WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.710 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.710 --> 00:00:02.810 align:middle line:84% We are particularly grateful tonight 00:00:02.810 --> 00:00:05.060 align:middle line:84% to two friends of the Poetry Center; 00:00:05.060 --> 00:00:07.070 align:middle line:84% Hunter Wessells and Bokgi Choi, who 00:00:07.070 --> 00:00:08.630 align:middle line:90% have made the visit possible. 00:00:08.630 --> 00:00:10.260 align:middle line:84% From the distinguished poet Roland 00:00:10.260 --> 00:00:12.360 align:middle line:90% Flint, our thanks to them. 00:00:12.360 --> 00:00:16.309 align:middle line:84% We've been interested recently in talking about influences 00:00:16.309 --> 00:00:19.670 align:middle line:84% and talking about the influences of older poets on younger poets, 00:00:19.670 --> 00:00:22.670 align:middle line:84% but there are other influences that are important as well. 00:00:22.670 --> 00:00:26.270 align:middle line:84% Hunter studied with Professor Flint at Georgetown University, 00:00:26.270 --> 00:00:29.330 align:middle line:84% and although he's gone into the field of medicine 00:00:29.330 --> 00:00:33.260 align:middle line:84% he remains a serious reader of poetry. 00:00:33.260 --> 00:00:35.810 align:middle line:84% And Roland seems to have had that effect on a number 00:00:35.810 --> 00:00:37.230 align:middle line:90% of students around the country. 00:00:37.230 --> 00:00:41.660 align:middle line:84% We've been hearing tales of the Renaissance, people he's 00:00:41.660 --> 00:00:43.290 align:middle line:90% influenced from here to there. 00:00:43.290 --> 00:00:48.050 align:middle line:84% So it's an opportunity to celebrate that kind of influence 00:00:48.050 --> 00:00:52.640 align:middle line:84% on the part of a professor as well as the work of this writer. 00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:55.433 align:middle line:84% Originally from Park River, North [AUDIO OUT] Roland Flint 00:00:55.433 --> 00:00:56.850 align:middle line:84% has lived for many years in Silver 00:00:56.850 --> 00:00:58.610 align:middle line:84% Spring, Maryland, where he taught 00:00:58.610 --> 00:01:02.780 align:middle line:84% at Georgetown University from 1968 until his retirement 00:01:02.780 --> 00:01:04.319 align:middle line:90% last year. 00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:07.130 align:middle line:84% He's the author of eight poetry books, including: 00:01:07.130 --> 00:01:12.860 align:middle line:84% And Mourning in 1975, Resuming Green: selected 00:01:12.860 --> 00:01:18.290 align:middle line:84% poems 1965 to 1982, Stubborn selected 00:01:18.290 --> 00:01:22.790 align:middle line:84% by Dave Smith for the 1990 National Poetry Series, 00:01:22.790 --> 00:01:27.470 align:middle line:84% Pigeon published in 1991, and the ninth, Easy, 00:01:27.470 --> 00:01:31.250 align:middle line:84% which will be published this spring by LSU Press. 00:01:31.250 --> 00:01:33.470 align:middle line:84% Among his awards and distinctions, 00:01:33.470 --> 00:01:37.730 align:middle line:84% he's been named the Poet Laureate of Maryland in 1995, 00:01:37.730 --> 00:01:40.670 align:middle line:84% he's the recipient of both a discovery grant 00:01:40.670 --> 00:01:44.900 align:middle line:84% and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. 00:01:44.900 --> 00:01:48.290 align:middle line:84% He was a silver medalist in the Council for Advancement 00:01:48.290 --> 00:01:52.700 align:middle line:84% and Support of Education's National Professor of the Year 00:01:52.700 --> 00:01:55.100 align:middle line:90% award in 1987. 00:01:55.100 --> 00:01:57.570 align:middle line:84% And he recently completed a [AUDIO OUT] 00:01:57.570 --> 00:02:01.370 align:middle line:84% at the Cadillac of Arts colonies, the Rockefeller 00:02:01.370 --> 00:02:05.900 align:middle line:84% Foundation's Bellagio facility in Italy. 00:02:05.900 --> 00:02:08.930 align:middle line:84% He's also published three books in translation from Bulgarian. 00:02:08.930 --> 00:02:10.970 align:middle line:84% And one of his books, Pigeon in the Night, 00:02:10.970 --> 00:02:15.860 align:middle line:84% was published in a bilingual edition, Bulgarian and English. 00:02:15.860 --> 00:02:19.520 align:middle line:84% Flint's work has been likened to that of Chekhov and James 00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:20.600 align:middle line:90% Wright. 00:02:20.600 --> 00:02:23.630 align:middle line:84% Of his National Poetry Series award winning book, 00:02:23.630 --> 00:02:28.040 align:middle line:84% Stubborn, his North Dakota compatriot Thomas McGrath 00:02:28.040 --> 00:02:31.910 align:middle line:84% wrote, "Few have written with such powerful candor 00:02:31.910 --> 00:02:35.630 align:middle line:84% about themselves, and few have celebrated so 00:02:35.630 --> 00:02:40.400 align:middle line:84% well the homely, the mad, and the lost." 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:43.190 align:middle line:84% James Wright found Flint's purity 00:02:43.190 --> 00:02:49.430 align:middle line:84% of feeling beyond question, a purity fulfilled in writing. 00:02:49.430 --> 00:02:53.030 align:middle line:84% And that purity is perhaps most remarkably embodied 00:02:53.030 --> 00:02:56.450 align:middle line:84% in the beautiful poem, A Letter Home. 00:02:56.450 --> 00:02:58.700 align:middle line:84% Flint's poems have the plain style of Wright, 00:02:58.700 --> 00:03:01.910 align:middle line:84% and the dramatized clarity of emotion of Chekhov. 00:03:01.910 --> 00:03:06.200 align:middle line:84% But I also see in his book, Pigeon, a raucous 00:03:06.200 --> 00:03:10.550 align:middle line:84% and tender whimsy in both mood and language, 00:03:10.550 --> 00:03:13.520 align:middle line:84% which creates the persona of Pigeon 00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:17.270 align:middle line:84% in the manner of Berryman's Henry, or Linda Gregg's 00:03:17.270 --> 00:03:21.710 align:middle line:84% Alma, or Zbigniew Herbert's Mr. Cogito. 00:03:21.710 --> 00:03:25.070 align:middle line:84% Effective stand in for the self that 00:03:25.070 --> 00:03:30.830 align:middle line:84% allows a playful freedom, at once emotionally close to home 00:03:30.830 --> 00:03:36.500 align:middle line:84% and aesthetically remote: Pigeon, a plain and clumsy bird. 00:03:36.500 --> 00:03:39.680 align:middle line:84% This particular bird knows himself 00:03:39.680 --> 00:03:43.880 align:middle line:84% to be a compulsive meddler, needler and nag. 00:03:43.880 --> 00:03:48.770 align:middle line:84% Pigeon sings out his contradictory self-acceptance 00:03:48.770 --> 00:03:54.740 align:middle line:84% and self castigation in the haltingly perfect music 00:03:54.740 --> 00:03:57.590 align:middle line:90% of human imperfection. 00:03:57.590 --> 00:03:59.495 align:middle line:90% Please welcome Roland Flint. 00:03:59.495 --> 00:04:02.732 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:04:02.732 --> 00:04:11.030 align:middle line:90% 00:04:11.030 --> 00:04:11.720 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:11.720 --> 00:04:17.480 align:middle line:90% 00:04:17.480 --> 00:04:18.860 align:middle line:90% "Skin. 00:04:18.860 --> 00:04:22.760 align:middle line:84% If the wood is good grain and the carpenter, 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:28.670 align:middle line:84% the fit, the caulking, the cast will be good. 00:04:28.670 --> 00:04:32.420 align:middle line:84% And if the grapes are good, the wood and the wine 00:04:32.420 --> 00:04:38.670 align:middle line:84% will improve each other in the dark long days of aging. 00:04:38.670 --> 00:04:42.290 align:middle line:84% The separate tastes of earth will taste again 00:04:42.290 --> 00:04:47.450 align:middle line:84% and change again each other, until like membrane somehow 00:04:47.450 --> 00:04:50.600 align:middle line:84% in and between the wood and wine. 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:57.420 align:middle line:84% There will be no separation, wood from dark, from wine. 00:04:57.420 --> 00:05:01.200 align:middle line:84% When this goes on, anything can happen. 00:05:01.200 --> 00:05:05.830 align:middle line:90% Go back to mystery. 00:05:05.830 --> 00:05:12.180 align:middle line:84% And I'm grateful to my small poem for teaching me this again, 00:05:12.180 --> 00:05:15.270 align:middle line:84% that my God is still the moment where 00:05:15.270 --> 00:05:18.060 align:middle line:90% the wood is no longer itself. 00:05:18.060 --> 00:05:21.195 align:middle line:84% Where the wine is no longer only itself." 00:05:21.195 --> 00:05:25.550 align:middle line:90% 00:05:25.550 --> 00:05:29.210 align:middle line:84% That's a poem from an early book, out of print now. 00:05:29.210 --> 00:05:32.390 align:middle line:84% And I've never read here before, so I 00:05:32.390 --> 00:05:36.980 align:middle line:84% take the liberty of reading some few early poems before moving 00:05:36.980 --> 00:05:38.750 align:middle line:90% to some later one. 00:05:38.750 --> 00:05:41.840 align:middle line:84% Can you hear me in the background? 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:45.270 align:middle line:84% Any trouble at all when I'm reading as quietly as this? 00:05:45.270 --> 00:05:45.770 align:middle line:90% Good. 00:05:45.770 --> 00:05:55.150 align:middle line:90% 00:05:55.150 --> 00:05:59.890 align:middle line:90% This is a poem called Say It. 00:05:59.890 --> 00:06:03.520 align:middle line:84% Having lent my apartment to visiting friends, 00:06:03.520 --> 00:06:05.650 align:middle line:84% I was sleeping in a strange basement 00:06:05.650 --> 00:06:09.400 align:middle line:84% and I was wakened by a crumb in my ear. 00:06:09.400 --> 00:06:14.560 align:middle line:84% I tried to shake it out tossing my head, no luck. 00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:17.260 align:middle line:84% It was not a crumb, though I didn't know it yet, 00:06:17.260 --> 00:06:18.910 align:middle line:90% it was a bug. 00:06:18.910 --> 00:06:20.240 align:middle line:90% Not small. 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:23.470 align:middle line:84% So burrowed in my friend couldn't see it when I finally 00:06:23.470 --> 00:06:25.330 align:middle line:90% called her to look. 00:06:25.330 --> 00:06:28.810 align:middle line:84% Sweating, cold, crazed, thinking of death, 00:06:28.810 --> 00:06:34.000 align:middle line:84% feeling it moved deeper, gurgling, in and in. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.750 align:middle line:84% I poured water in to drown it, and pried it out 00:06:37.750 --> 00:06:39.880 align:middle line:90% with a cuticle knife. 00:06:39.880 --> 00:06:43.420 align:middle line:84% Pure dread, I was awake for hours. 00:06:43.420 --> 00:06:45.250 align:middle line:84% Late the next day, I was telling how 00:06:45.250 --> 00:06:50.770 align:middle line:84% fine the previous day had been, how wrong to end like that. 00:06:50.770 --> 00:06:53.500 align:middle line:84% And then slowly, and then suddenly, 00:06:53.500 --> 00:06:57.250 align:middle line:84% I realized what the thing in my ear had said. 00:06:57.250 --> 00:07:02.440 align:middle line:84% It said, "Listen, this will make you hear what kind of day 00:07:02.440 --> 00:07:03.970 align:middle line:90% it was. 00:07:03.970 --> 00:07:09.340 align:middle line:84% Slow, and warm, and fine, a two mile run in the rain. 00:07:09.340 --> 00:07:11.080 align:middle line:84% A new book on the great Jefferson 00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:13.990 align:middle line:84% begun, people pleased with your own book. 00:07:13.990 --> 00:07:18.850 align:middle line:84% Proofs, children laughing, calling. 00:07:18.850 --> 00:07:22.750 align:middle line:84% And most good-- and at the start of your fifth decade, 00:07:22.750 --> 00:07:24.460 align:middle line:90% most strange-- 00:07:24.460 --> 00:07:29.380 align:middle line:84% a beautiful woman loves you, so the dank corners lightened. 00:07:29.380 --> 00:07:33.760 align:middle line:84% Listen how she came to you at noon with love, 00:07:33.760 --> 00:07:36.490 align:middle line:84% how you went to her at night for love 00:07:36.490 --> 00:07:40.390 align:middle line:84% and found the light was in you singing. 00:07:40.390 --> 00:07:45.730 align:middle line:84% I couldn't hear it until now, the brown, ugly, implacable bug 00:07:45.730 --> 00:07:49.870 align:middle line:84% saying, "Pay attention, this is back 00:07:49.870 --> 00:07:55.090 align:middle line:84% of any perfect day, madness, the child's death, 00:07:55.090 --> 00:07:57.430 align:middle line:90% and will not stop. 00:07:57.430 --> 00:08:00.310 align:middle line:84% And saying by the difference, will you 00:08:00.310 --> 00:08:04.540 align:middle line:84% hear now which side of days you have. 00:08:04.540 --> 00:08:08.050 align:middle line:84% Then thank a mystery that speaks your name. 00:08:08.050 --> 00:08:12.864 align:middle line:84% Thank every trick in your ear, and listen. 