WEBVTT

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Thank you, Lois.

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I feel intimidated tonight
because just before I

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came to Tucson, we were
at a poetry reading

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given by Robert Pinsky.

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And someone afterwards asked him
to justify poetry readings, why

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he gave them, because
the person who asked

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said that it was too
difficult to understand poetry

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when you just listen to it.

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And he agreed.

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And so I am very much under
the influence of that.

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[LAUGHING]

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The poet who asked--
the person who asked it

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was a poet herself.

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Well, nevertheless, I'd like
to start with the poem called

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"Naming The Animals."

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This is what Adam is supposed
to have done as you know,

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giving names to all the animals.

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"Until he named
the horse, horse,

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hooves left no
prints on the earth.

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Manes had not been invented.

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Swiftness and grace
were not married.

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Until he named the cow, cow,
no one slept standing up.

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No one saw through opaque eyes.

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Food was chewed only once.

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Only after he named
the fish, fish

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did the light put on skins
of yellow and silver oil,

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revealing itself as a
dancer and high jump

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champion of the world,
just as later he

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had to name the
woman love before he

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could put on the
knowledge of who

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she was with her small hands."

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