WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.020 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.020 --> 00:00:06.960 align:middle line:84%
I want to read perhaps
two more poems, one

00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:11.010 align:middle line:84%
that I was kind of happy
and disturbed by after it

00:00:11.010 --> 00:00:12.630 align:middle line:90%
was published.

00:00:12.630 --> 00:00:15.390 align:middle line:90%
I got a letter from a doctor--

00:00:15.390 --> 00:00:19.860 align:middle line:84%
this is a poem about a
quack in my hometown.

00:00:19.860 --> 00:00:28.760 align:middle line:84%
And his primary accomplishment
was to get, I would say,

00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:36.690 align:middle line:84%
33% of the people in the county
addicted to barbiturates,

00:00:36.690 --> 00:00:41.160 align:middle line:84%
for which he may have a
good place in glory or not.

00:00:41.160 --> 00:00:45.000 align:middle line:84%
But he was
characterized by people

00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:50.040 align:middle line:84%
as a heart specialist, a nerve
specialist, and that rarest

00:00:50.040 --> 00:00:54.274 align:middle line:90%
of Southern characters--

00:00:54.274 --> 00:00:57.470 align:middle line:90%
a female doctor.

00:00:57.470 --> 00:01:01.880 align:middle line:84%
And I just thought that he
always told people something,

00:01:01.880 --> 00:01:04.879 align:middle line:84%
and he gave them a word,
and it made them happy.

00:01:04.879 --> 00:01:10.190 align:middle line:84%
And so this woman
in the Northwest

00:01:10.190 --> 00:01:12.260 align:middle line:84%
wrote me a letter,
a doctor, and said

00:01:12.260 --> 00:01:14.390 align:middle line:84%
she wanted to publish
it in a medical article

00:01:14.390 --> 00:01:15.410 align:middle line:90%
that she was publishing.

00:01:15.410 --> 00:01:16.790 align:middle line:90%
So I thought, oh no.

00:01:16.790 --> 00:01:18.020 align:middle line:90%
That's what doctors do.

00:01:18.020 --> 00:01:23.710 align:middle line:84%
They give us a name we don't
understand, and we go, yeah--

00:01:23.710 --> 00:01:26.280 align:middle line:90%
[INAUDIBLE]

00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:29.530 align:middle line:90%
And you go, [INAUDIBLE].

00:01:29.530 --> 00:01:31.155 align:middle line:84%
It turns into your
little death mantra.

00:01:31.155 --> 00:01:35.630 align:middle line:90%


00:01:35.630 --> 00:01:38.010 align:middle line:90%
"Mortal Sorrows."

00:01:38.010 --> 00:01:42.310 align:middle line:84%
"The tortures of lumbago
consumed Aunt Madge,

00:01:42.310 --> 00:01:45.160 align:middle line:84%
and Leah Vest once resigned
from schoolmarming,

00:01:45.160 --> 00:01:48.370 align:middle line:84%
could not be convinced
to leave the house.

00:01:48.370 --> 00:01:50.950 align:middle line:84%
Mrs. Mary Hogan, after
birthing her fifth son,

00:01:50.950 --> 00:01:55.060 align:middle line:84%
lay bedfast for the last
52 years of her life.

00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:57.880 align:middle line:84%
Reporting shooting pains that
would begin high in her back

00:01:57.880 --> 00:02:01.820 align:middle line:84%
and shear downward to her
feet, as though, she said,

00:02:01.820 --> 00:02:05.670 align:middle line:84%
she had been glazed
in lightning.

00:02:05.670 --> 00:02:11.610 align:middle line:84%
Also men broken on bridges and
mills, shell-shocked veterans,

00:02:11.610 --> 00:02:16.410 align:middle line:84%
religious alcoholics, Leldon
Kilpatrick, Johnson Suggs,

00:02:16.410 --> 00:02:18.330 align:middle line:90%
Whitey Carlyle.

00:02:18.330 --> 00:02:21.030 align:middle line:84%
They came and sat
there too, leafing

00:02:21.030 --> 00:02:25.200 align:middle line:84%
through yellowing Pageants
and Progressive Farmers.

00:02:25.200 --> 00:02:27.840 align:middle line:84%
One by one, all
entered in and talked

00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:32.310 align:middle line:84%
while the good doctor gargled
a dark chaff in his pipe

00:02:32.310 --> 00:02:34.710 align:middle line:84%
and took down symptoms,
annotating them

00:02:34.710 --> 00:02:37.080 align:middle line:90%
on his hidden chart.

00:02:37.080 --> 00:02:43.290 align:middle line:84%
Numbness, neuralgia, the
knotted lymph, the clammy palms.

00:02:43.290 --> 00:02:44.940 align:middle line:84%
And then he'd
scratch his temples,

00:02:44.940 --> 00:02:48.240 align:middle line:84%
meaningful patch of white,
and scrawl out his unfailing

00:02:48.240 --> 00:02:51.930 align:middle line:84%
barbiturate prescription to
be filled by his pharmacist

00:02:51.930 --> 00:02:55.500 align:middle line:84%
brother-in-law until half
the county had gathered

00:02:55.500 --> 00:02:57.060 align:middle line:90%
as in a lap--

00:02:57.060 --> 00:03:01.680 align:middle line:84%
the quantum ache, the
mutiny in every house.

00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:03.600 align:middle line:90%
How much pain?

00:03:03.600 --> 00:03:07.590 align:middle line:84%
How many diseases consigned
to the mythological?

00:03:07.590 --> 00:03:14.070 align:middle line:84%
The dropped ovaries, the torn
up nerves, what women said,

00:03:14.070 --> 00:03:16.820 align:middle line:90%
what men wanted to believe.

00:03:16.820 --> 00:03:20.610 align:middle line:90%
Part of it laughable, I know.

00:03:20.610 --> 00:03:25.740 align:middle line:84%
Still, I want someone to see,
now that they lie safe in graves

00:03:25.740 --> 00:03:29.670 align:middle line:84%
beyond the vacant stores,
that someone listened

00:03:29.670 --> 00:03:33.180 align:middle line:84%
and, hearing the wrong at
the heart, named it something

00:03:33.180 --> 00:03:34.890 align:middle line:90%
that sounded real.

00:03:34.890 --> 00:03:37.740 align:middle line:84%
Whatever they lived
through and died of.

00:03:37.740 --> 00:03:42.570 align:middle line:84%
I remember Mrs. Lyle, who called
it a thorn in the flesh, and Mr.

00:03:42.570 --> 00:03:46.460 align:middle line:84%
Appleton who had no
roof in his mouth."

00:03:46.460 --> 00:03:47.000 align:middle line:90%