00:08:12.864 --> 00:08:14.360 align:middle line:90% [CLEARING THROAT] 00:08:14.360 --> 00:08:16.220 align:middle line:84% From this book, it's the shortest. 00:08:16.220 --> 00:08:19.340 align:middle line:90% It's called "And morning in." 00:08:19.340 --> 00:08:22.910 align:middle line:84% On a fence post, the rooster simply saying 00:08:22.910 --> 00:08:26.510 align:middle line:84% to the sun, our father, "Hello old car. 00:08:26.510 --> 00:08:30.950 align:middle line:90% I'm up again, and so are you." 00:08:30.950 --> 00:08:32.960 align:middle line:84% Just to bother you with this once more, 00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:35.480 align:middle line:84% could you hear that all right in the back? 00:08:35.480 --> 00:08:37.159 align:middle line:90% All the way back? 00:08:37.159 --> 00:08:38.133 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:08:38.133 --> 00:08:42.080 align:middle line:90% [CLEARING THROAT] 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:47.210 align:middle line:84% I want to read some poem from this book, Stubborn, now. 00:08:47.210 --> 00:08:49.250 align:middle line:84% And I want to intersperse along the way 00:08:49.250 --> 00:08:53.450 align:middle line:90% some things I'm working on now. 00:08:53.450 --> 00:08:57.960 align:middle line:90% 00:08:57.960 --> 00:09:03.440 align:middle line:84% So here is a poem called "Measure for Elizabeth." 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:05.990 align:middle line:84% My daughter Elizabeth, who's 34 now, 00:09:05.990 --> 00:09:12.710 align:middle line:84% was 19 and going through some confusing transitions. 00:09:12.710 --> 00:09:15.248 align:middle line:84% And I was in upstate New York, and all of the leaves 00:09:15.248 --> 00:09:16.040 align:middle line:90% should have fallen. 00:09:16.040 --> 00:09:18.020 align:middle line:84% But outside my window was a little maple 00:09:18.020 --> 00:09:19.730 align:middle line:84% that seemed to have all of its leaves, 00:09:19.730 --> 00:09:25.550 align:middle line:84% but they were a fine faded yellow. 00:09:25.550 --> 00:09:29.450 align:middle line:84% And behind them were dark evergreens. 00:09:29.450 --> 00:09:31.130 align:middle line:84% And I don't know exactly the connection, 00:09:31.130 --> 00:09:31.838 align:middle line:90% [CLEARING THROAT] 00:09:31.838 --> 00:09:33.740 align:middle line:84% Even now having written this, but I offer 00:09:33.740 --> 00:09:36.740 align:middle line:90% it: "Measure for Elizabeth." 00:09:36.740 --> 00:09:39.140 align:middle line:84% I don't gauge the light perfection, 00:09:39.140 --> 00:09:41.330 align:middle line:90% until I see the small maple. 00:09:41.330 --> 00:09:44.390 align:middle line:84% Slender, full leafed in its yellows 00:09:44.390 --> 00:09:47.090 align:middle line:84% up against the taller evergreens. 00:09:47.090 --> 00:09:50.810 align:middle line:84% The slanting Indian summer seems lofted by late afternoon, just 00:09:50.810 --> 00:09:53.720 align:middle line:84% over their tops to light this tree. 00:09:53.720 --> 00:09:57.290 align:middle line:84% Its buff transparencies fragile to airiness. 00:09:57.290 --> 00:10:00.920 align:middle line:84% As if so near the edge of every leaf's releasing, 00:10:00.920 --> 00:10:03.800 align:middle line:84% a chill would let them down at once. 00:10:03.800 --> 00:10:07.790 align:middle line:84% It is deciduous, from the Latin verb, to fall. 00:10:07.790 --> 00:10:11.930 align:middle line:84% And here before it joins an ancient language, 00:10:11.930 --> 00:10:14.300 align:middle line:84% it is oriental grace and feminine 00:10:14.300 --> 00:10:17.660 align:middle line:84% with delicate sachet leaning or moving 00:10:17.660 --> 00:10:21.410 align:middle line:84% to the permanent greens [INAUDIBLE] 00:10:21.410 --> 00:10:26.360 align:middle line:84% Yes, slender and just emerging in her name, one 00:10:26.360 --> 00:10:32.510 align:middle line:84% arm before her one hand up to hold the pine needle branch away 00:10:32.510 --> 00:10:36.185 align:middle line:84% as she takes quick small steps to enter. 00:10:36.185 --> 00:10:39.898 align:middle line:90% 00:10:39.898 --> 00:10:41.380 align:middle line:90% [CLEARING THROAT] 00:10:41.380 --> 00:10:47.450 align:middle line:84% I have a poem about writing in a way called "Late September, 00:10:47.450 --> 00:10:48.970 align:middle line:90% early morning." 00:10:48.970 --> 00:10:56.200 align:middle line:84% And it really came about because Garrison Keillor's book, 00:10:56.200 --> 00:11:01.450 align:middle line:84% Lake Wobegon Days, was on the bestseller list for a year. 00:11:01.450 --> 00:11:04.450 align:middle line:84% Hardcover in hardcover for a year. 00:11:04.450 --> 00:11:09.070 align:middle line:84% He's an old friend of mine, and this poem came from it. 00:11:09.070 --> 00:11:10.990 align:middle line:90% "Late September, early morning." 00:11:10.990 --> 00:11:13.300 align:middle line:84% It's fall, but he's written his fall poems, 00:11:13.300 --> 00:11:16.970 align:middle line:84% his harvest poems, and here comes each poem. 00:11:16.970 --> 00:11:19.310 align:middle line:84% Few have noticed but he's tried everything. 00:11:19.310 --> 00:11:23.590 align:middle line:84% Including birth, life, and death poems, the dying Christ, God, 00:11:23.590 --> 00:11:25.240 align:middle line:90% the ministry of work poems. 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:27.880 align:middle line:84% The insouciance, especially, Ivan Spornitz's, 00:11:27.880 --> 00:11:32.500 align:middle line:84% Bunk McVane's, and his father, grandmother, Rose, and others. 00:11:32.500 --> 00:11:35.620 align:middle line:84% Himself, he's covered like a wall poster full. 00:11:35.620 --> 00:11:39.970 align:middle line:84% He's even tried Alaska and Korea, Bulgaria, and Iwo Jima, 00:11:39.970 --> 00:11:41.690 align:middle line:90% no visit required. 00:11:41.690 --> 00:11:44.980 align:middle line:84% So now he's trying to wait, patient to strike 00:11:44.980 --> 00:11:48.820 align:middle line:84% under his peculiar illusion and weed it counts. 00:11:48.820 --> 00:11:51.490 align:middle line:84% But something stubborn wants him scribbling daily, 00:11:51.490 --> 00:11:54.820 align:middle line:84% even if it is the only thing to write about. 00:11:54.820 --> 00:11:57.070 align:middle line:84% Like straw blown through a tree, it's in him. 00:11:57.070 --> 00:11:59.830 align:middle line:84% Or gratitude to get up before dawn, 00:11:59.830 --> 00:12:02.710 align:middle line:84% to sit at the cricketing window while letting it in 00:12:02.710 --> 00:12:05.350 align:middle line:90% and then to put it down here. 00:12:05.350 --> 00:12:09.520 align:middle line:84% And after seeing his old friend madly flogging his book months 00:12:09.520 --> 00:12:12.400 align:middle line:84% now atop the Times bestseller list, 00:12:12.400 --> 00:12:16.690 align:middle line:84% he's trying to work up a solace that his obscurity, 00:12:16.690 --> 00:12:20.920 align:middle line:84% like this early morning star, is the perfect light to work in. 00:12:20.920 --> 00:12:23.797 align:middle line:90% 00:12:23.797 --> 00:12:24.880 align:middle line:90% It didn't work, of course. 00:12:24.880 --> 00:12:38.310 align:middle line:90% 00:12:38.310 --> 00:12:41.460 align:middle line:84% Here's a poem called "What I have tried to say to you." 00:12:41.460 --> 00:12:47.550 align:middle line:84% After a tragedy in the family, what I have tried to say to you. 00:12:47.550 --> 00:12:51.510 align:middle line:84% That there are ways to love the life you haven't had, 00:12:51.510 --> 00:12:54.750 align:middle line:84% ways to forgive the one you have. 00:12:54.750 --> 00:12:58.500 align:middle line:84% That while your brother wasn't killed to test anyone, 00:12:58.500 --> 00:13:04.260 align:middle line:84% his death is somehow allowed by the mystery requiring our lives 00:13:04.260 --> 00:13:07.320 align:middle line:84% to have this permanent pull at the middle. 00:13:07.320 --> 00:13:11.460 align:middle line:84% Our lives are what they have been, unrevisable. 00:13:11.460 --> 00:13:17.100 align:middle line:84% Changed only in our responses, if we are still ready somehow, 00:13:17.100 --> 00:13:21.900 align:middle line:84% for the next day, the next person, poem, chance. 00:13:21.900 --> 00:13:26.490 align:middle line:84% Even prepared, however unready for the next death, 00:13:26.490 --> 00:13:28.350 align:middle line:84% can we permanently grieve the boy 00:13:28.350 --> 00:13:31.170 align:middle line:84% with hating what has become of him? 00:13:31.170 --> 00:13:33.390 align:middle line:90% What has become of him? 00:13:33.390 --> 00:13:35.610 align:middle line:90% He has returned to mystery. 00:13:35.610 --> 00:13:40.470 align:middle line:84% The same one that is our life, mine and yours this morning. 00:13:40.470 --> 00:13:44.670 align:middle line:84% The continuing shapes we never see up there, this afternoon, 00:13:44.670 --> 00:13:46.300 align:middle line:90% tomorrow. 00:13:46.300 --> 00:13:50.220 align:middle line:84% So he is already ahead of time in everything we do. 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:54.450 align:middle line:84% I feel it often, that I am living my life in part for him. 00:13:54.450 --> 00:13:59.010 align:middle line:84% Not permanently dead in us, but telling how we'd rather 00:13:59.010 --> 00:14:01.620 align:middle line:90% he had lived than not. 00:14:01.620 --> 00:14:03.780 align:middle line:84% Remember our game of listening in the park 00:14:03.780 --> 00:14:06.990 align:middle line:84% to hear the woods fill up with sounds, birds mostly, 00:14:06.990 --> 00:14:10.470 align:middle line:84% from farther and farther away the longer we listen. 00:14:10.470 --> 00:14:16.020 align:middle line:84% He seems now especially to have listened raptly, eyes closed. 00:14:16.020 --> 00:14:20.190 align:middle line:84% As if to singing, as if he were entering the song. 00:14:20.190 --> 00:14:22.860 align:middle line:84% And like the way he usually walked far ahead of us 00:14:22.860 --> 00:14:28.080 align:middle line:84% or far behind, already gone to his own music. 00:14:28.080 --> 00:14:31.740 align:middle line:84% When I think how long it is since he has entered all silent, 00:14:31.740 --> 00:14:34.470 align:middle line:84% it takes me by the heart to think 00:14:34.470 --> 00:14:36.870 align:middle line:84% those sounds like light have stayed 00:14:36.870 --> 00:14:40.170 align:middle line:90% in whatever we are left to be. 00:14:40.170 --> 00:14:42.810 align:middle line:84% That songs we heard those days are from the place he's 00:14:42.810 --> 00:14:44.370 align:middle line:90% gone away to. 00:14:44.370 --> 00:14:47.220 align:middle line:84% A singing in the mystery is connecting us, 00:14:47.220 --> 00:14:51.320 align:middle line:84% if we can stop and be quiet and listen. 00:14:51.320 --> 00:14:54.940 align:middle line:90% 00:14:54.940 --> 00:15:01.870 align:middle line:84% And after Jim Wright's death that book 00:15:01.870 --> 00:15:05.410 align:middle line:90% came out, The Last Journey. 00:15:05.410 --> 00:15:12.970 align:middle line:84% And I wrote this poem called Jim. 00:15:12.970 --> 00:15:14.590 align:middle line:84% And it is based on something that 00:15:14.590 --> 00:15:16.870 align:middle line:90% happened years ago, right then. 00:15:16.870 --> 00:15:20.740 align:middle line:84% I think it was John Logan or James Dickey read at the Newman 00:15:20.740 --> 00:15:23.710 align:middle line:84% Center at the University of Minnesota on campus, 00:15:23.710 --> 00:15:28.240 align:middle line:84% and Wright had been out to Robert Bly's farm. 00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:32.080 align:middle line:84% And he stopped reading, and was looking for a poem. 00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:35.800 align:middle line:84% And he looked [AUDIO OUT] a briefcase and said, 00:15:35.800 --> 00:15:38.350 align:middle line:90% "I guess David ate it." 00:15:38.350 --> 00:15:39.730 align:middle line:90% David was Bly's horse. 00:15:39.730 --> 00:15:40.930 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLE] 00:15:40.930 --> 00:15:43.750 align:middle line:84% And he had seen the horse over at the edge of the corral 00:15:43.750 --> 00:15:48.940 align:middle line:84% with his snout, with his muzzle in the briefcase 00:15:48.940 --> 00:15:51.070 align:middle line:84% and he said, "I guess David ate the poem." 00:15:51.070 --> 00:15:53.200 align:middle line:84% And if you see Wright's collected poems, 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:56.050 align:middle line:84% there's a blank page that has a [INAUDIBLE] in memory 00:15:56.050 --> 00:15:59.860 align:middle line:84% of the horse David who ate one of my poems. 00:15:59.860 --> 00:16:02.380 align:middle line:90% A blank page. 00:16:02.380 --> 00:16:04.690 align:middle line:84% But at any rate, in this reading after he 00:16:04.690 --> 00:16:07.900 align:middle line:84% said, "I think the horse ate my poem," people laughed. 