WEBVTT

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I want to read a poem that--

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a couple of poems that
concern friendship.

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Steve and I, when
we were at Iowa,

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had a mutual friend by the name
of Dave Schloss, who we later

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had a falling out with
in a poem that I'll

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read to you afterwards and
have since become friends

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with again.

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But-- this poem,
if I can find it.

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This is a poem
dedicated to David.

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When I was teaching
in Oregon, as I

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guess I implied when I was
talking about driving out

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there, I was in the
midst of a bad marriage,

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where my wife and I
defeated each other's egos,

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I guess, constantly,
but we loved each other,

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unfortunately.

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We stayed together for
years because of that.

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It was a destructive
kind of love.

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And so I was in a
marriage like that.

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I was thousands of miles
away from my best friends.

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I was going through
the paranoias

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of early teaching and
the long, Portland winter

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where it rained
seven days a week.

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And I got fairly crazy.

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And I wanted to write my
friend David a letter,

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just to make some sort
of contact with him.

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Happened I hadn't been
successful writing poems

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at all at that time.

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And it started to become a poem,
so I turned it into a poem.

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But I called the
poem "A Letter," OK?

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It's addressed to him.

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It's a little bit
surreal in the beginning.

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It's in four short parts.

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Speaking of surrealism, my
son is 3 and 1/2 years old,

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and I asked him two
days ago what he

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wanted to be when he grew up--

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when he grew up, and
he said, a golf course.

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[LAUGHTER]

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That's ambition, huh?

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[LAUGHTER]

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God.

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I asked him-- you know,
you want to show off when

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he does something like that.

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So we asked him in
front of someone

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else today-- his
pediatrician, in fact.

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I said, what do you want to be?

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And he said, I want to be
a golf course or a fly.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well.

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Beginning of the
poem is odd, and I'll

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have to explain
something to you.

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When we lived in
Portland, Oregon,

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we had wild possums that lived
in our house behind our stove.

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Evidently, one of
them was giving birth.

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And we'd go out
at night and hear

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the skitter of little feet,
and these strange possums

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would be around the house.

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And we'd feed them
and so on, but they--

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possums are evidently so dumb
that they can't remember you

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the next time they see you.

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And that's a
reference to the part

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that-- the beginning of the
poem refers to the possums.

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"A Letter for David Schloss."

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I put my soul in a tin dish.

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All night, the possums laughed.

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Next, I put my brain
in the tin dish.

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It was slick.

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I put my brain in the
tin dish, god awful.

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I put my brain in the tin
dish, the brain pan, the bowl.

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I didn't want it.

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One night, my hand became--"
this is a weird poem.

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"One night, my hand
became a tarantula,

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but I kissed its head.

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I put my mouth down
in the dark fur,

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turned it over, breathed
into the warm belly of palm.

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And such repose,
David, came over me.

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But the other one, the
hairless one, was a hand.

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It shook in fear.

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Now I have two
hands, no intellect,

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and each refuses to cut
off the hated other.

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Every year, I feel older.

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It's normal, a task I don't love
and haven't the time to hate.

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Powerless now, I walk
out, and inarticulate, I

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breathe into the faces
of the undergraduates.

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A girl said, Mr. Anderson,
you know so much,

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and I touched her.

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But my good hand ran along
my face, its wilderness.

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And David, but for love of you
and some others, I'd give up.

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You said, I can't
find my life either.

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It falls all winter.

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It falls into your hair and your
eyes, making them wet again,

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the lost freshness for which
we hurt ourselves and write

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these letters.

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[APPLAUSE]

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A scattering of
applause for that one.

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[LAUGHS]

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