WEBVTT

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Here is an early poem with
a highly unoriginal title.

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It's called "Nude
Descending a Staircase."

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And I swiped this title of
course from the painting

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by the French cubist
painter Marcel Duchamp.

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If you happen to have
the painting in memory,

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you recall how Duchamp, to
show the figure in motion,

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shows her sort of flowing
down and shuffling herself

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like a couple of decks of cards.

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The poem is not trying
to describe the painting,

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so much as it is trying to
swipe Duchamp's subject.

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I was encouraged in this by
a remark of T. S. Eliot's.

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Eliot said, "Bad poets
imitate; good poets steal."

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So thus, emboldened, I stole.

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"Nude Descending a Staircase."

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Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
a gold of lemon, root, and rind.

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She sifts in sunlight down
the stair with nothing on.

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Nor on her mind.

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We spy, beneath the
banister, a constant thresh

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of thigh on thigh.

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Her lips imprint the swinging
air that parts to let her parts

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go by.

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One-woman waterfall, she
wears her slow descent

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like a long cape, and
pausing on the final stair,

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collects her motions into shape.

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[APPLAUSE]

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