00:16:07.900 --> 00:16:10.420 align:middle line:84% And he paused with perfect comic timing 00:16:10.420 --> 00:16:13.630 align:middle line:84% and said, "That's all right, I've had my poems chewed up 00:16:13.630 --> 00:16:16.030 align:middle line:90% by critics I admire less." 00:16:16.030 --> 00:16:19.000 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:24.280 align:middle line:84% Jim, I gave my lunch apple to a horse yesterday. 00:16:24.280 --> 00:16:27.100 align:middle line:84% And remembered the horse who was your friend, 00:16:27.100 --> 00:16:32.390 align:middle line:84% David, eating the only copy of one poem in Minnesota. 00:16:32.390 --> 00:16:37.120 align:middle line:84% So last night I reread your final book again [AUDIO OUT] 00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:41.680 align:middle line:84% among the Ohio, French, and especially Italian people 00:16:41.680 --> 00:16:45.130 align:middle line:84% and animals of your last journey. 00:16:45.130 --> 00:16:49.390 align:middle line:84% Some of the resolved gentleness here makes me cry. 00:16:49.390 --> 00:16:51.280 align:middle line:84% Your welcoming of the blue spider 00:16:51.280 --> 00:16:56.560 align:middle line:84% not so much as this late acceptance of the self. 00:16:56.560 --> 00:17:01.480 align:middle line:84% I was often moved when you wrote of your preferring lions 00:17:01.480 --> 00:17:03.100 align:middle line:90% in his name. 00:17:03.100 --> 00:17:08.170 align:middle line:84% Small wonder Jesus wept at a human city. 00:17:08.170 --> 00:17:10.000 align:middle line:84% But I am more moved now, when you 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:13.960 align:middle line:84% make me believe the turtle to be a man of God. 00:17:13.960 --> 00:17:18.460 align:middle line:84% With its religious face meaning unswervably perfect to itself 00:17:18.460 --> 00:17:23.140 align:middle line:84% I guess to you, perfect to me in your language. 00:17:23.140 --> 00:17:27.460 align:middle line:84% Holding the book I read watching your father and the fat Ohioans 00:17:27.460 --> 00:17:29.470 align:middle line:90% tremble in my hands. 00:17:29.470 --> 00:17:31.420 align:middle line:90% I close it at last. 00:17:31.420 --> 00:17:33.190 align:middle line:84% And looking at the jacket back, I 00:17:33.190 --> 00:17:37.480 align:middle line:84% bid the picture and your name goodnight. 00:17:37.480 --> 00:17:42.160 align:middle line:84% Then in the dark, I try to sleep [AUDIO OUT] the stone, beasts, 00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:46.480 align:middle line:84% ghosts, and angels of my stubborn grief 00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:51.400 align:middle line:90% who bear Ohio after Fano. 00:17:51.400 --> 00:17:54.640 align:middle line:84% I should have reminded you, of course, that writers from Ohio, 00:17:54.640 --> 00:17:57.520 align:middle line:84% and Fano with this town in Italy that he partly 00:17:57.520 --> 00:18:01.300 align:middle line:84% dedicated his last book to, "To Fano, where Annie and I got 00:18:01.300 --> 00:18:02.470 align:middle line:90% well," something like that. 00:18:02.470 --> 00:18:05.802 align:middle line:90% 00:18:05.802 --> 00:18:08.658 align:middle line:90% [COUGH] 00:18:08.658 --> 00:18:11.942 align:middle line:90% 00:18:11.942 --> 00:18:13.400 align:middle line:84% Well, I think I want to jump ahead. 00:18:13.400 --> 00:18:18.800 align:middle line:84% Jump a little out of order and read a poem from the New book 00:18:18.800 --> 00:18:21.710 align:middle line:90% called Monkey House. 00:18:21.710 --> 00:18:23.810 align:middle line:84% I seem to need to do this when I feel 00:18:23.810 --> 00:18:29.090 align:middle line:84% I'm being too grave, or too taken 00:18:29.090 --> 00:18:34.100 align:middle line:90% with myself and my sorrows. 00:18:34.100 --> 00:18:37.820 align:middle line:84% So I'm looking for a poem called Monkey House. 00:18:37.820 --> 00:18:39.530 align:middle line:84% This is about an occasion that happened 00:18:39.530 --> 00:18:44.060 align:middle line:84% when my children were five and three in the national zoo 00:18:44.060 --> 00:18:46.340 align:middle line:90% in Washington. 00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:49.940 align:middle line:84% There had been a lot of rain for several days. 00:18:49.940 --> 00:18:52.460 align:middle line:84% And in all of the big creature enclosures 00:18:52.460 --> 00:18:57.190 align:middle line:84% there were, but at the zoo they call carousels. 00:18:57.190 --> 00:18:58.940 align:middle line:84% What would they call them in North Dakota? 00:18:58.940 --> 00:19:04.460 align:middle line:90% Movable feeding stations. 00:19:04.460 --> 00:19:08.900 align:middle line:84% The hay was up above, and the creatures would come up and eat. 00:19:08.900 --> 00:19:14.880 align:middle line:84% And I didn't write about this for about 25 years, 00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:18.920 align:middle line:84% I told about it and I always was amused by it. 00:19:18.920 --> 00:19:20.930 align:middle line:90% It's called Monkey House. 00:19:20.930 --> 00:19:24.470 align:middle line:84% For a while, the three-year-old twins seem as interested 00:19:24.470 --> 00:19:26.870 align:middle line:84% as their father but the five-year-old 00:19:26.870 --> 00:19:29.002 align:middle line:90% keeps tugging his hand. 00:19:29.002 --> 00:19:30.710 align:middle line:84% They've been looking at the black rhinos. 00:19:30.710 --> 00:19:32.450 align:middle line:84% And the father, leaning and squat, 00:19:32.450 --> 00:19:36.110 align:middle line:84% is absorbed in watching a lithe male trying 00:19:36.110 --> 00:19:39.290 align:middle line:84% to mount a big thick cow who faces 00:19:39.290 --> 00:19:42.530 align:middle line:84% a carousel of hay contentedly chewing. 00:19:42.530 --> 00:19:45.440 align:middle line:84% Heavy rains have left the ground a muddy gumbo, 00:19:45.440 --> 00:19:48.470 align:middle line:84% for the rhinos have made paths as especially 00:19:48.470 --> 00:19:50.630 align:middle line:90% all around the carousel. 00:19:50.630 --> 00:19:54.140 align:middle line:84% Twice in a row, the dignified cow oblivious, 00:19:54.140 --> 00:19:58.220 align:middle line:84% the bull has cranked his hooves and the horny anvil of his head 00:19:58.220 --> 00:20:00.170 align:middle line:90% up onto her back. 00:20:00.170 --> 00:20:03.680 align:middle line:84% The exposed pink and surprisingly pointed 00:20:03.680 --> 00:20:07.430 align:middle line:84% tip of his eagerness has been an inch from entering, 00:20:07.430 --> 00:20:10.070 align:middle line:84% when his hind hooves begin to sink in the mud 00:20:10.070 --> 00:20:12.770 align:middle line:90% and he slides back down. 00:20:12.770 --> 00:20:16.820 align:middle line:84% After the second time all three children are whining, "Let's go, 00:20:16.820 --> 00:20:17.930 align:middle line:90% daddy. 00:20:17.930 --> 00:20:18.650 align:middle line:90% Let's go." 00:20:18.650 --> 00:20:20.600 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:20:20.600 --> 00:20:25.310 align:middle line:84% Although the morning is cool, the men's face is hotly flushed. 00:20:25.310 --> 00:20:27.290 align:middle line:90% "Just a minute," he explains. 00:20:27.290 --> 00:20:29.090 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:20:29.090 --> 00:20:30.950 align:middle line:90% "Wait." 00:20:30.950 --> 00:20:36.140 align:middle line:84% A third time the bull rises up until millimeters from paydirt, 00:20:36.140 --> 00:20:38.660 align:middle line:90% his back legs trembling. 00:20:38.660 --> 00:20:44.030 align:middle line:84% The pointy hind hooves slowly sink, and down he falls again. 00:20:44.030 --> 00:20:46.550 align:middle line:84% This time he pivots sharply and trots 00:20:46.550 --> 00:20:51.830 align:middle line:84% away, then stops, tenses and voids with great force 00:20:51.830 --> 00:20:56.210 align:middle line:84% two rectangular turds in a row like little hay bales 00:20:56.210 --> 00:20:58.430 align:middle line:90% slap against the mud, "Whap. 00:20:58.430 --> 00:20:59.960 align:middle line:90% Whap." 00:20:59.960 --> 00:21:02.900 align:middle line:84% In this, the children are interested. 00:21:02.900 --> 00:21:05.600 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:21:05.600 --> 00:21:06.950 align:middle line:90% 00:21:06.950 --> 00:21:09.050 align:middle line:90% They shout, "Wow." 00:21:09.050 --> 00:21:10.130 align:middle line:90% And, "Whap. 00:21:10.130 --> 00:21:11.090 align:middle line:90% Whap." 00:21:11.090 --> 00:21:14.180 align:middle line:84% And point and make delighted drillings of laughter. 00:21:14.180 --> 00:21:18.470 align:middle line:84% The father looking down as if wakened, also begins to laugh 00:21:18.470 --> 00:21:21.663 align:middle line:84% and they stroll away towards the monkey house. 00:21:21.663 --> 00:21:24.621 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:21:24.621 --> 00:21:28.072 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:21:28.072 --> 00:21:35.970 align:middle line:90% 00:21:35.970 --> 00:21:41.460 align:middle line:84% This is called Snug Harbor, New Orleans. 00:21:41.460 --> 00:21:45.870 align:middle line:84% I gave a reading at LSU, and planned 00:21:45.870 --> 00:21:47.400 align:middle line:84% to spend the weekend in New Orleans. 00:21:47.400 --> 00:21:51.360 align:middle line:84% And when I got to my hotel in the Quarter, 00:21:51.360 --> 00:21:55.260 align:middle line:84% the room wasn't ready so I got upgraded to a suite. 00:21:55.260 --> 00:21:58.505 align:middle line:84% And so I felt quite expansive, the whole weekend. 00:21:58.505 --> 00:22:00.630 align:middle line:84% I called my wife and tried to get her to come down, 00:22:00.630 --> 00:22:01.920 align:middle line:90% she couldn't. 00:22:01.920 --> 00:22:05.710 align:middle line:84% So I just did New Orleans things. 00:22:05.710 --> 00:22:08.160 align:middle line:84% And one of them was the saxophone shootout. 00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:09.690 align:middle line:84% And it wasn't in the Quarter, which 00:22:09.690 --> 00:22:13.120 align:middle line:84% is pretty commercial, but way off to the side. 00:22:13.120 --> 00:22:17.400 align:middle line:84% And it was recommended to me by Codrescu, who was at LSU. 00:22:17.400 --> 00:22:18.370 align:middle line:90% Andrei Codrescu. 00:22:18.370 --> 00:22:20.610 align:middle line:84% So I went there and had a lot of fun. 00:22:20.610 --> 00:22:21.510 align:middle line:90% [CLEARING THROAT] 00:22:21.510 --> 00:22:23.190 align:middle line:90% As I hope the poem suggests. 00:22:23.190 --> 00:22:26.310 align:middle line:84% I also went to Brennan, the famous breakfast place 00:22:26.310 --> 00:22:29.880 align:middle line:84% and asked if I could get breakfast reservations 00:22:29.880 --> 00:22:30.990 align:middle line:90% for Sunday. 00:22:30.990 --> 00:22:33.090 align:middle line:84% And the lady said, "We have left now 00:22:33.090 --> 00:22:36.022 align:middle line:90% only at 8:00 AM and 2:00 PM." 00:22:36.022 --> 00:22:37.980 align:middle line:84% I said, "Well, I prefer to come in the morning, 00:22:37.980 --> 00:22:39.460 align:middle line:90% but can I get a drink?" 00:22:39.460 --> 00:22:40.240 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLE] 00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:42.960 align:middle line:84% Imagine saying this to some worldly wise person 00:22:42.960 --> 00:22:44.190 align:middle line:90% in New Orleans. 00:22:44.190 --> 00:22:47.160 align:middle line:84% She said, "Darling, this is New Orleans. 00:22:47.160 --> 00:22:51.120 align:middle line:84% You can get anything at anytime." 00:22:51.120 --> 00:22:52.740 align:middle line:90% Snug Harbor, New Orleans. 00:22:52.740 --> 00:22:55.890 align:middle line:84% The soprano sax [AUDIO OUT] at Snug Harbor. 00:22:55.890 --> 00:22:58.020 align:middle line:84% Outside the quarter in New Orleans, 00:22:58.020 --> 00:23:00.900 align:middle line:84% was stone improvisation for three sets: 00:23:00.900 --> 00:23:05.100 align:middle line:84% by Black Earl the boss, young Black Victor, and Tony, 00:23:05.100 --> 00:23:07.020 align:middle line:90% white and young. 00:23:07.020 --> 00:23:10.680 align:middle line:84% They were backed up all night by two white players, the drummer, 00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:13.920 align:middle line:84% Vidacovich, and one Singleton on bass. 00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:16.140 align:middle line:84% I liked the plain cat friendliness 00:23:16.140 --> 00:23:20.730 align:middle line:84% that came slowly, quiet with the playing for excellence. 00:23:20.730 --> 00:23:23.370 align:middle line:84% I liked being in a real jazz joint in New Orleans. 