WEBVTT

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A few nights ago, I was
talking on the phone

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to a young poet friend
of mine named Willie.

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I said, Willie-- he
doesn't have any connection

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with the university--
and I said, "Willie, I'm

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going to be doing a reading at
the university Wednesday night.

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Why don't you come down there?"

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Willie said, "Oh man,
gee, that'd be great.

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That sounds like a lot of fun.

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Are you going to be there?"

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So Willie, if you're out there
in the fog somewhere I'm here.

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This is me.

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I read here last time in 1970.

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And since then I've
read a lot of places

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and pretty much all over
the country, enough at least

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to know that this is probably
the best and most challenging

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audience for poetry
in the United States.

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And I get that not only
from my own experience

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but from what other
poets have told me.

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It's not just
because of its size

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but because of its quality.

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It's a literate audience,
sophisticated audience,

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an audience that knows
poetry pretty well--

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I'm going to try to
get this out of my eye.

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And it's an audience which can
be critical, quite critical.

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I've seen this audience respond
with the great rolling volumes

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of silence at times--

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things like that.

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So it's a challenging audience.

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And I've enjoyed watching
it grow over the years.

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It's been wonderful.

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Some people think that
this audience is made up

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mostly of just people in
the English department,

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creative writing, and so on.

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But it isn't.

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This audience is a
cross-section audience.

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We let everybody come here.

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There are even people from
the speech department.

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The speech department
is very, very strange.

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I don't understand it.

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But I understand that
there's, sort of, two speech

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departments.

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It's, sort of,
bifurcated in some way.

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And people say it's like
two chocolate cakes,

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and one is plain and the other
one has all the nuts in it.

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And I think that the people
from the speech department who

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come to these readings
are from the one

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with all the nuts in it.

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But they are very interested,
the speech department.

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I think we are, in the
English department,

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we are a little bit conservative
and a little bit stodgy.

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But in the speech department
they burn their building down,

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and they do interesting
things that we don't do.

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We just don't have
that much imagination.

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They have a woman teaching
over there, is very dear to me,

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and she's usually
in this audience.

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They call her Mad Mary Maher.

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Her close friends
call her Crazy Mary.

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But she has a course
called "Body Language."

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And I tried to take it, but
they said my body was too old.

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And they wouldn't
even let me audit.

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I went over and
peeked in the window,

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but the gardener sprayed
me with the hose.

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And they have a fellow over
in the speech department

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called Goliath Williams.

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And his real name is David,
but they call him Goliath.

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He teaches a course, it's
just called "Communications,"

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and he teaches it
with a baseball bat.

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He got his training at the
state prison working with me

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two or three years ago.

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They say it's a very
memorable course.

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We're kind of conservative
in the English department,

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and we don't really have that
sort of interesting people.

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We have some interesting
secretaries though.

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And we have one secretary,
she's very attractive,

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her name is Pat.

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And there's a strange
thing about her--

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I have never seen
her in all the years

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she works here when
she didn't have

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a pair of scissors in her hand.

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I don't know why
exactly, and she's

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always in this defensive
posture, like this.

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I think she has had some
trouble with some of the faculty

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members.

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But I think things are looking
up in the English department.

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I think we're going to get more
interesting as time goes on.

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We have a new chairman
of the department,

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and he's very young.

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And we like him a lot.

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He's very energetic.

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He's very young.

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He came this summer
and for the first week

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he wore short pants to work, and
somebody finally sent him home

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to put his long
pants on and they

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discovered he didn't have any.

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He's very young.

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But we always have, at least,
an interesting dean and--

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well, liberal arts dean.

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Well what I really
mean to say, I guess,

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is that the most interesting
thing about the dean

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is his wife.

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His wife is very interesting.

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She's very beautiful.

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And they tell me
she's a psychiatrist.

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I guess she must be very bright.

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Everybody says it's a good
thing that the dean's wife is

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a psychiatrist so he doesn't
have to go out for treatment.

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I think I just saw the dean.

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I think I blew it.

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Well, that's the way
it is with deans,

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they're always
snooping around instead

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of staying in their office
doing whatever it is they do.

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I don't know what that is.

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But they snoop around, and
you can't recognize them

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because they look just
like normal people.

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Almost.

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It's amazing how
few poems have been

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written about college deans.

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Have you ever
thought about that?

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I think there's a moral in it.

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I don't know what it is.

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But I do know of one,
and I think I'll read it.

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It's by one of my favorite
poets, by Kenneth Patchen,

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and it's called "The Cowboy
Who Went to College."

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It's very short.

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I'll try to read this
a little bit the way

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Kenneth Patchen read it,
but nobody can really

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read like Kenneth Patchen.

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He was probably
the best reader--

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one of the two best
readers of this century.

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"The Cowboy Who
Went to College."

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"There was a cowboy who went
to college, where somebody

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spilled ink on his horse.

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He went to the dean in
charge of such things

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and was told by that gentleman
that that gentleman had just

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popped out to the can again.

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"Oh, he has, has he!"

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says the cowboy.

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"And me thinking it might be
an accident-- why, hell, it's

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part of the damn curriculum!"

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