00:47:46.640 align:middle line:84% And the last poem I want to read is a pretty short one. 00:47:46.640 --> 00:47:50.280 align:middle line:84% I think in the back of your mind, 00:47:50.280 --> 00:47:53.780 align:middle line:84% you probably have a theme or something when 00:47:53.780 --> 00:47:55.040 align:middle line:90% you put the poems together. 00:47:55.040 --> 00:47:57.707 align:middle line:84% And as I'm walking over here, it dawned on me that a lot of them 00:47:57.707 --> 00:48:02.600 align:middle line:84% have to do with poems about poems. 00:48:02.600 --> 00:48:05.240 align:middle line:84% And it's probably the sum total of my poems about poems. 00:48:05.240 --> 00:48:07.970 align:middle line:90% 00:48:07.970 --> 00:48:10.305 align:middle line:84% This last one just called The Real World. 00:48:10.305 --> 00:48:13.400 align:middle line:90% 00:48:13.400 --> 00:48:15.620 align:middle line:84% And I think this is probably the last poem 00:48:15.620 --> 00:48:21.350 align:middle line:84% in this manuscript that's sort of edging its way along. 00:48:21.350 --> 00:48:23.630 align:middle line:84% "I'm sorry for the way all this turned out. 00:48:23.630 --> 00:48:27.080 align:middle line:84% But the scene I begin with, the one where my eight-year-old 00:48:27.080 --> 00:48:30.320 align:middle line:84% body is sprawled out next to my aunt's old Philco radio 00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:34.460 align:middle line:84% cabinet, its beveled brown wood curved at the top, 00:48:34.460 --> 00:48:36.710 align:middle line:84% with the electric smell of tubes warming up, 00:48:36.710 --> 00:48:39.353 align:middle line:84% beginning to fill my spirit, has dissolved 00:48:39.353 --> 00:48:41.270 align:middle line:84% when I remember it must have been the McCarthy 00:48:41.270 --> 00:48:43.970 align:middle line:90% hearing she was listening to. 00:48:43.970 --> 00:48:46.430 align:middle line:84% I don't know what to do with what's left, 00:48:46.430 --> 00:48:49.880 align:middle line:84% is his fragmentary sentence, a blind horse knocking around 00:48:49.880 --> 00:48:51.140 align:middle line:90% in a stable. 00:48:51.140 --> 00:48:52.940 align:middle line:90% But I don't know where. 00:48:52.940 --> 00:48:55.100 align:middle line:84% It must have something to do with the toy cowboys 00:48:55.100 --> 00:48:56.990 align:middle line:90% and horses I was clutching. 00:48:56.990 --> 00:48:58.460 align:middle line:84% It probably doesn't mean anything, 00:48:58.460 --> 00:49:01.190 align:middle line:84% but there's another scene where my face is pressed 00:49:01.190 --> 00:49:03.110 align:middle line:84% against the back window of our Plymouth 00:49:03.110 --> 00:49:06.200 align:middle line:84% later that summer, when we drove through enormous fields 00:49:06.200 --> 00:49:07.160 align:middle line:90% of cotton. 00:49:07.160 --> 00:49:09.410 align:middle line:84% Saw the ragged shacks, the pitiful young 00:49:09.410 --> 00:49:12.140 align:middle line:84% faces Walker Evans had photographed. 00:49:12.140 --> 00:49:14.840 align:middle line:84% A place I vowed never to return to, 00:49:14.840 --> 00:49:17.510 align:middle line:84% though writing you there from now. 00:49:17.510 --> 00:49:18.840 align:middle line:90% I can't help it. 00:49:18.840 --> 00:49:20.000 align:middle line:90% The sun is going down. 00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:22.310 align:middle line:84% I can't find enough moonlight to replace it. 00:49:22.310 --> 00:49:25.670 align:middle line:84% I can't find any song of crickets to console me. 00:49:25.670 --> 00:49:27.950 align:middle line:84% Every now and then a coyote, a wild dog 00:49:27.950 --> 00:49:30.260 align:middle line:84% calls from somewhere beyond the tree line, 00:49:30.260 --> 00:49:33.470 align:middle line:84% but I don't hear an answer from the other side of the field. 00:49:33.470 --> 00:49:37.490 align:middle line:84% What I can't make sense of is why the later barbershop scene. 00:49:37.490 --> 00:49:40.790 align:middle line:84% A smell of oils, of electric shares, of cut hair. 00:49:40.790 --> 00:49:43.770 align:middle line:84% The pottery dusted on the back of my neck. 00:49:43.770 --> 00:49:46.070 align:middle line:90% It makes me shiver even now. 00:49:46.070 --> 00:49:49.250 align:middle line:84% Outside I had placed a beautiful winged car, probably 00:49:49.250 --> 00:49:50.180 align:middle line:90% that Plymouth. 00:49:50.180 --> 00:49:52.790 align:middle line:84% But already, somebody has packed it with explosives 00:49:52.790 --> 00:49:55.640 align:middle line:84% and abandoned it outside a hotel in another city 00:49:55.640 --> 00:49:57.470 align:middle line:90% where I've never been. 00:49:57.470 --> 00:49:59.930 align:middle line:84% It doesn't mean anything when the bomb goes off 00:49:59.930 --> 00:50:02.220 align:middle line:90% because I couldn't stop it. 00:50:02.220 --> 00:50:05.570 align:middle line:84% And I'm sorry for the way I let these images get away from me. 00:50:05.570 --> 00:50:08.930 align:middle line:84% I'd like to apologize to my aunt, myself, 00:50:08.930 --> 00:50:12.200 align:middle line:84% for the rich landowners, for whoever stole the car. 00:50:12.200 --> 00:50:14.120 align:middle line:90% But it wouldn't mean anything. 00:50:14.120 --> 00:50:17.690 align:middle line:84% I'd like to apologize for you, but leave you this instead, 00:50:17.690 --> 00:50:21.140 align:middle line:90% the truth all you get. 00:50:21.140 --> 00:50:24.190 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:50:24.190 --> 00:50:29.000 align:middle line:90%