WEBVTT

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I was talking a bit today
in Barbara Anderson's class

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about the way in which,
or a way in which,

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my poetry changed when
I became a parent.

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And what I said then
was that I started

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to see in objects
that had hitherto been

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innocent and incapable
of working harm

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a capacity for devastation--

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stairs, objects on
a table, corners,

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things that you
could fall off of,

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things that could
come down on you.

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The whole world changes.

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And I discovered that I was
writing poems of peril--

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the peril that the world
can be to children.

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And some of these poems were
fairly general and others more

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particular to my own history--

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I found opened up to me
a part of that history

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I had not yet felt called to.

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I had a sister who died before
I was born at nine days old.

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It would seem that, as
losses go that wouldn't

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be too hard to bear.

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I wasn't, after all,
there when it happened.

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But there's a way
in which my family

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formed around her absence.

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I'd like to read a series
of poems-- three poems--

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written about my
sister, and then I'll

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read several more about
children in general.

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This poem, like "The Garden,"
has one title and then titles

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for the individual poems.

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And the single title
is "Descending Figure."

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The only thing I
think you need to know

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is that the middle section
describes a painting.

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"The Wanderer."

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At twilight, I went
into the street,

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the sun hung low in the iron
sky, ringed with cold plumage.

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If I could write to you
about this emptiness--

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along the curb,
groups of children

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were playing in the dry leaves.

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Long ago, at this hour, my
mother stood at the lawn's edge

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holding my little sister.

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Everyone was gone I was
playing in the dark street

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with my other sister, whom
death had made so lonely.

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Night after night, we watched
the screened porch filling

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with a gold magnetic light.

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Why was she never called?

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Often, I would let my
own name glide past me,

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though I craved its protection.

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