00:23:23.370 --> 00:23:26.760 align:middle line:84% Grateful to the Bucharest Cajun who sent me there, 00:23:26.760 --> 00:23:30.630 align:middle line:84% far from the Bourbon Street Dive charging $6 a pop. 00:23:30.630 --> 00:23:33.870 align:middle line:84% For only money and booze have jazzed for years. 00:23:33.870 --> 00:23:36.420 align:middle line:84% I liked how the white guy Tony held his own. 00:23:36.420 --> 00:23:38.770 align:middle line:84% Less hot though, and more bookish, 00:23:38.770 --> 00:23:41.220 align:middle line:90% quieter in the free fall wail. 00:23:41.220 --> 00:23:44.010 align:middle line:84% How at ease cross color all five were, 00:23:44.010 --> 00:23:47.490 align:middle line:84% musicians more and more as the night. 00:23:47.490 --> 00:23:51.210 align:middle line:84% I was moved by the riffs, the sonorous blare, the brand 00:23:51.210 --> 00:23:53.850 align:middle line:84% new Bach, and Thelonious harmonies. 00:23:53.850 --> 00:23:55.770 align:middle line:84% The way they played more things together, 00:23:55.770 --> 00:23:59.460 align:middle line:84% as if they were finding things slowly: it. 00:23:59.460 --> 00:24:04.650 align:middle line:84% I improvised two switching drinks, vodka, Jack Daniels, 00:24:04.650 --> 00:24:08.910 align:middle line:84% a burger, some rum monsoons till 3:00 AM. 00:24:08.910 --> 00:24:12.090 align:middle line:84% Then back to the hotel to sleep for hours, 00:24:12.090 --> 00:24:17.460 align:middle line:84% and wait clear as the stone, booze rinsed in a song. 00:24:17.460 --> 00:24:20.670 align:middle line:84% Two weeks later at 4:30 I'm up to say, 00:24:20.670 --> 00:24:24.150 align:middle line:84% "I can still hear those saxes getting down." 00:24:24.150 --> 00:24:29.850 align:middle line:84% And wish I were Al Young, or Matthews, or Zimmer, to sing it, 00:24:29.850 --> 00:24:36.580 align:middle line:84% mournful and joyous, joyful, and mourning, and God. 00:24:36.580 --> 00:24:40.293 align:middle line:90% I wrote a poem about whiskey. 00:24:40.293 --> 00:24:42.460 align:middle line:84% I don't want to read it tonight, it's a little long. 00:24:42.460 --> 00:24:44.290 align:middle line:90% But I was very fond of it. 00:24:44.290 --> 00:24:51.070 align:middle line:84% And it came from reading an account in a Amherst Virginia 00:24:51.070 --> 00:24:53.980 align:middle line:84% newspaper, the headline of which was "Fading taste 00:24:53.980 --> 00:24:56.410 align:middle line:90% for bourbon pinches Kentucky." 00:24:56.410 --> 00:24:59.110 align:middle line:84% And it was about all the light beer, and low cal-- 00:24:59.110 --> 00:25:00.280 align:middle line:90% [AUDIO OUT] all that. 00:25:00.280 --> 00:25:05.950 align:middle line:84% So I wrote that and I was at an artist colony in Virginia, 00:25:05.950 --> 00:25:07.930 align:middle line:84% and I heard people in the next studio talking. 00:25:07.930 --> 00:25:09.430 align:middle line:84% So I knew they weren't working and I 00:25:09.430 --> 00:25:11.920 align:middle line:84% went and asked them if I could read it to them, 00:25:11.920 --> 00:25:13.570 align:middle line:90% and they obliged. 00:25:13.570 --> 00:25:19.660 align:middle line:84% And one was a sculptor, painter, and jewelry maker named Nancy. 00:25:19.660 --> 00:25:22.630 align:middle line:84% And the other was Mark [INAUDIBLE] 00:25:22.630 --> 00:25:25.330 align:middle line:84% And so they indulged me, and I got another poem 00:25:25.330 --> 00:25:28.030 align:middle line:90% from that called Gift. 00:25:28.030 --> 00:25:31.450 align:middle line:84% Now here is a poem for Nancy, who along with Mark 00:25:31.450 --> 00:25:34.720 align:middle line:84% let me read her my brand new bourbon whiskey poem. 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:38.230 align:middle line:84% Not only because she left me and agreed to my rules 00:25:38.230 --> 00:25:44.260 align:middle line:84% beforehand that they must like it, say so, and mean it, 00:25:44.260 --> 00:25:45.940 align:middle line:84% and not only because when I'd read it 00:25:45.940 --> 00:25:49.480 align:middle line:84% she liked it and meant it, but also an overriding 00:25:49.480 --> 00:25:50.860 align:middle line:90% may the mystery bless her. 00:25:50.860 --> 00:25:54.400 align:middle line:84% Because she said, "Wait, first I'm going to lie down." 00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:56.890 align:middle line:84% We were in Mark's studio, and she laid down 00:25:56.890 --> 00:25:58.720 align:middle line:90% on the couch closing her eyes. 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:01.990 align:middle line:84% The better to welcome my whiskey poem. 00:26:01.990 --> 00:26:05.440 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] it, all my obscure scribbler's life 00:26:05.440 --> 00:26:09.400 align:middle line:84% I have wanted to write one poem a woman beautiful as Nancy 00:26:09.400 --> 00:26:13.480 align:middle line:84% would want like that to lie down. 00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:17.440 align:middle line:84% I thank her for revealing this, for liking my poem about whiskey 00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:21.160 align:middle line:84% and for meaning it, but most for lying down. 00:26:21.160 --> 00:26:23.260 align:middle line:84% When I go to the writer's last place 00:26:23.260 --> 00:26:26.350 align:middle line:84% I will say for credentials, "I am Flint. 00:26:26.350 --> 00:26:29.650 align:middle line:84% I wrote one poem, Nancy the muse laid out." 00:26:29.650 --> 00:26:33.522 align:middle line:90% 00:26:33.522 --> 00:26:38.370 align:middle line:90% [CLEARING THROAT] 00:26:38.370 --> 00:26:41.330 align:middle line:84% Here's a new poem, one I'm working on. 00:26:41.330 --> 00:26:44.570 align:middle line:84% The book that's coming out in the spring, 00:26:44.570 --> 00:26:48.260 align:middle line:90% was taken late in 1996. 00:26:48.260 --> 00:26:51.020 align:middle line:90% So everything since then is new. 00:26:51.020 --> 00:26:56.550 align:middle line:84% And since no one has read the book, the book is new as well. 00:26:56.550 --> 00:27:00.950 align:middle line:84% But this is something I'm working on now. 00:27:00.950 --> 00:27:04.943 align:middle line:84% This is called Tributaries, and it's an homage to [? 00:27:04.943 --> 00:27:07.040 align:middle line:90% García Márquez. ?] 00:27:07.040 --> 00:27:10.970 align:middle line:84% "10 straight days of rain roiled from clouds, 00:27:10.970 --> 00:27:13.230 align:middle line:90% with temperatures in the 50s. 00:27:13.230 --> 00:27:17.270 align:middle line:84% So you close windows and retrieve the winter PJs. 00:27:17.270 --> 00:27:20.180 align:middle line:84% Can almost blot how plump and April 00:27:20.180 --> 00:27:22.730 align:middle line:84% green is the world of your county 00:27:22.730 --> 00:27:25.520 align:middle line:90% now, Montgomery in Maryland. 00:27:25.520 --> 00:27:28.070 align:middle line:84% Everything ready to bloom, but here 00:27:28.070 --> 00:27:31.010 align:middle line:90% is rain, and rain, and rain. 00:27:31.010 --> 00:27:32.930 align:middle line:84% To lose you in one long sentence, 00:27:32.930 --> 00:27:35.570 align:middle line:90% by Gabriel García Márquez. 00:27:35.570 --> 00:27:37.970 align:middle line:84% With no way out till the sky has said all 00:27:37.970 --> 00:27:41.450 align:middle line:84% it has of cats and dogs, pitchforks and hammerheads, 00:27:41.450 --> 00:27:45.200 align:middle line:84% frogs and fish, moths and monkeys, quims and bums, 00:27:45.200 --> 00:27:50.570 align:middle line:84% corn silk and willow leaf, jets and pets, and lily pads, Dodges, 00:27:50.570 --> 00:27:53.060 align:middle line:84% Chevys, steering wheels and rumble seats. 00:27:53.060 --> 00:27:54.710 align:middle line:84% The tin-tin, the sluice and runnel 00:27:54.710 --> 00:27:57.620 align:middle line:84% of all you love wetly rinsing your ears. 00:27:57.620 --> 00:28:02.660 align:middle line:84% Until the old woman dies buried in the stump of her grave, 00:28:02.660 --> 00:28:05.750 align:middle line:84% the colonel ascends only to lose in the ranks 00:28:05.750 --> 00:28:07.580 align:middle line:90% sweat of an allusion. 00:28:07.580 --> 00:28:09.770 align:middle line:84% Some areas meet and marry in the rain, 00:28:09.770 --> 00:28:13.190 align:middle line:84% the state falls, the dictator fingers girls. 00:28:13.190 --> 00:28:15.980 align:middle line:84% Dreams of sun or snow all turn to rain 00:28:15.980 --> 00:28:19.740 align:middle line:84% pouring into the next county or country the next day, week, 00:28:19.740 --> 00:28:23.720 align:middle line:84% month year, drowning the sewers but not the rats. 00:28:23.720 --> 00:28:28.040 align:middle line:84% Until all verbs, rivers, and prayers at flood stage, 00:28:28.040 --> 00:28:33.380 align:middle line:84% it empties into the sea on which just now the sun begins 00:28:33.380 --> 00:28:36.260 align:middle line:90% to shine." 00:28:36.260 --> 00:28:40.430 align:middle line:84% Those moments in Márquez when he described the rain or anything 00:28:40.430 --> 00:28:42.620 align:middle line:90% else for 25 pages. 00:28:42.620 --> 00:28:44.270 align:middle line:84% Maybe in only two or three sentences 00:28:44.270 --> 00:28:47.030 align:middle line:84% and you think he can't go on, and then he does it 00:28:47.030 --> 00:28:49.370 align:middle line:90% for a 30 or 40 more pages. 00:28:49.370 --> 00:28:52.550 align:middle line:84% That's, I guess, where that comes from. 00:28:52.550 --> 00:28:55.970 align:middle line:90% 00:28:55.970 --> 00:29:00.410 align:middle line:84% Well, I want to read some pigeon poems which 00:29:00.410 --> 00:29:02.990 align:middle line:90% Alison spoke of so generously. 00:29:02.990 --> 00:29:07.160 align:middle line:84% I was at the wedding of a former student 20 years ago, 00:29:07.160 --> 00:29:10.550 align:middle line:84% and he had a terrific party at Tavern on the Green 00:29:10.550 --> 00:29:14.810 align:middle line:84% and there was far too much to drink. 00:29:14.810 --> 00:29:18.290 align:middle line:84% And my wife and I went back to our hotel 00:29:18.290 --> 00:29:20.360 align:middle line:84% and cleverly decided we should have 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:22.490 align:middle line:90% a stinger before going to bed. 00:29:22.490 --> 00:29:25.940 align:middle line:84% So the next day, we were both a little shaky. 00:29:25.940 --> 00:29:29.900 align:middle line:84% And I went out to find some comfort, 00:29:29.900 --> 00:29:35.870 align:middle line:84% and I encountered these grouchy New York street pigeons. 00:29:35.870 --> 00:29:38.070 align:middle line:90% They don't get out of your way. 00:29:38.070 --> 00:29:40.610 align:middle line:84% And I went back to the hotel and wrote this, 00:29:40.610 --> 00:29:42.950 align:middle line:84% and then I wrote a lot of these poems. 00:29:42.950 --> 00:29:45.930 align:middle line:84% All of the titles go into the poem. 00:29:45.930 --> 00:29:47.960 align:middle line:84% So I'll read this one that launched them. 00:29:47.960 --> 00:29:51.140 align:middle line:84% "They all began in this breezy crazy way, 00:29:51.140 --> 00:29:54.080 align:middle line:84% and then they became other kinds of things. 00:29:54.080 --> 00:29:57.140 align:middle line:84% He didn't know he was a pigeon, until the day in New York 00:29:57.140 --> 00:30:00.260 align:middle line:84% City when he'd left the rented nest, and her he's 00:30:00.260 --> 00:30:03.230 align:middle line:84% often called a nest, and was walking bad 00:30:03.230 --> 00:30:07.520 align:middle line:84% hung over from the pre-wedding bash to his favorite Wolf's 52nd 00:30:07.520 --> 00:30:09.860 align:middle line:84% and seventh for bagel egg and aspirin. 00:30:09.860 --> 00:30:12.960 align:middle line:84% And his path was blocked by pigeons. 00:30:12.960 --> 00:30:15.920 align:middle line:84% And then just [AUDIO OUT] fat, rumpled, grouchy, clumsy, 00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:17.660 align:middle line:84% and he and the pigeon did a little dance 00:30:17.660 --> 00:30:19.460 align:middle line:90% before finding the paths around. 00:30:19.460 --> 00:30:22.160 align:middle line:84% And he thought, "Oh God, I danced 00:30:22.160 --> 00:30:24.680 align:middle line:84% like that last night at the fancy dinner, 00:30:24.680 --> 00:30:27.830 align:middle line:84% dressed just like a pigeon in the rented tux, 00:30:27.830 --> 00:30:29.840 align:middle line:84% colliding with the bride's mother 00:30:29.840 --> 00:30:32.150 align:middle line:90% saying some dumb pigeon Yiddish. 00:30:32.150 --> 00:30:34.550 align:middle line:84% And pigeon-dancing, drunk and bumbling, 00:30:34.550 --> 00:30:38.330 align:middle line:84% stumbling by pigeon, plain as pigeon." 00:30:38.330 --> 00:30:43.400 align:middle line:84% Well as I said, they changed and became otherwise. 00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:46.430 align:middle line:84% But some of them returned retained a jauntiness. 