WEBVTT

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So my plan, I was told--

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let's see, get my
watch that I can see.

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So a little background, my
mother died three weeks ago.

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So I'm a little fragile for it.

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But I got strength as
soon as I got here.

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It was hard to be at
their house across town.

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But as soon as I got into
the little poetry cottage,

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I got strength.

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And so I put together
a 39 minute reading.

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So our friend Seamus Heaney
and Marie Heaney used to say,

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there's no such thing
as a short poetry

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reading or a tall whiskey.

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I hope I come in a
little under time.

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But I wanted to start by reading
the poem on the broadside,

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which is in the new
book: Concerning

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the Meaning Molecule in Poetry.

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Long ago, a man told
me if you write poetry,

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keep your subjects small.

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I was a tiny skinny
girl at that point.

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Much later, I heard a meaning
molecule in the call of a dove,

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pretending to be
an owl in the pine.

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A song speck
circling in a thought

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throughout all time, like the
man said, extremely small.

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Traveling from before literature
through the blue centuries,

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Until quite recently when a
radiant instance of the unknown

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paused our bafflement but kept
that little meaning absolutely

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elusive and erotic.

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I think that meaning
is sort of sexy,

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[LAUGHTER]

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But it's not really available.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's like falling in love
with a priest or something.