00:30:46.430 --> 00:30:49.160 align:middle line:84% I sent poems to a little magazine 00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:53.130 align:middle line:84% that asked me for poems, and this poem came from it. 00:30:53.130 --> 00:30:56.330 align:middle line:84% An editor from Buzzard Press writes to the pigeon 00:30:56.330 --> 00:31:00.260 align:middle line:84% saying, "Thanks for sending the poems as requested. 00:31:00.260 --> 00:31:04.970 align:middle line:84% We're shooting seven back, but one we really like and enclose 00:31:04.970 --> 00:31:08.330 align:middle line:84% a copy with a number of changes we think 00:31:08.330 --> 00:31:10.700 align:middle line:90% would make the poem stronger. 00:31:10.700 --> 00:31:14.510 align:middle line:84% It's a little 28-line versicle, pigeon worked his tail off 00:31:14.510 --> 00:31:17.855 align:middle line:84% on as usual, and let's suggest 21 changes. 00:31:17.855 --> 00:31:19.610 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:19.610 --> 00:31:21.230 align:middle line:90% 21. 00:31:21.230 --> 00:31:24.890 align:middle line:84% Including striking out half a line, then a whole line, 00:31:24.890 --> 00:31:28.070 align:middle line:84% most of the definite articles like any hapless rookie. 00:31:28.070 --> 00:31:32.960 align:middle line:84% And then the worst to P, they rewrite a line providing a bird 00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:35.390 align:middle line:90% brained metaphor of their own. 00:31:35.390 --> 00:31:37.880 align:middle line:84% Changing the line utterly, removing 00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:40.160 align:middle line:84% a meaning pigeon planted with ordinary, 00:31:40.160 --> 00:31:43.040 align:middle line:90% obsessed, and offhand care. 00:31:43.040 --> 00:31:44.960 align:middle line:90% "Fuck you very much." 00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:49.400 align:middle line:84% In his reply, says raging P. But grinning with integrity. 00:31:49.400 --> 00:31:51.815 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:51.815 --> 00:31:54.713 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:31:54.713 --> 00:32:00.030 align:middle line:90% 00:32:00.030 --> 00:32:03.510 align:middle line:90% Well as I say, they changed. 00:32:03.510 --> 00:32:05.625 align:middle line:90% And here's another kind. 00:32:05.625 --> 00:32:08.580 align:middle line:90% 00:32:08.580 --> 00:32:11.610 align:middle line:84% "Pigeon sees how this scratching of his, 00:32:11.610 --> 00:32:14.060 align:middle line:84% will be more and more of the center. 00:32:14.060 --> 00:32:17.430 align:middle line:84% Family and friends he loves are dying of hearts, 00:32:17.430 --> 00:32:20.400 align:middle line:90% or falling, pills, or cancer. 00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:22.830 align:middle line:84% And as long as pigeon is staying on behind, 00:32:22.830 --> 00:32:25.980 align:middle line:84% and long he means and wants to do. 00:32:25.980 --> 00:32:28.910 align:middle line:84% He must always court and chance the dumbest failure 00:32:28.910 --> 00:32:33.030 align:middle line:84% to saying almost exactly what he means. 00:32:33.030 --> 00:32:36.750 align:middle line:84% He's not praying for miracles or lost in some delusion, 00:32:36.750 --> 00:32:38.250 align:middle line:90% he'll get out alive. 00:32:38.250 --> 00:32:42.570 align:middle line:84% Or even for long, survive this ugly place 00:32:42.570 --> 00:32:45.330 align:middle line:90% he loves in rapt confusion. 00:32:45.330 --> 00:32:53.780 align:middle line:90% 00:32:53.780 --> 00:32:59.480 align:middle line:84% Pigeon in the night feels a little black hole in his chest, 00:32:59.480 --> 00:33:02.060 align:middle line:90% and knows it to be his heart. 00:33:02.060 --> 00:33:06.020 align:middle line:84% Dense with the [AUDIO OUT] a black invisible diamond weighing 00:33:06.020 --> 00:33:09.200 align:middle line:84% in with a cruel impacted build up, 00:33:09.200 --> 00:33:13.370 align:middle line:84% the loss especially this morning drawing all the others into it 00:33:13.370 --> 00:33:16.190 align:middle line:84% of his own right hand his heart itself 00:33:16.190 --> 00:33:20.720 align:middle line:84% for a while, his son gone forever. 00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:23.780 align:middle line:84% He can't quite hang on to [AUDIO OUT] the night boards 00:33:23.780 --> 00:33:27.260 align:middle line:90% in like this. 00:33:27.260 --> 00:33:28.600 align:middle line:90% And finally, the last poem. 00:33:28.600 --> 00:33:31.330 align:middle line:90% [CLEARING THROAT] 00:33:31.330 --> 00:33:33.392 align:middle line:90% 00:33:33.392 --> 00:33:35.350 align:middle line:84% I mean the last in this book, I'm not stopping. 00:33:35.350 --> 00:33:35.850 align:middle line:90% No. 00:33:35.850 --> 00:33:37.640 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:37.640 --> 00:33:40.036 align:middle line:84% I saw people glancing with relief. 00:33:40.036 --> 00:33:43.438 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:43.438 --> 00:33:45.430 align:middle line:84% Could we be getting out of here this early? 00:33:45.430 --> 00:33:47.440 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:47.440 --> 00:33:49.210 align:middle line:84% Josephine Jacobson, the wonderful poet 00:33:49.210 --> 00:33:52.550 align:middle line:84% told me one of the things she was proudest of in her career 00:33:52.550 --> 00:33:54.880 align:middle line:84% that she had never read longer than she was asked to. 00:33:54.880 --> 00:33:58.060 align:middle line:90% 00:33:58.060 --> 00:34:01.360 align:middle line:84% Usually, it's different, I wrote this little thing about it 00:34:01.360 --> 00:34:03.340 align:middle line:84% that's all title except the first line. 00:34:03.340 --> 00:34:06.100 align:middle line:84% After reading for 35 minutes, when 00:34:06.100 --> 00:34:08.530 align:middle line:84% you ask him to read for 15 because he's 00:34:08.530 --> 00:34:10.510 align:middle line:84% sharing the time with three other poets 00:34:10.510 --> 00:34:14.139 align:middle line:84% he says, "Now for some longer pieces." 00:34:14.139 --> 00:34:16.905 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:16.905 --> 00:34:19.210 align:middle line:90% 00:34:19.210 --> 00:34:23.630 align:middle line:84% "When her digital clock says 5:55, pigeon knows it's time. 00:34:23.630 --> 00:34:25.810 align:middle line:84% And so on Thanksgiving [AUDIO OUT] 00:34:25.810 --> 00:34:30.010 align:middle line:84% appropriately thankful to be stretching in his pigeon book. 00:34:30.010 --> 00:34:34.239 align:middle line:84% On this one, old one, older and older ones, something in them 00:34:34.239 --> 00:34:37.900 align:middle line:84% still calls him out of the bed and brings him along. 00:34:37.900 --> 00:34:40.840 align:middle line:84% One thing not to give thanks for is 16 years ago 00:34:40.840 --> 00:34:43.810 align:middle line:84% today, the young president's death in Dallas 00:34:43.810 --> 00:34:46.210 align:middle line:84% and all the train of griefs it pulled. 00:34:46.210 --> 00:34:51.139 align:middle line:84% Martin, Bobby, Malcolm, and Medgar, Vietnam and LBJ, 00:34:51.139 --> 00:34:53.830 align:middle line:84% who actually said of the war protesters, 00:34:53.830 --> 00:34:57.310 align:middle line:84% "Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do." 00:34:57.310 --> 00:34:59.665 align:middle line:84% And also Watergate, and that other one 00:34:59.665 --> 00:35:03.010 align:middle line:84% P we won't let into his song at all. 00:35:03.010 --> 00:35:08.110 align:middle line:84% Except for a rhyme right here, "Millhouse, the charmless, 00:35:08.110 --> 00:35:10.900 align:middle line:90% witless, sexless louse." 00:35:10.900 --> 00:35:14.290 align:middle line:84% Well, despite carps backward and abysms, 00:35:14.290 --> 00:35:18.460 align:middle line:84% pigeon is giving thanks today for the living children 00:35:18.460 --> 00:35:20.500 align:middle line:90% surviving love. 00:35:20.500 --> 00:35:22.840 align:middle line:84% For pages up there on which to write. 00:35:22.840 --> 00:35:25.660 align:middle line:90% For the fat bird in the oven. 00:35:25.660 --> 00:35:28.015 align:middle line:84% For a slender one in his [AUDIO OUT].. 00:35:28.015 --> 00:35:32.200 align:middle line:84% For all his days and nights with her ahead. 00:35:32.200 --> 00:35:37.150 align:middle line:84% For whatever else it is at 5:55 that gets him up to scratch 00:35:37.150 --> 00:35:39.085 align:middle line:90% the thanking day, alive." 00:35:39.085 --> 00:35:44.890 align:middle line:90% 00:35:44.890 --> 00:35:47.270 align:middle line:84% This is slightly related and it's new. 00:35:47.270 --> 00:35:49.480 align:middle line:90% It's called Hydrofoil. 00:35:49.480 --> 00:35:54.040 align:middle line:84% My wife and I were staying in an apartment in Milan. 00:35:54.040 --> 00:35:57.760 align:middle line:84% And there was a very nice apartment for her 00:35:57.760 --> 00:36:00.910 align:middle line:84% on the spot rental, but it had thin walls 00:36:00.910 --> 00:36:03.460 align:middle line:90% between us and neighbors. 00:36:03.460 --> 00:36:05.500 align:middle line:90% Hydrofoil. 00:36:05.500 --> 00:36:07.840 align:middle line:84% [? "Marchini ?] is the name on their door. 00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:11.830 align:middle line:84% Our neighbors for a month in Milan, who like us 00:36:11.830 --> 00:36:14.290 align:middle line:90% are early to bed, early to rise. 00:36:14.290 --> 00:36:18.730 align:middle line:84% And as we hear them talking, coughing, snoring, leaving early 00:36:18.730 --> 00:36:22.150 align:middle line:84% for work each day, we must assume they hear us 00:36:22.150 --> 00:36:23.770 align:middle line:90% when we make noise. 00:36:23.770 --> 00:36:27.880 align:middle line:84% Especially in the bedroom, which seems to abut theirs. 00:36:27.880 --> 00:36:30.340 align:middle line:84% We think they fall silent, maybe listening, 00:36:30.340 --> 00:36:34.600 align:middle line:84% and so we grow careful circumspect in our sounds there. 00:36:34.600 --> 00:36:38.920 align:middle line:84% With the big rattling headboard, like a curlicue postscript 00:36:38.920 --> 00:36:41.290 align:middle line:90% against the plaster-thin wall. 00:36:41.290 --> 00:36:46.450 align:middle line:84% A sounding board of who we are as a couple, aged 63 and 58. 00:36:46.450 --> 00:36:48.010 align:middle line:90% How often in the month we sail? 00:36:48.010 --> 00:36:51.370 align:middle line:90% 00:36:51.370 --> 00:36:52.990 align:middle line:90% And how intense? 00:36:52.990 --> 00:36:54.640 align:middle line:90% Or how ingenious? 00:36:54.640 --> 00:36:58.630 align:middle line:84% A slant or sideways trimming our craft 00:36:58.630 --> 00:37:02.920 align:middle line:84% to run as deep, but silent with instead 00:37:02.920 --> 00:37:06.234 align:middle line:90% of against the bangy waves." 00:37:06.234 --> 00:37:09.198 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:37:09.198 --> 00:37:14.140 align:middle line:90% 00:37:14.140 --> 00:37:15.700 align:middle line:90% God, I'm so pleased with myself. 00:37:15.700 --> 00:37:17.636 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:37:17.636 --> 00:37:22.000 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:37:22.000 --> 00:37:29.230 align:middle line:84% I was actually asked to say a little about my work translating 00:37:29.230 --> 00:37:30.520 align:middle line:90% from Bulgarian. 00:37:30.520 --> 00:37:32.770 align:middle line:84% And I'll say just a little about that, 00:37:32.770 --> 00:37:35.140 align:middle line:84% and read just [AUDIO OUT] of poems. 00:37:35.140 --> 00:37:38.130 align:middle line:84% About 20 years ago, someone there began translating my poem. 00:37:38.130 --> 00:37:39.910 align:middle line:84% It's a long, interesting story and I'll 00:37:39.910 --> 00:37:42.760 align:middle line:84% try to make it short and not too boring. 00:37:42.760 --> 00:37:45.190 align:middle line:84% Someone there began translating my poems, 00:37:45.190 --> 00:37:47.620 align:middle line:84% and that led to invitations from the Old Writers' Union. 00:37:47.620 --> 00:37:49.037 align:middle line:84% Which of course, was an instrument 00:37:49.037 --> 00:37:51.970 align:middle line:90% of the Communist Party. 00:37:51.970 --> 00:37:55.720 align:middle line:84% And I had a number of problems with that and with them, 00:37:55.720 --> 00:37:58.300 align:middle line:84% but I did make friends there and I began 00:37:58.300 --> 00:38:00.220 align:middle line:90% slowly studying the language. 00:38:00.220 --> 00:38:05.740 align:middle line:84% And William Meredith was preparing an anthology 00:38:05.740 --> 00:38:10.870 align:middle line:84% before he had a stroke, of Bulgarian poems in translation. 00:38:10.870 --> 00:38:13.840 align:middle line:84% And almost all of these, maybe all of them 00:38:13.840 --> 00:38:18.880 align:middle line:84% were by the agency of Bulgarian scholars 00:38:18.880 --> 00:38:24.100 align:middle line:84% who had made word by word translation of Bulgarian poems 00:38:24.100 --> 00:38:25.480 align:middle line:90% into English. 00:38:25.480 --> 00:38:28.570 align:middle line:84% And then Meredith farmed them out to different American poets 00:38:28.570 --> 00:38:32.790 align:middle line:90% to do versions of. 00:38:32.790 --> 00:38:35.590 align:middle line:84% As many of you know, lots of translation in America 00:38:35.590 --> 00:38:40.960 align:middle line:84% gets [AUDIO OUT] I continued to study Bulgarian, 00:38:40.960 --> 00:38:43.840 align:middle line:90% and to try to read in Bulgarian. 00:38:43.840 --> 00:38:47.260 align:middle line:84% And I translated an article by a fascinating writer 00:38:47.260 --> 00:38:53.230 align:middle line:84% named Yordan Radichkov, it was in a literary newspaper. 00:38:53.230 --> 00:38:57.640 align:middle line:84% And I got hooked, because there was only 00:38:57.640 --> 00:39:00.790 align:middle line:84% about an inch of and a half of text on the front page, 00:39:00.790 --> 00:39:03.160 align:middle line:84% and I didn't need a dictionary for any of it. 00:39:03.160 --> 00:39:06.160 align:middle line:84% It gave me delusions of translation. 00:39:06.160 --> 00:39:09.490 align:middle line:84% And I translated the whole thing, and it was long. 00:39:09.490 --> 00:39:13.240 align:middle line:84% And it was about his lamenting the decision 00:39:13.240 --> 00:39:18.310 align:middle line:84% of the City of Sofia to widen one of the principal boulevards, 00:39:18.310 --> 00:39:21.820 align:middle line:84% because that involved cutting down some very old chestnut 00:39:21.820 --> 00:39:23.680 align:middle line:90% trees along the side of it. 00:39:23.680 --> 00:39:27.610 align:middle line:84% And he's a very cranky and peculiar writer, 00:39:27.610 --> 00:39:29.590 align:middle line:84% I learned a lot of Bulgarian doing that. 00:39:29.590 --> 00:39:32.410 align:middle line:90% 00:39:32.410 --> 00:39:34.480 align:middle line:84% All of my translation since then has 00:39:34.480 --> 00:39:37.120 align:middle line:84% been done with a Bulgarian poet, who now happens 00:39:37.120 --> 00:39:39.350 align:middle line:90% to live near me in Maryland. 00:39:39.350 --> 00:39:40.450 align:middle line:90% Good English. 00:39:40.450 --> 00:39:42.520 align:middle line:90% His wife, excellent English. 00:39:42.520 --> 00:39:44.050 align:middle line:90% And we translate together. 00:39:44.050 --> 00:39:46.270 align:middle line:84% I read everything in Bulgarian, I look up 00:39:46.270 --> 00:39:48.610 align:middle line:84% everything I don't understand, but I have him 00:39:48.610 --> 00:39:53.290 align:middle line:84% as a check against making terrible mistakes which 00:39:53.290 --> 00:39:54.310 align:middle line:90% it is easy to do. 00:39:54.310 --> 00:39:57.340 align:middle line:90% 00:39:57.340 --> 00:40:01.060 align:middle line:84% When I was studying, I got by heart almost all 00:40:01.060 --> 00:40:02.230 align:middle line:90% of the poems offered. 00:40:02.230 --> 00:40:05.440 align:middle line:90% Mostly, children's poems. 00:40:05.440 --> 00:40:08.560 align:middle line:84% And it's amazing how often constructions from them 00:40:08.560 --> 00:40:13.570 align:middle line:84% were useful in conversation when I got brave enough 00:40:13.570 --> 00:40:15.610 align:middle line:90% to try to converse. 00:40:15.610 --> 00:40:17.890 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLE] 00:40:17.890 --> 00:40:19.930 align:middle line:90% 00:40:19.930 --> 00:40:22.240 align:middle line:84% This is interesting to me, and is relevant. 00:40:22.240 --> 00:40:24.310 align:middle line:84% I was with two women one day in Sofia, 00:40:24.310 --> 00:40:28.630 align:middle line:84% and we bought strawberries from a green grocer. 00:40:28.630 --> 00:40:30.730 align:middle line:84% And they were the best strawberries I'd ever had, 00:40:30.730 --> 00:40:32.438 align:middle line:84% and they thought they were wonderful too. 00:40:32.438 --> 00:40:35.890 align:middle line:84% And they called them strawberries like raspberries, 00:40:35.890 --> 00:40:38.200 align:middle line:90% ягоди като малини. 00:40:38.200 --> 00:40:40.630 align:middle line:84% They were tiny, and they were delicious. 00:40:40.630 --> 00:40:44.930 align:middle line:84% And they said [AUDIO OUT] They say ягоди като малини. 00:40:44.930 --> 00:40:46.870 align:middle line:84% There is strawberries like raspberries. 00:40:46.870 --> 00:40:51.910 align:middle line:84% And I thought that was a varietal of this strawberry. 00:40:51.910 --> 00:40:55.390 align:middle line:84% I thought that was a varietal of a strawberry. 00:40:55.390 --> 00:40:58.900 align:middle line:84% And the next day I went to the green grocer 00:40:58.900 --> 00:41:02.110 align:middle line:84% and in my best Bulgarian said, "Are there 00:41:02.110 --> 00:41:05.560 align:middle line:90% any raspberrian strawberries?" 00:41:05.560 --> 00:41:07.028 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:07.028 --> 00:41:08.320 align:middle line:90% He thought I was very peculiar. 00:41:08.320 --> 00:41:10.600 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:10.600 --> 00:41:12.640 align:middle line:90% But he was amused. 00:41:12.640 --> 00:41:14.710 align:middle line:84% Boris Christov, a wonderful poet, 00:41:14.710 --> 00:41:17.110 align:middle line:84% wanted a new translation of his poem. 00:41:17.110 --> 00:41:19.090 align:middle line:84% They are already translated in English, 00:41:19.090 --> 00:41:20.710 align:middle line:90% he wanted new translation. 00:41:20.710 --> 00:41:22.630 align:middle line:84% And he called my friend [? Lyubo ?],, 00:41:22.630 --> 00:41:25.090 align:middle line:84% and we sat down, and for about two months 00:41:25.090 --> 00:41:28.870 align:middle line:84% did almost nothing else but work on these translations. 00:41:28.870 --> 00:41:32.440 align:middle line:84% And he went on to write other shorter ones, 00:41:32.440 --> 00:41:34.870 align:middle line:84% a whole book of three line poems. 00:41:34.870 --> 00:41:36.670 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read you a few of those, 00:41:36.670 --> 00:41:40.060 align:middle line:84% and a couple by this man Lyubomir Nikolov, who 00:41:40.060 --> 00:41:42.910 align:middle line:84% has a book from Carnegie Mellon Press called Pagan, 00:41:42.910 --> 00:41:44.710 align:middle line:90% I think it's 1992. 00:41:44.710 --> 00:41:47.890 align:middle line:84% And his wife and I are listed as the translators, 00:41:47.890 --> 00:41:50.400 align:middle line:84% but we all three in fact worked on them. 00:41:50.400 --> 00:41:53.920 align:middle line:90% 00:41:53.920 --> 00:41:57.550 align:middle line:84% First, Nikolov's, just two poems. 00:41:57.550 --> 00:42:00.310 align:middle line:90% The first is called Axes. 00:42:00.310 --> 00:42:04.650 align:middle line:84% "The axes lie next to the river, and their smooth 00:42:04.650 --> 00:42:06.910 align:middle line:90% handles glisten. 00:42:06.910 --> 00:42:09.790 align:middle line:90% On many stumps, the ants swarm. 00:42:09.790 --> 00:42:13.360 align:middle line:84% Like brides in black, they bustle. 00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:15.670 align:middle line:90% Birds fly over the branches. 00:42:15.670 --> 00:42:19.120 align:middle line:84% In the branches themselves, sap wells. 00:42:19.120 --> 00:42:22.390 align:middle line:90% The axes lie waiting and near. 00:42:22.390 --> 00:42:24.910 align:middle line:90% The axes line next to the river. 00:42:24.910 --> 00:42:27.040 align:middle line:90% Oh, how we horn them once. 00:42:27.040 --> 00:42:29.710 align:middle line:84% Against our thumbs, we tested them all summer 00:42:29.710 --> 00:42:32.710 align:middle line:84% and looked at ourselves in their blades. 00:42:32.710 --> 00:42:35.920 align:middle line:90% The axes lie next to the river. 00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:39.760 align:middle line:84% It smells here of lichen, frogs croak. 00:42:39.760 --> 00:42:42.940 align:middle line:90% Deep in the valley, fog clears. 00:42:42.940 --> 00:42:46.870 align:middle line:84% With fruit brandy, we rinse our throats. 00:42:46.870 --> 00:42:48.760 align:middle line:90% The axes to the river. 00:42:48.760 --> 00:42:53.470 align:middle line:84% The axe heads lie cold as steel, cold as 00:42:53.470 --> 00:42:55.570 align:middle line:90% death with a polished handle. 00:42:55.570 --> 00:42:58.720 align:middle line:84% They wait for us to seize them, and they 00:42:58.720 --> 00:43:02.523 align:middle line:90% rest in the spiky grass." 00:43:02.523 --> 00:43:03.940 align:middle line:84% If you knew more of his poems, you 00:43:03.940 --> 00:43:07.030 align:middle line:84% might know the point that he is trying to make. 00:43:07.030 --> 00:43:09.910 align:middle line:84% And that is some of the things that stopped 00:43:09.910 --> 00:43:11.905 align:middle line:90% working well under the regime. 00:43:11.905 --> 00:43:14.740 align:middle line:90% 00:43:14.740 --> 00:43:19.510 align:middle line:84% And the last one is called "In a poet's museum." 00:43:19.510 --> 00:43:22.600 align:middle line:84% "Where are the blueprints for the stars? 00:43:22.600 --> 00:43:25.360 align:middle line:90% Where is the logbook of the sea? 00:43:25.360 --> 00:43:30.190 align:middle line:84% And the genealogy of the briar in blossom. 00:43:30.190 --> 00:43:33.040 align:middle line:90% The poem is a fox. 00:43:33.040 --> 00:43:38.800 align:middle line:84% With its tail, it wipes away its tracks." 00:43:38.800 --> 00:43:41.440 align:middle line:90% That's Lyubomir Nikolov. 00:43:41.440 --> 00:43:46.030 align:middle line:84% I'll just read some of these peculiar three line poem 00:43:46.030 --> 00:43:48.430 align:middle line:90% by Boris Christov. 00:43:48.430 --> 00:43:52.150 align:middle line:84% He has as an epigraph to this book, a dedication for Emile. 00:43:52.150 --> 00:43:54.790 align:middle line:84% "In whose memory I vowed to compress my words 00:43:54.790 --> 00:43:58.420 align:middle line:84% into three lines, to write a book of titles alone, 00:43:58.420 --> 00:44:01.030 align:middle line:84% to then free myself even of these, 00:44:01.030 --> 00:44:05.380 align:middle line:84% and enter the poetry of silence in which he lives." 00:44:05.380 --> 00:44:08.290 align:middle line:84% And many of these say that he's going to give it up. 00:44:08.290 --> 00:44:11.560 align:middle line:90% 00:44:11.560 --> 00:44:14.560 align:middle line:84% Beginning, "And the dead will come here again, 00:44:14.560 --> 00:44:18.880 align:middle line:84% like fish to the places where they let their eggs go. 00:44:18.880 --> 00:44:22.630 align:middle line:84% Voice of an Egyptian priest from an old inkwell in front of me, 00:44:22.630 --> 00:44:28.840 align:middle line:84% 'Fool, everything has been said and long ago.'" Is the beginning 00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:30.490 align:middle line:90% of it. 00:44:30.490 --> 00:44:35.140 align:middle line:84% "Here is one called egg, tap on him but gently. 00:44:35.140 --> 00:44:37.210 align:middle line:90% Man is still only an egg." 00:44:37.210 --> 00:44:42.800 align:middle line:90% 00:44:42.800 --> 00:44:44.450 align:middle line:90% This is called Vocation. 00:44:44.450 --> 00:44:48.440 align:middle line:84% "His vocation found at last, the execution of rejoices. 00:44:48.440 --> 00:44:50.270 align:middle line:84% Here is a place, I will be useful." 00:44:50.270 --> 00:44:58.940 align:middle line:90% 00:44:58.940 --> 00:45:01.865 align:middle line:84% Forgive me for skipping about, I just want to read a few. 00:45:01.865 --> 00:45:06.420 align:middle line:90% 00:45:06.420 --> 00:45:08.460 align:middle line:84% "He talked a long time, but when he 00:45:08.460 --> 00:45:11.970 align:middle line:84% saw his words would not defeat me he took off his clothes 00:45:11.970 --> 00:45:12.795 align:middle line:90% and went naked. 00:45:12.795 --> 00:45:15.840 align:middle line:90% 00:45:15.840 --> 00:45:21.240 align:middle line:84% Work, work, no one has died for years, 00:45:21.240 --> 00:45:23.790 align:middle line:84% but I hear the coffin maker working 00:45:23.790 --> 00:45:25.365 align:middle line:90% convinced his labor is useful. 00:45:25.365 --> 00:45:32.290 align:middle line:90% 00:45:32.290 --> 00:45:34.060 align:middle line:84% Butterfly, here's one of my favorites. 00:45:34.060 --> 00:45:38.860 align:middle line:84% Butterfly in Bulgarian is пеперуда, butterfly. 00:45:38.860 --> 00:45:42.520 align:middle line:84% "Her wings drooping over a plucked flower, 00:45:42.520 --> 00:45:47.020 align:middle line:84% she is a widow come to the grave in a bridal gown. 00:45:47.020 --> 00:45:55.800 align:middle line:90% 00:45:55.800 --> 00:45:58.680 align:middle line:84% Discovery: how good it is to let a thought go. 00:45:58.680 --> 00:46:02.310 align:middle line:84% Not to write it down, to let it fly to freedom." 00:46:02.310 --> 00:46:04.440 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:46:04.440 --> 00:46:05.820 align:middle line:90% A writer growing weary. 00:46:05.820 --> 00:46:08.640 align:middle line:90% 00:46:08.640 --> 00:46:10.500 align:middle line:90% Here, Confession. 00:46:10.500 --> 00:46:14.040 align:middle line:90% "It is plasma, not a bone. 00:46:14.040 --> 00:46:17.100 align:middle line:84% Poetry may connect, but it cannot carry. 00:46:17.100 --> 00:46:20.240 align:middle line:90% 00:46:20.240 --> 00:46:22.520 align:middle line:90% Lament, what a sad fate? 00:46:22.520 --> 00:46:25.130 align:middle line:84% Another fornicate with the model, 00:46:25.130 --> 00:46:26.540 align:middle line:90% and you sing her praises." 00:46:26.540 --> 00:46:31.295 align:middle line:90% 00:46:31.295 --> 00:46:32.265 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:46:32.265 --> 00:46:38.570 align:middle line:90% 00:46:38.570 --> 00:46:42.590 align:middle line:90% So maybe just one more. 00:46:42.590 --> 00:46:47.240 align:middle line:84% "Saltwater on sweet water, what's the sense? 00:46:47.240 --> 00:46:52.355 align:middle line:84% For centuries on your shore, to write words upon other words." 00:46:52.355 --> 00:46:57.710 align:middle line:90% 00:46:57.710 --> 00:47:02.585 align:middle line:84% I'm turning now to the book, and now for some longer pieces. 00:47:02.585 --> 00:47:05.390 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:47:05.390 --> 00:47:17.360 align:middle line:90% 00:47:17.360 --> 00:47:21.050 align:middle line:84% This is called "Little men who come blindly." 00:47:21.050 --> 00:47:23.660 align:middle line:90% That's from Stephen Crane. 00:47:23.660 --> 00:47:34.600 align:middle line:90% 00:47:34.600 --> 00:47:36.540 align:middle line:90% [AUDIO OUT] 00:47:36.540 --> 00:47:39.450 align:middle line:90% 00:47:39.450 --> 00:47:43.280 align:middle line:84% The third and fourth generations of them that hate me. 00:47:43.280 --> 00:47:45.410 align:middle line:90% And he writes gravely. 00:47:45.410 --> 00:47:48.500 align:middle line:84% "Well then, I hate the wicked image. 00:47:48.500 --> 00:47:51.320 align:middle line:84% I hate to strike with thy vengeance 00:47:51.320 --> 00:47:54.410 align:middle line:84% the heads of those little men who come blindly. 00:47:54.410 --> 00:47:59.660 align:middle line:84% It will be a brave [INAUDIBLE] Little men who come blindly. 00:47:59.660 --> 00:48:02.930 align:middle line:84% Here is my neighbor, a young man in the street with his son, 00:48:02.930 --> 00:48:06.590 align:middle line:84% who is about six, and has his first bicycle. 00:48:06.590 --> 00:48:07.490 align:middle line:90% "Like this, dad?" 00:48:07.490 --> 00:48:08.210 align:middle line:90% He says. 00:48:08.210 --> 00:48:11.120 align:middle line:84% And his father says, 'No, get on like this." 00:48:11.120 --> 00:48:12.320 align:middle line:90% "Like this, dad?" 00:48:12.320 --> 00:48:15.290 align:middle line:84% Asked the boy, and his father says, "No, like this. 00:48:15.290 --> 00:48:17.210 align:middle line:84% When we take the training wheels off 00:48:17.210 --> 00:48:20.150 align:middle line:90% you'll fall if you get on that." 00:48:20.150 --> 00:48:23.330 align:middle line:84% The boy is on the bike now and says, "Like this, dad?" 00:48:23.330 --> 00:48:24.410 align:middle line:90% "No," says his father. 00:48:24.410 --> 00:48:26.690 align:middle line:90% "Sit back more relaxed." 00:48:26.690 --> 00:48:27.650 align:middle line:90% "Like this?" 00:48:27.650 --> 00:48:29.540 align:middle line:90% "No, no." 00:48:29.540 --> 00:48:33.770 align:middle line:84% And so it goes, till they are out of my hearing at last. 00:48:33.770 --> 00:48:38.540 align:middle line:84% I resume cutting the grass, with something else making an echo. 00:48:38.540 --> 00:48:43.070 align:middle line:84% How the boy's heart ratchets in his voice. 00:48:43.070 --> 00:48:47.030 align:middle line:84% And I pray I never broke from my children's voices 00:48:47.030 --> 00:48:49.640 align:middle line:90% a hurt unfixable as that. 00:48:49.640 --> 00:48:52.250 align:middle line:84% And while its rasping echoes, I think 00:48:52.250 --> 00:48:54.980 align:middle line:84% of a fine novelist in whose teaching 00:48:54.980 --> 00:48:57.920 align:middle line:84% the precise negative word by mincing word 00:48:57.920 --> 00:49:00.470 align:middle line:90% paralyzed student writers. 00:49:00.470 --> 00:49:02.960 align:middle line:84% Not seeing any connection, he tells us 00:49:02.960 --> 00:49:05.360 align:middle line:84% how his parents and especially father 00:49:05.360 --> 00:49:09.080 align:middle line:84% never approved of anything he did as long as they lived. 00:49:09.080 --> 00:49:11.450 align:middle line:84% He knows that it literally and then otherwise 00:49:11.450 --> 00:49:17.420 align:middle line:84% crippled him, that it took years of war and stories, his talent, 00:49:17.420 --> 00:49:19.640 align:middle line:90% to save him. 00:49:19.640 --> 00:49:21.470 align:middle line:84% And there was my old student, who 00:49:21.470 --> 00:49:25.970 align:middle line:84% works with the urban poor bringing us his adopted son. 00:49:25.970 --> 00:49:30.920 align:middle line:84% A black haired boy named Thomas, whom he rebuked harshly 00:49:30.920 --> 00:49:32.660 align:middle line:90% in front of us. 00:49:32.660 --> 00:49:36.770 align:middle line:84% And who said, when our friend stepped out, 00:49:36.770 --> 00:49:39.860 align:middle line:90% "My dad don't like me." 00:49:39.860 --> 00:49:42.350 align:middle line:84% What can we tell the fathers, and what shall 00:49:42.350 --> 00:49:47.910 align:middle line:84% I do with how this sounds in me if writing it down isn't enough? 00:49:47.910 --> 00:49:49.670 align:middle line:84% What can I say to the writer so he 00:49:49.670 --> 00:49:53.300 align:middle line:84% forgives his father's hurt enough to trust his students' 00:49:53.300 --> 00:49:54.530 align:middle line:90% failures? 00:49:54.530 --> 00:49:57.770 align:middle line:90% To see them and see himself. 00:49:57.770 --> 00:50:02.060 align:middle line:84% What can I say to my neighbor young enough to be my son, 00:50:02.060 --> 00:50:05.840 align:middle line:84% some healing words to change him without offence 00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:08.690 align:middle line:90% to help him and help them? 00:50:08.690 --> 00:50:10.460 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:50:10.460 --> 00:50:14.990 align:middle line:84% So I tell you, is it any use to you?" 00:50:14.990 --> 00:50:19.380 align:middle line:90% 00:50:19.380 --> 00:50:23.440 align:middle line:84% I have a poem called Austere, that takes as an epigraph 00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:28.350 align:middle line:84% the last two lines of a wonderful poem by Robert Hayden. 00:50:28.350 --> 00:50:31.710 align:middle line:84% And as to break from myself, I think I'll say that. 00:50:31.710 --> 00:50:36.910 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] "Sundays too, my father got up early 00:50:36.910 --> 00:50:40.900 align:middle line:84% and put his clothes on in the blue black holes. 00:50:40.900 --> 00:50:43.930 align:middle line:84% Then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday 00:50:43.930 --> 00:50:47.560 align:middle line:90% weather, made bank fires blaze. 00:50:47.560 --> 00:50:49.750 align:middle line:90% No one ever thanked him. 00:50:49.750 --> 00:50:54.010 align:middle line:84% I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, break. 00:50:54.010 --> 00:50:57.070 align:middle line:84% When the rooms were warm he'd call, 00:50:57.070 --> 00:50:58.690 align:middle line:84% and slowly I would rise and dress. 00:50:58.690 --> 00:51:01.870 align:middle line:84% Fearing the chronic angers of that house, 00:51:01.870 --> 00:51:06.250 align:middle line:84% speaking indifferently to him who had driven out the cold 00:51:06.250 --> 00:51:08.740 align:middle line:84% and polished my good shoes as well. 00:51:08.740 --> 00:51:16.690 align:middle line:84% What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely 00:51:16.690 --> 00:51:19.490 align:middle line:90% offices?" 00:51:19.490 --> 00:51:22.085 align:middle line:84% Hayden was the first African-American consultant 00:51:22.085 --> 00:51:25.430 align:middle line:84% in poetry, as many of you know, as the Library of Congress. 00:51:25.430 --> 00:51:28.670 align:middle line:84% Before, it was called National Poet Laureate. 00:51:28.670 --> 00:51:32.930 align:middle line:84% So the last two lines are under a title, "Austere." 00:51:32.930 --> 00:51:36.620 align:middle line:84% "For my mother who had six children in a farmhouse in North 00:51:36.620 --> 00:51:42.080 align:middle line:84% Dakota, where there was no central heating, or electricity, 00:51:42.080 --> 00:51:44.980 align:middle line:90% or running water. 00:51:44.980 --> 00:51:46.000 align:middle line:90% "Austere." 00:51:46.000 --> 00:51:50.650 align:middle line:84% How she left kettles of water on the kitchen stove for bath each 00:51:50.650 --> 00:51:53.680 align:middle line:84% Saturday night until hotter than needed (add cold) 00:51:53.680 --> 00:51:59.050 align:middle line:84% to wash in the corrugated tub the week's field dirt away. 00:51:59.050 --> 00:52:02.620 align:middle line:84% Blown even into the crib from a North Dakota sky. 00:52:02.620 --> 00:52:05.380 align:middle line:84% As all of us take turns, the young mother 00:52:05.380 --> 00:52:08.230 align:middle line:84% renewing clean heat for each till it runs out 00:52:08.230 --> 00:52:10.390 align:middle line:90% as she's finishing hers. 00:52:10.390 --> 00:52:16.270 align:middle line:84% I offer you her kettle, stove, the kerosene lamp light. 00:52:16.270 --> 00:52:22.490 align:middle line:84% Her palm, for soap, for all of the tub, its velvety silt." 00:52:22.490 --> 00:52:29.580 align:middle line:90% 00:52:29.580 --> 00:52:33.060 align:middle line:84% Here's a poem about my grandmother, and about baseball. 00:52:33.060 --> 00:52:36.630 align:middle line:84% It's called Near our Villa, North Dakota, 1941. 00:52:36.630 --> 00:52:39.060 align:middle line:84% "You go with grandma to make cherries farm, where 00:52:39.060 --> 00:52:42.570 align:middle line:84% in her mid 60s she works as a cook, housekeeper, servant, 00:52:42.570 --> 00:52:44.580 align:middle line:90% and your local parent. 00:52:44.580 --> 00:52:47.460 align:middle line:84% Avid for the farm, you were generally obedient, 00:52:47.460 --> 00:52:50.460 align:middle line:84% but especially drawn to the bullpen 00:52:50.460 --> 00:52:53.670 align:middle line:84% because she'd scared you about its danger. 00:52:53.670 --> 00:52:55.950 align:middle line:84% Or for a mystery between the bull and you, 00:52:55.950 --> 00:52:58.050 align:middle line:90% his nostril snorting you on. 00:52:58.050 --> 00:53:02.610 align:middle line:84% The horn where they rasped the name, his male fat sack 00:53:02.610 --> 00:53:07.140 align:middle line:84% asway with jewels you could fix could you just whack it 00:53:07.140 --> 00:53:09.030 align:middle line:90% with a bat. 00:53:09.030 --> 00:53:11.910 align:middle line:84% Grandma terrified at the window, too late, 00:53:11.910 --> 00:53:14.100 align:middle line:90% you dream, to stop you. 00:53:14.100 --> 00:53:16.590 align:middle line:84% And while he groomed his [AUDIO OUT] shoe 00:53:16.590 --> 00:53:20.040 align:middle line:84% or splashily peed, the dream went on. 00:53:20.040 --> 00:53:23.250 align:middle line:84% He's seeing but ignoring you, a great pitcher 00:53:23.250 --> 00:53:27.570 align:middle line:84% with a pesky runner on first a few feet off the bag, 00:53:27.570 --> 00:53:29.505 align:middle line:90% testing the bottom strand." 00:53:29.505 --> 00:53:32.760 align:middle line:90% 00:53:32.760 --> 00:53:37.410 align:middle line:84% OK I actually am going to finish pretty soon. 00:53:37.410 --> 00:53:38.760 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:53:38.760 --> 00:53:39.840 align:middle line:90% Early tomorrow. 00:53:39.840 --> 00:53:42.720 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:53:42.720 --> 00:53:46.560 align:middle line:90% 00:53:46.560 --> 00:53:50.010 align:middle line:84% Here's one called Henry & June, the movie. 00:53:50.010 --> 00:53:58.530 align:middle line:84% You know Henry Miller and Anais Nin, all that gang? 00:53:58.530 --> 00:54:02.790 align:middle line:84% There was a movie about it, Stanley Kaufman doesn't like it. 00:54:02.790 --> 00:54:07.170 align:middle line:84% And OK it drags a little, but there are some moments 00:54:07.170 --> 00:54:11.820 align:middle line:84% as when Anais tells Henry, she's happy they fit so good. 00:54:11.820 --> 00:54:16.170 align:middle line:84% How sometimes she has to Vaseline her husband's Hugo. 00:54:16.170 --> 00:54:18.870 align:middle line:84% And Henry snaps a quarter second [AUDIO OUT] 00:54:18.870 --> 00:54:21.120 align:middle line:84% that says, "He too has been taught 00:54:21.120 --> 00:54:24.660 align:middle line:84% the faith of every modest male, that all dicks are 00:54:24.660 --> 00:54:26.940 align:middle line:90% roughly the same." 00:54:26.940 --> 00:54:30.240 align:middle line:84% Stan is on the money about June, or the tall invert 00:54:30.240 --> 00:54:31.470 align:middle line:90% who plays her. 00:54:31.470 --> 00:54:34.500 align:middle line:84% What a honey furnish she is, especially with her dampers 00:54:34.500 --> 00:54:36.000 align:middle line:90% down. 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:40.650 align:middle line:84% But if he really means it when he says the Anais isn't sexy, 00:54:40.650 --> 00:54:43.470 align:middle line:90% Stanley needs an oil change. 00:54:43.470 --> 00:54:44.580 align:middle line:90% Or a lube job. 00:54:44.580 --> 00:54:46.260 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:54:46.260 --> 00:54:48.660 align:middle line:84% And he'd better get that tailpipe checked." 00:54:48.660 --> 00:54:51.130 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:54:51.130 --> 00:55:01.020 align:middle line:90% 00:55:01.020 --> 00:55:09.090 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm looking for poems that are short and engage 00:55:09.090 --> 00:55:09.880 align:middle line:90% in certain ways. 00:55:09.880 --> 00:55:12.030 align:middle line:84% Here's a theft from Robert Frost, 00:55:12.030 --> 00:55:13.620 align:middle line:90% and from a student of mine. 00:55:13.620 --> 00:55:16.770 align:middle line:84% It's called Never again with birdsong. 00:55:16.770 --> 00:55:19.440 align:middle line:84% "A pretty girl writes in her journal. 00:55:19.440 --> 00:55:21.300 align:middle line:84% She probably shouldn't put this here, 00:55:21.300 --> 00:55:24.810 align:middle line:84% but she'd had the best sex ever in her life. 00:55:24.810 --> 00:55:30.510 align:middle line:84% Fresh as 22, says she's had her first orgasm during intercourse. 00:55:30.510 --> 00:55:33.810 align:middle line:84% That they both came at the same time, 00:55:33.810 --> 00:55:37.080 align:middle line:84% that she finally sees what all the fuss is about. 00:55:37.080 --> 00:55:39.900 align:middle line:84% How this guy is also fun, the laughing 00:55:39.900 --> 00:55:41.940 align:middle line:90% they do before and after. 00:55:41.940 --> 00:55:45.870 align:middle line:84% How it may not probably won't last, but what the hell? 00:55:45.870 --> 00:55:48.060 align:middle line:90% It's so good now. 00:55:48.060 --> 00:55:50.970 align:middle line:84% And you resist jotting her your theory, 00:55:50.970 --> 00:55:54.480 align:middle line:84% that laughter and orgasm are connected. 00:55:54.480 --> 00:55:57.130 align:middle line:84% Those who have a lot of one are likelier than most 00:55:57.130 --> 00:55:59.400 align:middle line:90% to have a lot of the other. 00:55:59.400 --> 00:56:01.860 align:middle line:84% But she must know this in her skin, 00:56:01.860 --> 00:56:04.890 align:middle line:84% we love to make who make us laugh 00:56:04.890 --> 00:56:07.410 align:middle line:90% even before we feel them one. 00:56:07.410 --> 00:56:10.908 align:middle line:84% Cum funny, honey [INAUDIBLE] when they come." 00:56:10.908 --> 00:56:13.896 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:56:13.896 --> 00:56:18.890 align:middle line:90% 00:56:18.890 --> 00:56:21.410 align:middle line:90% All right, two more. 00:56:21.410 --> 00:56:24.700 align:middle line:90% 00:56:24.700 --> 00:56:27.730 align:middle line:90% Well, I'll make it three. 00:56:27.730 --> 00:56:29.005 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:56:29.005 --> 00:56:30.280 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:56:30.280 --> 00:56:34.900 align:middle line:84% I'll tell you my daughter Elizabeth's first poem. 00:56:34.900 --> 00:56:41.440 align:middle line:84% We changed schools and put them into a Catholic school 00:56:41.440 --> 00:56:42.970 align:middle line:90% when she was eight. 00:56:42.970 --> 00:56:45.220 align:middle line:84% And they really hadn't had, she and her sister, 00:56:45.220 --> 00:56:46.360 align:middle line:90% any religious training. 00:56:46.360 --> 00:56:48.688 align:middle line:84% And the nuns asked for a Christmas poem, 00:56:48.688 --> 00:56:50.230 align:middle line:84% and Elizabeth wrote this and asked me 00:56:50.230 --> 00:56:51.010 align:middle line:90% if I thought it was right. 00:56:51.010 --> 00:56:52.180 align:middle line:90% I said I liked it very much. 00:56:52.180 --> 00:56:53.805 align:middle line:84% I didn't know what the nun would think, 00:56:53.805 --> 00:56:56.110 align:middle line:84% but I honestly liked it very much. 00:56:56.110 --> 00:57:00.340 align:middle line:90% I call it The hard nosed Noel. 00:57:00.340 --> 00:57:04.960 align:middle line:84% "Jesus was born on Christmas day under the straw, under the hay. 00:57:04.960 --> 00:57:07.450 align:middle line:84% He's dead now, as everyone knows. 00:57:07.450 --> 00:57:09.700 align:middle line:84% Nails in his finger, nails in his toes. 00:57:09.700 --> 00:57:12.652 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:57:12.652 --> 00:57:26.920 align:middle line:90% 00:57:26.920 --> 00:57:29.620 align:middle line:84% By the way, she was offered a scholarship for an MFA 00:57:29.620 --> 00:57:30.235 align:middle line:90% at Tucson. 00:57:30.235 --> 00:57:32.020 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:57:32.020 --> 00:57:34.090 align:middle line:84% I don't think she submitted that. 00:57:34.090 --> 00:57:36.430 align:middle line:84% She did get one at the University of Virginia, 00:57:36.430 --> 00:57:39.130 align:middle line:84% and her sister and I went down to Charlottesville 00:57:39.130 --> 00:57:42.010 align:middle line:84% to hear her reading, which they do as they're finishing. 00:57:42.010 --> 00:57:46.030 align:middle line:84% And she began with that poem, I was very proud of her. 00:57:46.030 --> 00:57:48.700 align:middle line:90% 00:57:48.700 --> 00:57:52.480 align:middle line:84% Here's a poem for my other daughter called Pamela. 00:57:52.480 --> 00:57:57.130 align:middle line:84% She did something extraordinary, and reminding me of times 00:57:57.130 --> 00:57:58.810 align:middle line:90% I wished I had done something. 00:57:58.810 --> 00:58:00.940 align:middle line:84% A former student called me, and his wife 00:58:00.940 --> 00:58:03.280 align:middle line:84% had a baby who lived only two days. 00:58:03.280 --> 00:58:05.920 align:middle line:90% And he knew I had lost a child. 00:58:05.920 --> 00:58:09.040 align:middle line:84% And I asked him if he wanted me to come, and he said, no. 00:58:09.040 --> 00:58:11.470 align:middle line:84% But I shouldn't have asked, I should have taken the call 00:58:11.470 --> 00:58:14.300 align:middle line:90% as enough of a call to go. 00:58:14.300 --> 00:58:18.288 align:middle line:84% And then if I was of no use to him, I wouldn't have been hurt. 00:58:18.288 --> 00:58:19.455 align:middle line:90% I could have just come home. 00:58:19.455 --> 00:58:21.940 align:middle line:90% It was Washington to New York. 00:58:21.940 --> 00:58:24.430 align:middle line:84% Well, my daughter went from Washington to California 00:58:24.430 --> 00:58:26.770 align:middle line:90% when she was called. 00:58:26.770 --> 00:58:28.750 align:middle line:84% She was going to Georgetown. she was working 00:58:28.750 --> 00:58:30.580 align:middle line:84% in a car dealership in Arlington, 00:58:30.580 --> 00:58:36.100 align:middle line:84% and she just went to California on her very fragile credit card. 00:58:36.100 --> 00:58:37.630 align:middle line:90% It's called Pamela. 00:58:37.630 --> 00:58:40.750 align:middle line:84% "Praise for Pamela Helen Flint, who 00:58:40.750 --> 00:58:45.730 align:middle line:84% when Rick's mother called to say her son was dying left at once. 00:58:45.730 --> 00:58:50.410 align:middle line:84% Expensive to fly from Virginia to California to see, 00:58:50.410 --> 00:58:53.560 align:middle line:84% and as it turned out, to be the only one with him 00:58:53.560 --> 00:58:57.700 align:middle line:90% when he died of AIDS at 27. 00:58:57.700 --> 00:59:02.170 align:middle line:84% Went because she's loved him since they were 14, maybe 00:59:02.170 --> 00:59:05.830 align:middle line:84% before either knew the complicated calls of sex, 00:59:05.830 --> 00:59:08.620 align:middle line:84% specific measures of need or predilection, 00:59:08.620 --> 00:59:13.790 align:middle line:84% but went on as each had promised each in love for life. 00:59:13.790 --> 00:59:18.670 align:middle line:84% And so just left school, and job, and kin, 00:59:18.670 --> 00:59:20.740 align:middle line:90% catching the first flight out. 00:59:20.740 --> 00:59:24.370 align:middle line:84% Rented a car in Fresno, drove 50 miles 00:59:24.370 --> 00:59:26.800 align:middle line:90% to the hospital to be with him. 00:59:26.800 --> 00:59:31.570 align:middle line:84% So he knew it, a wordless surge of greeting 00:59:31.570 --> 00:59:35.510 align:middle line:90% at her voice and touch. 00:59:35.510 --> 00:59:40.190 align:middle line:84% May all who need one at the end have such a breath. 00:59:40.190 --> 00:59:40.690 align:middle line:90% Praise." 00:59:40.690 --> 00:59:46.570 align:middle line:90% 00:59:46.570 --> 00:59:49.340 align:middle line:84% And at last, this is the last poem in the new book. 00:59:49.340 --> 00:59:51.070 align:middle line:90% It's called Prayer. 00:59:51.070 --> 00:59:53.560 align:middle line:84% And in it I say, deo volente, which 00:59:53.560 --> 00:59:56.080 align:middle line:84% is not a mistake for the Latin, but Italian. 00:59:56.080 --> 01:00:01.780 align:middle line:84% Meaning the same thing, God grant, or God willing. 01:00:01.780 --> 01:00:03.700 align:middle line:90% Prayer. 01:00:03.700 --> 01:00:06.880 align:middle line:84% "Any day's writing may be the last, 01:00:06.880 --> 01:00:09.420 align:middle line:84% he's reminded at 2:00 in the morning." 01:00:09.420 --> 01:00:11.545 align:middle line:84% I'm going to stop to say this owes a little I think 01:00:11.545 --> 01:00:14.020 align:middle line:84% to that Merwin poem in which he remarks 01:00:14.020 --> 01:00:18.580 align:middle line:84% the obvious but spooky idea that each year we 01:00:18.580 --> 01:00:23.110 align:middle line:84% live through the calendar date on which eventually we'll die. 01:00:23.110 --> 01:00:26.440 align:middle line:84% I think it owes a little to that. 01:00:26.440 --> 01:00:27.160 align:middle line:90% Prayer. 01:00:27.160 --> 01:00:29.620 align:middle line:84% "Any day's writing may be the last, 01:00:29.620 --> 01:00:31.810 align:middle line:84% he's reminded at 2:00 in the morning. 01:00:31.810 --> 01:00:35.420 align:middle line:84% Making this year's last Italian notes, 01:00:35.420 --> 01:00:39.880 align:middle line:84% readying his machine and self to get aboard the bigger machine 01:00:39.880 --> 01:00:43.780 align:middle line:90% and fly, deo volente, home. 01:00:43.780 --> 01:00:46.300 align:middle line:84% And so he repeats the 'Our Father' 01:00:46.300 --> 01:00:48.970 align:middle line:84% he said to himself before rising. 01:00:48.970 --> 01:00:54.100 align:middle line:84% And feels a heartfelt, Thanks Lord for such a poem as 01:00:54.100 --> 01:00:56.030 align:middle line:90% have come his way. 01:00:56.030 --> 01:00:58.510 align:middle line:90% Whether or not they get read. 01:00:58.510 --> 01:01:01.960 align:middle line:84% And it goes without saying, few may. 01:01:01.960 --> 01:01:05.200 align:middle line:84% And thanks as well for eagerness almost daily, 01:01:05.200 --> 01:01:09.610 align:middle line:84% to greet the drone with words a question part 01:01:09.610 --> 01:01:12.570 align:middle line:90% by what poets before have done. 01:01:12.570 --> 01:01:15.270 align:middle line:90% He prays to be among them. 01:01:15.270 --> 01:01:21.840 align:middle line:84% One however small, the work is all." 01:01:21.840 --> 01:01:24.810 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:01:24.810 --> 01:01:43.525 align:middle line:90% 01:01:43.525 --> 01:01:44.400 align:middle line:90% You're very generous. 01:01:44.400 --> 01:01:46.650 align:middle line:84% I don't take it as a request for an encore, 01:01:46.650 --> 01:01:49.320 align:middle line:84% but it made me remember a New Yorker cartoon. 01:01:49.320 --> 01:01:52.350 align:middle line:90% 01:01:52.350 --> 01:01:57.060 align:middle line:84% The usual thing is the fighter is all battered in his corner 01:01:57.060 --> 01:01:59.830 align:middle line:84% and his manager says, "Go out and kill him again." 01:01:59.830 --> 01:02:03.390 align:middle line:84% But the New Yorker had one in which this guy is very badly 01:02:03.390 --> 01:02:06.120 align:middle line:84% beaten, and his manager looks terrified says, "Look out, 01:02:06.120 --> 01:02:07.590 align:middle line:90% here he comes again." 01:02:07.590 --> 01:02:08.235 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:02:08.235 --> 01:02:10.390 align:middle line:84% I didn't want you to think that I was coming back 01:02:10.390 --> 01:02:13.440 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER]