WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.284 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.284 --> 00:00:06.610 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER: --off the spring series on January 21 with the poet 00:00:06.610 --> 00:00:11.500 align:middle line:90% Dean Young in this auditorium. 00:00:11.500 --> 00:00:13.240 align:middle line:84% After the reading in the hall, we 00:00:13.240 --> 00:00:16.059 align:middle line:84% hope you will join us for a little reception. 00:00:16.059 --> 00:00:21.760 align:middle line:84% We have-- the bookstore has for sale Steve Orlen's books. 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:25.330 align:middle line:84% And Alison Deming's new book, Monarch, 00:00:25.330 --> 00:00:27.940 align:middle line:90% will be available tonight. 00:00:27.940 --> 00:00:31.090 align:middle line:84% Tonight's reader will be introduced by the poet 00:00:31.090 --> 00:00:33.250 align:middle line:90% and teacher Tony Hoagland. 00:00:33.250 --> 00:00:36.729 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:36.729 --> 00:00:42.196 align:middle line:90% 00:00:42.196 --> 00:00:44.243 align:middle line:90% TONY HOAGLAND: Hello. 00:00:44.243 --> 00:00:46.285 align:middle line:84% Thank you for coming tonight to hear Steve Orlen. 00:00:46.285 --> 00:00:49.600 align:middle line:90% 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:55.600 align:middle line:84% He's published-- I'm going to just [MUTED] brief essay. 00:00:55.600 --> 00:00:59.830 align:middle line:84% He's published four collections of poetry: Permission to Speak, 00:00:59.830 --> 00:01:03.190 align:middle line:84% A Place at the Table, The Bridge of Sighs, 00:01:03.190 --> 00:01:06.220 align:middle line:84% and most recently this book, Kisses, 00:01:06.220 --> 00:01:09.940 align:middle line:84% from Miami Ohio University Press. 00:01:09.940 --> 00:01:14.080 align:middle line:84% And Steve has also won as many NEA grants as you can win. 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:17.870 align:middle line:90% 00:01:17.870 --> 00:01:20.180 align:middle line:84% It's a real pleasure for me to introduce him 00:01:20.180 --> 00:01:22.970 align:middle line:84% because I'm a former student of his 00:01:22.970 --> 00:01:25.610 align:middle line:84% and also because I love his poems 00:01:25.610 --> 00:01:28.280 align:middle line:84% and also because I've been watching 00:01:28.280 --> 00:01:35.510 align:middle line:84% him, his process over his shoulder, for 15 or 16 years 00:01:35.510 --> 00:01:37.160 align:middle line:90% now. 00:01:37.160 --> 00:01:42.510 align:middle line:84% And it's been a very educational experience. 00:01:42.510 --> 00:01:46.400 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to give a mini essay. 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:49.520 align:middle line:84% And the subject of my mini essay to introduce Steve 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:53.990 align:middle line:84% is a quote from the poet and essayist Jonathan Holden. 00:01:53.990 --> 00:01:59.300 align:middle line:84% And the quote is, "Poets are the elites of literature, 00:01:59.300 --> 00:02:01.460 align:middle line:84% literary critics are the sports writers." 00:02:01.460 --> 00:02:07.310 align:middle line:90% 00:02:07.310 --> 00:02:11.600 align:middle line:84% Now the idea of a poet as an athlete has a history 00:02:11.600 --> 00:02:14.240 align:middle line:84% but it's so obvious that I'm surprised that no one said it 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:17.150 align:middle line:90% before Jonathan Holden. 00:02:17.150 --> 00:02:21.710 align:middle line:84% It's good because it makes poets sound agile and muscular 00:02:21.710 --> 00:02:23.570 align:middle line:90% and that's good for their image. 00:02:23.570 --> 00:02:26.480 align:middle line:84% And it also seems simply accurate as a description 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:28.250 align:middle line:90% of what poems do. 00:02:28.250 --> 00:02:30.890 align:middle line:84% An acrobatic performance which combines 00:02:30.890 --> 00:02:33.710 align:middle line:84% freedom and control, gravity, anti-gravity, 00:02:33.710 --> 00:02:36.860 align:middle line:84% death-defying love, love-defying death. 00:02:36.860 --> 00:02:39.770 align:middle line:84% When we watch an athlete, we're reminded of how 00:02:39.770 --> 00:02:41.240 align:middle line:90% amazing the human body is. 00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:43.670 align:middle line:84% When we listen to a poet, we're reminded of how 00:02:43.670 --> 00:02:46.940 align:middle line:90% capacious the human psyche is. 00:02:46.940 --> 00:02:50.900 align:middle line:84% And then there are a lot of game-related injuries 00:02:50.900 --> 00:02:55.040 align:middle line:90% in both poetry and athletics. 00:02:55.040 --> 00:02:57.027 align:middle line:84% The Chinese poet Li Po, for example, 00:02:57.027 --> 00:02:59.360 align:middle line:84% drowned while attempting to copulate with the reflection 00:02:59.360 --> 00:02:59.958 align:middle line:90% of the moon. 00:02:59.958 --> 00:03:02.200 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:02.200 --> 00:03:08.230 align:middle line:84% Poets have a history of forgetting the oven is on, 00:03:08.230 --> 00:03:14.350 align:middle line:84% falling off bridges by accident, and poets and athletes, finally, 00:03:14.350 --> 00:03:17.345 align:middle line:84% also seem to have in common what might be called a short shelf 00:03:17.345 --> 00:03:17.845 align:middle line:90% life. 00:03:17.845 --> 00:03:20.650 align:middle line:90% 00:03:20.650 --> 00:03:22.360 align:middle line:84% By which I don't mean how many years 00:03:22.360 --> 00:03:24.760 align:middle line:84% a poet writes, but the period of time 00:03:24.760 --> 00:03:28.000 align:middle line:84% in which he or she is actively inventing a way of speaking 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:31.150 align:middle line:90% and discovering subject matter. 00:03:31.150 --> 00:03:35.860 align:middle line:84% Arrested development is more the rule than the exception. 00:03:35.860 --> 00:03:38.620 align:middle line:84% And this is what I want to testify to 00:03:38.620 --> 00:03:40.630 align:middle line:90% in Steve Orlen's work. 00:03:40.630 --> 00:03:42.910 align:middle line:84% Especially his work over the last few years, which 00:03:42.910 --> 00:03:45.280 align:middle line:90% you'll be hearing tonight. 00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:48.460 align:middle line:84% Stamina and persistence, and study and discipline 00:03:48.460 --> 00:03:50.210 align:middle line:84% are all parts of an artist's talent. 00:03:50.210 --> 00:03:54.910 align:middle line:84% But to be able to reconceive your own limitations 00:03:54.910 --> 00:03:58.120 align:middle line:84% and to have the spiritual readiness 00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:02.320 align:middle line:90% that inspiration requires-- 00:04:02.320 --> 00:04:06.850 align:middle line:84% qualities that represent another kind of work, inner work, 00:04:06.850 --> 00:04:12.050 align:middle line:84% and that's why I'm introducing Steve Orlen as an athlete 00:04:12.050 --> 00:04:12.550 align:middle line:90% tonight. 00:04:12.550 --> 00:04:15.850 align:middle line:90% 00:04:15.850 --> 00:04:18.670 align:middle line:84% His imagination is muscular and quick 00:04:18.670 --> 00:04:21.250 align:middle line:84% and tender and above all, in the poems 00:04:21.250 --> 00:04:27.220 align:middle line:84% you're going to hear tonight, is surprising and unpredictable. 00:04:27.220 --> 00:04:30.490 align:middle line:90% His feet are big and flat. 00:04:30.490 --> 00:04:34.550 align:middle line:84% And he is not so slim as he once was, 00:04:34.550 --> 00:04:37.815 align:middle line:84% but he is at the peak of his form and I hope you enjoy him. 00:04:37.815 --> 00:04:41.695 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:41.695 --> 00:04:51.332 align:middle line:90% 00:04:51.332 --> 00:04:53.040 align:middle line:84% STEVE ORLEN: That's a hard act to follow. 00:04:53.040 --> 00:04:55.750 align:middle line:90% 00:04:55.750 --> 00:04:59.200 align:middle line:84% Thank you, Tony, and thank you all for coming. 00:04:59.200 --> 00:05:01.350 align:middle line:84% I've stood out in the hallway with a sandwich board 00:05:01.350 --> 00:05:03.900 align:middle line:84% for the last week asking everybody to come 00:05:03.900 --> 00:05:05.045 align:middle line:90% and you all came. 00:05:05.045 --> 00:05:05.670 align:middle line:90% It's very nice. 00:05:05.670 --> 00:05:08.550 align:middle line:90% 00:05:08.550 --> 00:05:09.540 align:middle line:90% I'm all dressed up now. 00:05:09.540 --> 00:05:10.680 align:middle line:90% I can take it off, right. 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:13.920 align:middle line:90% It's warm up here. 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:16.980 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read some poems from the new book Kisses 00:05:16.980 --> 00:05:19.455 align:middle line:84% and then I'm going to read some newer poems. 00:05:19.455 --> 00:05:24.040 align:middle line:90% 00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:27.190 align:middle line:84% The first poem is called "Nobody's Jew." 00:05:27.190 --> 00:05:34.210 align:middle line:84% This takes place in a restaurant kitchen, et cetera. 00:05:34.210 --> 00:05:37.390 align:middle line:84% The chef of the restaurant was a big bluff man 00:05:37.390 --> 00:05:40.870 align:middle line:84% who looked like some palooka from the comics. 00:05:40.870 --> 00:05:44.470 align:middle line:84% In the kitchen, among the chowders and the steaks, 00:05:44.470 --> 00:05:47.860 align:middle line:84% he'd pump out his brave stories and take 00:05:47.860 --> 00:05:52.930 align:middle line:84% the giant, spiny, 12-pound old man lobster dripping 00:05:52.930 --> 00:05:56.920 align:middle line:84% from its tank and wave it like an obscene flag 00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:59.920 align:middle line:90% in someone's passing face. 00:05:59.920 --> 00:06:03.010 align:middle line:84% He abused the cooks and waiters equally. 00:06:03.010 --> 00:06:07.210 align:middle line:84% But one cook in particular, the apprentice saucier, 00:06:07.210 --> 00:06:12.040 align:middle line:84% he humiliated most for some reason I couldn't quite yet get, 00:06:12.040 --> 00:06:15.790 align:middle line:84% going for whatever jugular throb that moment 00:06:15.790 --> 00:06:18.430 align:middle line:90% in the kitchen culture. 00:06:18.430 --> 00:06:22.960 align:middle line:84% I don't know how the saucier knew I was Jewish like him. 00:06:22.960 --> 00:06:26.740 align:middle line:84% But one night in the larder, he confided that the chef 00:06:26.740 --> 00:06:28.300 align:middle line:90% despised the Jews. 00:06:28.300 --> 00:06:30.810 align:middle line:90% So watch your step. 00:06:30.810 --> 00:06:33.930 align:middle line:84% I can still feel him breathing in my face 00:06:33.930 --> 00:06:38.760 align:middle line:84% and speaking out his awful, personal, historical truths 00:06:38.760 --> 00:06:44.130 align:middle line:84% about our exile, our pogroms, our Holocaust. 00:06:44.130 --> 00:06:48.210 align:middle line:84% And as the summer passed, he tried in various ways 00:06:48.210 --> 00:06:52.410 align:middle line:84% without success to enlist me in the ancient wars 00:06:52.410 --> 00:06:55.800 align:middle line:84% between the Gentiles and the Jews. 00:06:55.800 --> 00:06:58.980 align:middle line:84% The problem was I couldn't stand him. 00:06:58.980 --> 00:07:03.330 align:middle line:84% Bookish, smug, overly alert to nuances 00:07:03.330 --> 00:07:07.080 align:middle line:84% everyone else let pass, his face kept 00:07:07.080 --> 00:07:10.710 align:middle line:84% that sour look of the willfully dispossessed 00:07:10.710 --> 00:07:15.120 align:middle line:84% like those immigrants my uncles chuckled at with their side 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:18.240 align:middle line:84% locks, their prayer books, and yarmulkes, 00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:22.110 align:middle line:84% their passive, bearded, ghetto insistence 00:07:22.110 --> 00:07:25.410 align:middle line:90% on being kept a race apart. 00:07:25.410 --> 00:07:27.930 align:middle line:84% And though I thought of myself as just 00:07:27.930 --> 00:07:32.730 align:middle line:84% another American working-class kid, who wanted to write poetry 00:07:32.730 --> 00:07:36.930 align:middle line:84% like the immortal Yeats, what he said nagged at me 00:07:36.930 --> 00:07:39.180 align:middle line:90% and wouldn't let me go. 00:07:39.180 --> 00:07:42.990 align:middle line:84% So that night in the kitchen, when the chef yelled something 00:07:42.990 --> 00:07:45.930 align:middle line:84% to the saucier something like, hey Jew 00:07:45.930 --> 00:07:50.400 align:middle line:84% boy, come taste the soup, and the silence in its wake 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:54.630 align:middle line:84% was like thick grease and the humid odors of the kitchen 00:07:54.630 --> 00:07:59.310 align:middle line:84% itself, whatever gorge there was in me rose. 00:07:59.310 --> 00:08:03.960 align:middle line:84% And as I tasted it, it yelled, watch your mouth. 00:08:03.960 --> 00:08:08.140 align:middle line:84% The chef was a coward and he made a joke. 00:08:08.140 --> 00:08:12.630 align:middle line:84% But in that moment I hated the saucier, not the chef. 00:08:12.630 --> 00:08:17.760 align:middle line:84% I hated his potato nose, and his chummy confiding sneers, 00:08:17.760 --> 00:08:21.450 align:middle line:84% and the loneliness he hoarded like so much aging 00:08:21.450 --> 00:08:24.720 align:middle line:90% cheese he finally got to share. 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:28.470 align:middle line:84% I hated him the way one hates oneself. 00:08:28.470 --> 00:08:32.309 align:middle line:84% The way one hates one's family, in oneself. 00:08:32.309 --> 00:08:35.100 align:middle line:84% Those little tics of character consigned 00:08:35.100 --> 00:08:39.690 align:middle line:84% to genes that rise to the ceiling in the dark and blind 00:08:39.690 --> 00:08:42.059 align:middle line:90% you so you can't sleep. 00:08:42.059 --> 00:08:44.820 align:middle line:90% Incessant shrugs and bickering. 00:08:44.820 --> 00:08:49.290 align:middle line:84% The constant emotional deals we made from room to room, 00:08:49.290 --> 00:08:52.890 align:middle line:84% from house to house, a block, a neighborhood, 00:08:52.890 --> 00:08:58.530 align:middle line:84% an insisted, noisy, inventive, tribal nation of us. 00:08:58.530 --> 00:09:01.440 align:middle line:90% We roamed the Earth, despised. 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:05.400 align:middle line:84% I hated all of it: how could we have survived? 00:09:05.400 --> 00:09:10.410 align:middle line:84% Einstein, Freud, and all the private melancholic schlumps, 00:09:10.410 --> 00:09:14.890 align:middle line:84% my uncles, my father, my brother. 00:09:14.890 --> 00:09:16.780 align:middle line:84% I'm just a guy like anybody else, 00:09:16.780 --> 00:09:20.860 align:middle line:84% was all I could think of to say later to the saucier 00:09:20.860 --> 00:09:25.600 align:middle line:84% at my station as I let my indifferent gaze fall equally 00:09:25.600 --> 00:09:29.080 align:middle line:84% on customers, on silverware, and plates. 00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:33.220 align:middle line:84% And the next day, when I got fired I said it again. 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:37.720 align:middle line:84% I'm just a guy like anybody else, in that spoken American 00:09:37.720 --> 00:09:41.890 align:middle line:84% fudged pentameter I was trying to steal from Yeats, 00:09:41.890 --> 00:09:45.130 align:middle line:84% himself among the haters of the Jews. 00:09:45.130 --> 00:09:48.670 align:middle line:84% And saw myself as far from the human race 00:09:48.670 --> 00:09:52.000 align:middle line:84% as that great dumb golem of a lobster, 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:55.270 align:middle line:84% crawling the mucky bottom on display. 00:09:55.270 --> 00:09:58.180 align:middle line:84% I wanted to raise it from its briny stew 00:09:58.180 --> 00:10:02.200 align:middle line:84% and shake it in his face, and say, I'm not your Jew. 00:10:02.200 --> 00:10:03.445 align:middle line:90% I'm nobody's Jew. 00:10:03.445 --> 00:10:13.100 align:middle line:90% 00:10:13.100 --> 00:10:15.120 align:middle line:90% This is a love poem. 00:10:15.120 --> 00:10:17.060 align:middle line:84% It's called "The Meaning of Romance." 00:10:17.060 --> 00:10:18.980 align:middle line:84% And you all get to hear me sing tonight. 00:10:18.980 --> 00:10:21.650 align:middle line:90% I can't sing very well. 00:10:21.650 --> 00:10:24.890 align:middle line:84% But there's some old '50s doo-wop songs in it 00:10:24.890 --> 00:10:25.820 align:middle line:90% and I'll do my best. 00:10:25.820 --> 00:10:29.007 align:middle line:90% 00:10:29.007 --> 00:10:31.340 align:middle line:84% I don't know if there's anything I have to say about it. 00:10:31.340 --> 00:10:33.290 align:middle line:90% I guess not. 00:10:33.290 --> 00:10:36.092 align:middle line:90% Called "The Meaning of Romance." 00:10:36.092 --> 00:10:38.300 align:middle line:84% You got to imagine two people in the living room that 00:10:38.300 --> 00:10:40.550 align:middle line:84% got a little baby, the wife is nursing, 00:10:40.550 --> 00:10:43.950 align:middle line:90% and things go on from there. 00:10:43.950 --> 00:10:46.850 align:middle line:84% The baby's cranky and the night is hot. 00:10:46.850 --> 00:10:50.390 align:middle line:84% First one breast then the other, his mouth 00:10:50.390 --> 00:10:52.700 align:middle line:90% moving in a graspy snuffle. 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:57.710 align:middle line:84% And before he knows just what he's got, he's fast asleep. 00:10:57.710 --> 00:11:01.760 align:middle line:84% My wife adrift in the darkened parlor on the couch, 00:11:01.760 --> 00:11:06.560 align:middle line:84% oiling her dark and heavy breasts, her head lolling back, 00:11:06.560 --> 00:11:11.690 align:middle line:84% and her socks off asked me to tell the same old stories that 00:11:11.690 --> 00:11:15.620 align:middle line:84% pulled us together when we were younger into a shared 00:11:15.620 --> 00:11:18.410 align:middle line:90% romance of our pasts. 00:11:18.410 --> 00:11:23.330 align:middle line:84% We had a style of dancing Friday nights we called inner shuffle. 00:11:23.330 --> 00:11:26.780 align:middle line:84% Like a tango or a bop, but slower, 00:11:26.780 --> 00:11:29.930 align:middle line:84% done together in a stiff staccato 00:11:29.930 --> 00:11:35.120 align:middle line:84% meter to the sweet and sensual doo-wop of the day. 00:11:35.120 --> 00:11:38.060 align:middle line:84% This in the flats among the factories 00:11:38.060 --> 00:11:43.220 align:middle line:84% 1957 after spinning silk into cloth all week 00:11:43.220 --> 00:11:45.170 align:middle line:90% in Skinner's mills. 00:11:45.170 --> 00:11:48.230 align:middle line:84% Do it, she says, so I get my comb 00:11:48.230 --> 00:11:51.830 align:middle line:84% and wet it and return with my hair slicked back 00:11:51.830 --> 00:11:56.780 align:middle line:84% into a crest like a bold and silly bird and my chest puffed 00:11:56.780 --> 00:11:59.910 align:middle line:84% up beneath my striped pajama top. 00:11:59.910 --> 00:12:03.590 align:middle line:84% And suddenly, we're gathered in the crowded, dark, 00:12:03.590 --> 00:12:08.180 align:middle line:84% high-ceilinged, rectangular dance hall with all the Joes 00:12:08.180 --> 00:12:13.760 align:middle line:84% and Marys from the projects, all the Aces, Frenchies, Butches, 00:12:13.760 --> 00:12:17.060 align:middle line:90% all the Babs and Ruths and Dots. 00:12:17.060 --> 00:12:20.700 align:middle line:90% Show me, she says, do it. 00:12:20.700 --> 00:12:26.370 align:middle line:84% So I rise from the couch and she puts the records on her 45s. 00:12:26.370 --> 00:12:33.960 align:middle line:84% (SINGING) Tonight, tonight, more than any other night. 00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:35.750 align:middle line:90% I pull her-- pretty awful. 00:12:35.750 --> 00:12:38.549 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:12:38.549 --> 00:12:39.382 align:middle line:90% [INTERPOSING VOICES] 00:12:39.382 --> 00:12:40.432 align:middle line:90% Ah-ha, thanks. 00:12:40.432 --> 00:12:40.932 align:middle line:90% Ah-ha. 00:12:40.932 --> 00:12:43.530 align:middle line:90% 00:12:43.530 --> 00:12:47.100 align:middle line:84% I pull her close half naked and we begin. 00:12:47.100 --> 00:12:51.900 align:middle line:84% My body canted slightly to the left and hers straight on. 00:12:51.900 --> 00:12:55.170 align:middle line:84% Me walking forward and her going back, 00:12:55.170 --> 00:13:00.900 align:middle line:84% and every three steps, a stop on a dime, a freeze, a stare, then 00:13:00.900 --> 00:13:03.330 align:middle line:84% a sort of rhythmic wiggly shuffle 00:13:03.330 --> 00:13:08.460 align:middle line:84% and on around the parlor moving to the old tunes, the doo-wops, 00:13:08.460 --> 00:13:12.060 align:middle line:84% and finally, the fast one, "Hey Bo Diddley." 00:13:12.060 --> 00:13:16.840 align:middle line:84% And I remove my pajama top and she her bottom. 00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:20.250 align:middle line:84% And here we are again doing the dirty boogie, 00:13:20.250 --> 00:13:25.890 align:middle line:84% crooning in our sweetest imitations of a cappella 00:13:25.890 --> 00:13:28.085 align:middle line:90% baritone, a cappella soprano. 00:13:28.085 --> 00:13:31.530 align:middle line:84% (SINGING) Oh, we papa cow, papa cow, papa cow, cow. 00:13:31.530 --> 00:13:34.440 align:middle line:84% Oh, we papa cow, papa cow, cow, cow. 00:13:34.440 --> 00:13:38.670 align:middle line:84% I promise to remember the meaning of romance. 00:13:38.670 --> 00:13:39.510 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:13:39.510 --> 00:13:42.090 align:middle line:90% Sorry about that. 00:13:42.090 --> 00:13:43.440 align:middle line:90% The baby sleeps. 00:13:43.440 --> 00:13:45.060 align:middle line:90% The baby snores. 00:13:45.060 --> 00:13:50.220 align:middle line:84% My wife shakes side to side, shoulders back, her blackened, 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:53.580 align:middle line:84% oiled nipples scattering drops of milk. 00:13:53.580 --> 00:13:58.140 align:middle line:84% Then bump, bump, two hips striking metal. 00:13:58.140 --> 00:14:04.050 align:middle line:84% Ace and Frenchie, Ruth, Dot, who made cloth from silk 00:14:04.050 --> 00:14:07.050 align:middle line:90% 30 years ago in Skinner's mills. 00:14:07.050 --> 00:14:09.750 align:middle line:84% What wonders are you spinning out? 00:14:09.750 --> 00:14:12.630 align:middle line:90% What teenagers have you wrought? 00:14:12.630 --> 00:14:17.700 align:middle line:84% Are you as proud and tough, as silly and as sentimental? 00:14:17.700 --> 00:14:20.070 align:middle line:90% Do you shine like oiled silk? 00:14:20.070 --> 00:14:23.902 align:middle line:90% And is the night as hot? 00:14:23.902 --> 00:14:24.402 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:14:24.402 --> 00:14:24.902 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:14:24.902 --> 00:14:31.930 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:14:31.930 --> 00:14:35.440 align:middle line:84% This next poem is called, "I Want To Be A Girl." 00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:38.050 align:middle line:84% And the only thing I think I have 00:14:38.050 --> 00:14:40.840 align:middle line:84% to tell you is, first of all, is that some 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:45.453 align:middle line:84% of the facts in the poem which are funny and awful are true. 00:14:45.453 --> 00:14:46.870 align:middle line:84% And the other one is, I don't know 00:14:46.870 --> 00:14:50.050 align:middle line:90% if anybody will recognize this. 00:14:50.050 --> 00:14:52.360 align:middle line:84% I mean, I don't know how many generations of kids 00:14:52.360 --> 00:14:56.505 align:middle line:84% learned how to write cursive in Palmer Method script. 00:14:56.505 --> 00:14:58.790 align:middle line:84% Do you all remember it and do you all have that? 00:14:58.790 --> 00:15:01.610 align:middle line:84% Well, that happens in the end of the poem. 00:15:01.610 --> 00:15:06.340 align:middle line:90% So, "I Want To Be A Girl." 00:15:06.340 --> 00:15:09.340 align:middle line:90% 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:11.440 align:middle line:84% I am reading the paper every morning. 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:13.810 align:middle line:84% And every morning, the big sadnesses 00:15:13.810 --> 00:15:15.820 align:middle line:90% make their loud noises. 00:15:15.820 --> 00:15:21.190 align:middle line:84% 100 Xs have suffocated in the humid explosive gases 00:15:21.190 --> 00:15:25.300 align:middle line:84% of a chemical plant and 200 Ys were crushed 00:15:25.300 --> 00:15:28.690 align:middle line:84% in an earthquake because of three dishonest building 00:15:28.690 --> 00:15:30.430 align:middle line:90% inspectors. 00:15:30.430 --> 00:15:34.660 align:middle line:84% After the great storm, the subheadline: only three people 00:15:34.660 --> 00:15:36.010 align:middle line:90% drowned. 00:15:36.010 --> 00:15:36.790 align:middle line:90% I know. 00:15:36.790 --> 00:15:39.730 align:middle line:84% Maybe a hundred human beings were at risk. 00:15:39.730 --> 00:15:44.170 align:middle line:84% But still to say, only, hurts everyone yet doesn't 00:15:44.170 --> 00:15:47.080 align:middle line:90% hurt enough to make us cry. 00:15:47.080 --> 00:15:49.030 align:middle line:84% And then there are the back pages 00:15:49.030 --> 00:15:50.770 align:middle line:90% where the little people live. 00:15:50.770 --> 00:15:52.150 align:middle line:90% Maybe you knew them. 00:15:52.150 --> 00:15:54.730 align:middle line:90% I think maybe some tears there. 00:15:54.730 --> 00:15:57.430 align:middle line:84% Because I know how important it is to be 00:15:57.430 --> 00:16:00.580 align:middle line:90% moved, to be cleansed by tears. 00:16:00.580 --> 00:16:03.070 align:middle line:84% This morning in the obituaries, I 00:16:03.070 --> 00:16:06.460 align:middle line:84% see that one Mickey Rubenstein has died and is now 00:16:06.460 --> 00:16:08.260 align:middle line:90% shopping with her grandmother. 00:16:08.260 --> 00:16:11.980 align:middle line:84% This is in the Tucson Citizen or the Star. 00:16:11.980 --> 00:16:13.390 align:middle line:90% And the next one's true too. 00:16:13.390 --> 00:16:16.450 align:middle line:90% I see that Ima U. Eggman died. 00:16:16.450 --> 00:16:17.650 align:middle line:90% These are facts. 00:16:17.650 --> 00:16:19.840 align:middle line:84% And around the breakfast table, we 00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:22.870 align:middle line:84% laughed more than we cried because maybe she 00:16:22.870 --> 00:16:26.470 align:middle line:84% developed a sense of humor like a stopped thermometer 00:16:26.470 --> 00:16:29.080 align:middle line:84% because some stupid parent decided 00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:33.820 align:middle line:84% to make a joke that would last for nearly nine decades. 00:16:33.820 --> 00:16:36.730 align:middle line:84% All my life I wanted to be with them one night. 00:16:36.730 --> 00:16:40.330 align:middle line:84% I say all my life meaning, when I was a little boy, 00:16:40.330 --> 00:16:44.650 align:middle line:84% I wanted to sit beside every dying human being I had ever 00:16:44.650 --> 00:16:45.730 align:middle line:90% heard of. 00:16:45.730 --> 00:16:49.390 align:middle line:84% The displaced princess of Bohemia in her bed 00:16:49.390 --> 00:16:53.560 align:middle line:84% of 1,000 flowers and that drowning 10-year-old girl 00:16:53.560 --> 00:16:58.810 align:middle line:84% in the mundane pissy waters of the YMCA swimming pool. 00:16:58.810 --> 00:17:01.780 align:middle line:84% I wanted to hold their hands in mine the way 00:17:01.780 --> 00:17:06.670 align:middle line:84% a child holds a piece of ice and watch the small soul melt 00:17:06.670 --> 00:17:09.310 align:middle line:90% from the body and cry. 00:17:09.310 --> 00:17:13.869 align:middle line:84% I knew even then there was nothing worse than death. 00:17:13.869 --> 00:17:17.170 align:middle line:84% I know I have squandered a few tears at movies. 00:17:17.170 --> 00:17:21.579 align:middle line:84% And once, on drugs, I wept at the slow, painful birth 00:17:21.579 --> 00:17:24.220 align:middle line:90% of a yellow cactus flower. 00:17:24.220 --> 00:17:26.589 align:middle line:84% I remember in sixth grade one day, 00:17:26.589 --> 00:17:30.310 align:middle line:84% Joyce Mendelsohn suddenly broke into tears. 00:17:30.310 --> 00:17:31.900 align:middle line:90% Nobody had died. 00:17:31.900 --> 00:17:34.990 align:middle line:84% I know for a fact that nobody had insulted her 00:17:34.990 --> 00:17:39.100 align:middle line:84% that day for her crossed eyes and chubby cheeks. 00:17:39.100 --> 00:17:43.300 align:middle line:84% After school, Miss Donahue whispered to me, she's a girl 00:17:43.300 --> 00:17:47.050 align:middle line:84% and girls need no special reason to cry. 00:17:47.050 --> 00:17:51.940 align:middle line:84% As a boy, I wanted to dog after the small sadnesses walking down 00:17:51.940 --> 00:17:53.470 align:middle line:90% Hillside Avenue. 00:17:53.470 --> 00:17:57.010 align:middle line:84% I knew by their wringing hands and the slight erosion 00:17:57.010 --> 00:18:00.550 align:middle line:84% of sunlight around their bodies that something terrible 00:18:00.550 --> 00:18:01.660 align:middle line:90% had happened. 00:18:01.660 --> 00:18:05.020 align:middle line:84% I wanted to hold their hands and say, there, there. 00:18:05.020 --> 00:18:07.960 align:middle line:84% And maybe cry a few small tears with them. 00:18:07.960 --> 00:18:09.910 align:middle line:90% But I never did. 00:18:09.910 --> 00:18:12.610 align:middle line:84% The barely pregnant, acned, teenaged 00:18:12.610 --> 00:18:15.790 align:middle line:84% Helen Geoffrey, abandoned by her boyfriend, 00:18:15.790 --> 00:18:19.780 align:middle line:84% and the immigrant Mrs. Ephros with her hairy upper lip 00:18:19.780 --> 00:18:22.450 align:middle line:84% who was just cheated at the corner grocery, 00:18:22.450 --> 00:18:24.790 align:middle line:84% and Arno Becher whose father used 00:18:24.790 --> 00:18:28.120 align:middle line:84% to slug him for no reason he could think of. 00:18:28.120 --> 00:18:32.590 align:middle line:84% I know that my street was just as important as ancient Greece. 00:18:32.590 --> 00:18:35.980 align:middle line:84% And I know they talked about themselves in the dark. 00:18:35.980 --> 00:18:38.080 align:middle line:84% And pretty soon they were weeping, 00:18:38.080 --> 00:18:41.980 align:middle line:84% although nobody would read about it, nobody would cry. 00:18:41.980 --> 00:18:44.530 align:middle line:90% Therefore, I want to be a girl. 00:18:44.530 --> 00:18:49.000 align:middle line:84% Some Joyce Mendelsohn singing her inner overtures. 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:52.090 align:middle line:84% Therefore, I send my divining rod 00:18:52.090 --> 00:18:55.240 align:middle line:84% over the small earth of my backyard. 00:18:55.240 --> 00:18:59.320 align:middle line:84% But no sudden jerk of gravity pulls the branch down 00:18:59.320 --> 00:19:02.650 align:middle line:84% toward those rich and helpless waters. 00:19:02.650 --> 00:19:05.380 align:middle line:84% I want to be a girl, I tell my wife. 00:19:05.380 --> 00:19:10.240 align:middle line:84% You big silly, she says cheerfully and pulls me so close 00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:12.830 align:middle line:90% I have no other place to go. 00:19:12.830 --> 00:19:16.150 align:middle line:84% There was no reason for tears between us. 00:19:16.150 --> 00:19:18.340 align:middle line:90% My wife is a wise woman. 00:19:18.340 --> 00:19:21.490 align:middle line:84% When somebody dies, she skips the funeral 00:19:21.490 --> 00:19:25.450 align:middle line:84% and writes them a personal letter in perfectly slanted 00:19:25.450 --> 00:19:31.774 align:middle line:84% Palmer Method cursive script and buries it in the backyard. 00:19:31.774 --> 00:19:35.662 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:19:35.662 --> 00:19:40.530 align:middle line:90% 00:19:40.530 --> 00:19:41.670 align:middle line:90% This is a shorter poem. 00:19:41.670 --> 00:19:45.050 align:middle line:84% It's called, "In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas." 00:19:45.050 --> 00:19:49.100 align:middle line:84% Maria Callas was a great diva, an opera star, 00:19:49.100 --> 00:19:52.190 align:middle line:90% who died not too many years ago. 00:19:52.190 --> 00:19:56.510 align:middle line:84% "In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas." 00:19:56.510 --> 00:19:59.420 align:middle line:84% In the house of the voice of Maria Callas 00:19:59.420 --> 00:20:03.410 align:middle line:84% we hear a baby's cries, and the after-supper rattle 00:20:03.410 --> 00:20:08.090 align:middle line:84% of silverware, and three clocks ticking to different tunes, 00:20:08.090 --> 00:20:11.840 align:middle line:84% and ripe plums sleeping in their chipped bowl, 00:20:11.840 --> 00:20:16.460 align:middle line:84% and traffic sounds dissecting the avenues outside. 00:20:16.460 --> 00:20:20.990 align:middle line:84% And we hear, like water pouring over time itself, 00:20:20.990 --> 00:20:26.630 align:middle line:84% the pure distillate arias of the numerous pampered queens 00:20:26.630 --> 00:20:29.630 align:middle line:84% who have reigned, and the working girls who 00:20:29.630 --> 00:20:32.060 align:middle line:84% have suffered the envious knives, 00:20:32.060 --> 00:20:35.660 align:middle line:84% and the breathless brides with their horned helmets 00:20:35.660 --> 00:20:39.980 align:middle line:84% who have fallen in love and gone crazy or fallen in love 00:20:39.980 --> 00:20:44.330 align:middle line:84% and died on the grand stage at their appointed moments. 00:20:44.330 --> 00:20:46.850 align:middle line:84% And no one will sing of them again. 00:20:46.850 --> 00:20:49.280 align:middle line:90% Maria Callas is dead. 00:20:49.280 --> 00:20:52.670 align:middle line:84% Although the full lips, and slanting eyes, 00:20:52.670 --> 00:20:57.170 align:middle line:84% and flaring nostrils of her voice resurrect dramas 00:20:57.170 --> 00:21:01.040 align:middle line:84% we are able to imagine in this parlor on evenings 00:21:01.040 --> 00:21:02.210 align:middle line:90% like this one. 00:21:02.210 --> 00:21:05.900 align:middle line:84% Adding some color, adding some order. 00:21:05.900 --> 00:21:10.040 align:middle line:84% Of whom it was said she could imagine almost anything 00:21:10.040 --> 00:21:11.600 align:middle line:90% and give voice to it. 00:21:11.600 --> 00:21:19.770 align:middle line:90% 00:21:19.770 --> 00:21:23.610 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "A Practical Joke" 00:21:23.610 --> 00:21:29.910 align:middle line:84% and it's in some ways it's an elegy for my father-in-law, who 00:21:29.910 --> 00:21:32.565 align:middle line:90% died some years ago. 00:21:32.565 --> 00:21:35.370 align:middle line:90% 00:21:35.370 --> 00:21:38.010 align:middle line:84% Every morning I strolled out to the garden 00:21:38.010 --> 00:21:41.850 align:middle line:84% in my huge green, baggy, oversized bathrobe 00:21:41.850 --> 00:21:44.310 align:middle line:84% and peered down at the big leaves 00:21:44.310 --> 00:21:48.390 align:middle line:84% surrounding nothing as yet but a hopeful pocket of air 00:21:48.390 --> 00:21:49.830 align:middle line:90% and waited. 00:21:49.830 --> 00:21:53.400 align:middle line:84% I was patient the way a man might learn wisdom 00:21:53.400 --> 00:21:57.750 align:middle line:84% after so much suffering it becomes a family joke. 00:21:57.750 --> 00:22:02.460 align:middle line:84% And one morning there it was: that first orbital, crenellated, 00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:05.670 align:middle line:84% rugate, white intellectual vegetable 00:22:05.670 --> 00:22:08.160 align:middle line:84% I can never remember the name of. 00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:10.290 align:middle line:90% I thought it was smiling at me. 00:22:10.290 --> 00:22:13.320 align:middle line:90% Me, the big papa of vegetables. 00:22:13.320 --> 00:22:17.640 align:middle line:84% I called out to my wife and her parents, hey, look, 00:22:17.640 --> 00:22:19.980 align:middle line:84% this is what it looks like before you buy it 00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:22.080 align:middle line:90% in the supermarket. 00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:26.550 align:middle line:84% My father-in-law had dropped it in the night before like a baby 00:22:26.550 --> 00:22:30.000 align:middle line:90% no one had expected so soon. 00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:32.160 align:middle line:90% Some years later he died. 00:22:32.160 --> 00:22:34.290 align:middle line:90% It was an awful dying. 00:22:34.290 --> 00:22:38.670 align:middle line:84% Two weeks like two years, pissing and shitting himself, 00:22:38.670 --> 00:22:40.260 align:middle line:90% and sweating buckets. 00:22:40.260 --> 00:22:42.870 align:middle line:84% And the three of us standing our vigils 00:22:42.870 --> 00:22:46.290 align:middle line:84% with the doctors who spoke no consolation 00:22:46.290 --> 00:22:48.870 align:middle line:90% in the dead Latin of medicine. 00:22:48.870 --> 00:22:50.530 align:middle line:90% We bought the coffin. 00:22:50.530 --> 00:22:53.580 align:middle line:84% It was almost like buying a vacation. 00:22:53.580 --> 00:22:57.300 align:middle line:84% The man advised us to choose just the right socks 00:22:57.300 --> 00:23:01.860 align:middle line:84% and underpants, and his best shined shoes, a white shirt, 00:23:01.860 --> 00:23:03.870 align:middle line:90% a suit and tie even. 00:23:03.870 --> 00:23:08.880 align:middle line:84% So he met his maker the same way he met each morning going off 00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:10.620 align:middle line:90% to work. 00:23:10.620 --> 00:23:13.890 align:middle line:84% The brain is a leaky vegetable and some of us 00:23:13.890 --> 00:23:16.140 align:middle line:90% are blessed with forgetfulness. 00:23:16.140 --> 00:23:20.460 align:middle line:84% People take the place of people we have loved. 00:23:20.460 --> 00:23:23.100 align:middle line:84% The place in the brain the dead once 00:23:23.100 --> 00:23:28.080 align:middle line:84% occupied becomes a smaller and then an even smaller room. 00:23:28.080 --> 00:23:31.350 align:middle line:84% And then becomes, in this case, a photo 00:23:31.350 --> 00:23:35.550 align:middle line:84% on the wall of a young fellow on his way to work, grinning. 00:23:35.550 --> 00:23:38.670 align:middle line:90% Like a man about to tell a joke. 00:23:38.670 --> 00:23:43.200 align:middle line:84% Such was this man, my father-in-law, Egon Marcus. 00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:47.160 align:middle line:84% A short fellow, balding, neat as a pin 00:23:47.160 --> 00:23:50.610 align:middle line:84% even in the morning first thing on vacation. 00:23:50.610 --> 00:23:53.550 align:middle line:84% Wearing his dark salesman suit as he 00:23:53.550 --> 00:23:58.200 align:middle line:84% gazed over my measly garden and shining out 10 feet 00:23:58.200 --> 00:24:01.110 align:middle line:84% from his pointing finger, the cauliflower. 00:24:01.110 --> 00:24:03.120 align:middle line:90% Now I remember its name. 00:24:03.120 --> 00:24:06.960 align:middle line:84% Already thinking its cauliflower thought. 00:24:06.960 --> 00:24:11.280 align:middle line:84% I would like to be remembered after I've died in such a way, 00:24:11.280 --> 00:24:14.580 align:middle line:84% at such a moment, dressed in my funeral suit, 00:24:14.580 --> 00:24:17.790 align:middle line:84% chuckling, playing a practical joke. 00:24:17.790 --> 00:24:22.380 align:middle line:84% Or there in sunlight beside myself in my bathrobe, 00:24:22.380 --> 00:24:25.110 align:middle line:90% surprised, taking a joke. 00:24:25.110 --> 00:24:31.143 align:middle line:84% Or like the cauliflower, let me be eaten and forgotten. 00:24:31.143 --> 00:24:34.991 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:24:34.991 --> 00:24:39.810 align:middle line:90% 00:24:39.810 --> 00:24:41.125 align:middle line:90% This poem is called-- 00:24:41.125 --> 00:24:42.750 align:middle line:84% I don't even know how to pronounce it-- 00:24:42.750 --> 00:24:45.450 align:middle line:84% "Onomastics and the Falling Snow." 00:24:45.450 --> 00:24:50.670 align:middle line:84% Onomastics is the study of naming practices, how 00:24:50.670 --> 00:24:53.100 align:middle line:90% people got their last names-- 00:24:53.100 --> 00:24:54.330 align:middle line:90% surnames. 00:24:54.330 --> 00:24:57.840 align:middle line:90% This is a long poem. 00:24:57.840 --> 00:24:59.820 align:middle line:90% A couple of pages. 00:24:59.820 --> 00:25:03.300 align:middle line:90% And it's sort of a rapture. 00:25:03.300 --> 00:25:06.450 align:middle line:84% "Onomastics and the Falling Snow." 00:25:06.450 --> 00:25:10.290 align:middle line:84% The name and the spirit are inseparable. 00:25:10.290 --> 00:25:14.940 align:middle line:84% And most everything has a name except the falling snow. 00:25:14.940 --> 00:25:19.770 align:middle line:84% By which I mean each flake, each one different as one spirit 00:25:19.770 --> 00:25:21.420 align:middle line:90% is different from another. 00:25:21.420 --> 00:25:26.070 align:middle line:84% And close up under a microscope, crystalline, like a thing 00:25:26.070 --> 00:25:31.080 align:middle line:84% made by a master watchmaker with a motor the size of a fingernail 00:25:31.080 --> 00:25:34.590 align:middle line:90% and an awl as fine as a hair. 00:25:34.590 --> 00:25:39.090 align:middle line:84% Sillier men than I have tried to name the flakes of snow 00:25:39.090 --> 00:25:42.300 align:middle line:84% while standing hapless at a bus stop. 00:25:42.300 --> 00:25:46.350 align:middle line:84% From where comes this human urge to name each thing? 00:25:46.350 --> 00:25:48.420 align:middle line:90% Each man and each woman. 00:25:48.420 --> 00:25:50.700 align:middle line:84% As though we're not all the same thing 00:25:50.700 --> 00:25:54.360 align:middle line:84% repeated endlessly, the human race. 00:25:54.360 --> 00:25:57.600 align:middle line:84% Did you know that among the ancient Hebrew tribes, 00:25:57.600 --> 00:26:02.850 align:middle line:84% babies were given two names at birth, one sacred, one profane? 00:26:02.850 --> 00:26:05.640 align:middle line:84% The child wasn't told the sacred one. 00:26:05.640 --> 00:26:08.130 align:middle line:84% So we walked around with two names. 00:26:08.130 --> 00:26:11.760 align:middle line:84% One by which to be called in from the sheepfold 00:26:11.760 --> 00:26:14.370 align:middle line:84% and the other intricate, mysterious, 00:26:14.370 --> 00:26:16.920 align:middle line:90% useless like the snow. 00:26:16.920 --> 00:26:20.800 align:middle line:84% And in Norway circa early 20th century, 00:26:20.800 --> 00:26:25.500 align:middle line:84% there were so few hereditary names to pass down everyone 00:26:25.500 --> 00:26:28.470 align:middle line:84% must have thought everyone else a cousin. 00:26:28.470 --> 00:26:32.340 align:middle line:84% Maybe that's why they're so polite, so orderly. 00:26:32.340 --> 00:26:35.250 align:middle line:84% That's why if it's snowing in Oslo 00:26:35.250 --> 00:26:39.360 align:middle line:84% there will always be a helpful soul standing beside you 00:26:39.360 --> 00:26:43.290 align:middle line:84% to offer space the size of an umbrella while waiting 00:26:43.290 --> 00:26:45.250 align:middle line:90% for the bus. 00:26:45.250 --> 00:26:48.130 align:middle line:84% In America, a name means nothing. 00:26:48.130 --> 00:26:51.430 align:middle line:84% A marker to be called in, a convenience. 00:26:51.430 --> 00:26:54.340 align:middle line:84% You can look up an old lost acquaintance 00:26:54.340 --> 00:26:57.580 align:middle line:84% in a phone directory while passing through a city. 00:26:57.580 --> 00:27:00.040 align:middle line:84% But until you call him up, he's only 00:27:00.040 --> 00:27:02.350 align:middle line:90% the name without the spirit. 00:27:02.350 --> 00:27:05.050 align:middle line:84% And his name won't tell us anything about what 00:27:05.050 --> 00:27:06.790 align:middle line:90% he does with his days. 00:27:06.790 --> 00:27:10.060 align:middle line:84% Mr. Weaver at his loom, Mr. Lavender 00:27:10.060 --> 00:27:13.960 align:middle line:84% who makes soap, or how he looks, Señor Roja 00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:18.550 align:middle line:84% for the color of his beard or hair growth, the fat man who 00:27:18.550 --> 00:27:22.750 align:middle line:84% stood in line waiting for the greedy minions of the fanatic 00:27:22.750 --> 00:27:26.200 align:middle line:84% Empress, Maria Teresa, to take his money 00:27:26.200 --> 00:27:29.830 align:middle line:84% and bestow upon him a name to be passed down 00:27:29.830 --> 00:27:33.250 align:middle line:84% to fat and skinny children alike. 00:27:33.250 --> 00:27:37.390 align:middle line:84% Or, if he were even poor and as a mean joke, 00:27:37.390 --> 00:27:41.740 align:middle line:84% to be called the German equivalent of grease, or monkey 00:27:41.740 --> 00:27:46.060 align:middle line:84% weed, or do not borrow from, or gallows rope. 00:27:46.060 --> 00:27:47.890 align:middle line:90% These are real names by the way. 00:27:47.890 --> 00:27:51.190 align:middle line:90% 00:27:51.190 --> 00:27:54.820 align:middle line:84% In Russia, there's a word here, ukase. 00:27:54.820 --> 00:27:55.780 align:middle line:90% It means an edict. 00:27:55.780 --> 00:27:57.550 align:middle line:90% It's a Russian word. 00:27:57.550 --> 00:28:01.060 align:middle line:84% In Russia in 1802, to raise an army, 00:28:01.060 --> 00:28:05.500 align:middle line:84% Czar Alexander sent out a ukase ordering each Jew 00:28:05.500 --> 00:28:07.210 align:middle line:90% to take a last name. 00:28:07.210 --> 00:28:12.520 align:middle line:84% Like a poem, mind sprung and wholly inspired on first draft, 00:28:12.520 --> 00:28:16.390 align:middle line:84% then inscribing it on the forehead of a neighbor, each one 00:28:16.390 --> 00:28:17.410 align:middle line:90% befitting. 00:28:17.410 --> 00:28:19.360 align:middle line:90% Isaac, he who laughs. 00:28:19.360 --> 00:28:21.490 align:middle line:90% Or Mazel, lucky man. 00:28:21.490 --> 00:28:23.890 align:middle line:90% Or Trubnik for chimney sweep. 00:28:23.890 --> 00:28:28.030 align:middle line:84% Or Soroka the magpie, meaning the gossip. 00:28:28.030 --> 00:28:32.470 align:middle line:84% And babies in those days were sometimes given ugly names 00:28:32.470 --> 00:28:37.570 align:middle line:84% to turn aside the assiduous bureaucratic angel of death. 00:28:37.570 --> 00:28:41.110 align:middle line:84% Or in illness, a child was renamed 00:28:41.110 --> 00:28:45.820 align:middle line:84% to befuddle the same angel coming down with his empty sack 00:28:45.820 --> 00:28:49.020 align:middle line:90% to collect for God's heavens. 00:28:49.020 --> 00:28:54.300 align:middle line:84% But naming the snow, each flake, each deliquescing cryptic coat 00:28:54.300 --> 00:28:55.200 align:middle line:90% of arms. 00:28:55.200 --> 00:29:00.180 align:middle line:84% That would be a game for only the most inventive hopeless man. 00:29:00.180 --> 00:29:04.360 align:middle line:84% For after all, the snowflakes are the soon to be dead. 00:29:04.360 --> 00:29:07.110 align:middle line:84% Those who float a while, then fall, 00:29:07.110 --> 00:29:10.260 align:middle line:84% and merging, pile up like corpses 00:29:10.260 --> 00:29:12.420 align:middle line:90% on some northern battlefield. 00:29:12.420 --> 00:29:15.480 align:middle line:84% And there melt, flow down as water 00:29:15.480 --> 00:29:18.960 align:middle line:84% to the river which has one name only. 00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:22.350 align:middle line:84% It so happens it's snowing where I'm standing now 00:29:22.350 --> 00:29:25.440 align:middle line:84% at a bus stop in Oslo, between one 00:29:25.440 --> 00:29:29.520 align:middle line:84% moment and the next, feeling nostalgic, homesick, 00:29:29.520 --> 00:29:34.020 align:middle line:84% trying to remember the names of everyone I've ever known. 00:29:34.020 --> 00:29:35.430 align:middle line:90% Hopeless, of course. 00:29:35.430 --> 00:29:40.270 align:middle line:84% So to name is also duty and is also good. 00:29:40.270 --> 00:29:44.100 align:middle line:84% So it worries me that my son, who is more like me 00:29:44.100 --> 00:29:48.420 align:middle line:84% than I care to think about and who bears my last name, 00:29:48.420 --> 00:29:52.860 align:middle line:84% could recite the names of each child in his kindergarten class 00:29:52.860 --> 00:29:56.340 align:middle line:84% after only one week of sitting with his hands folded 00:29:56.340 --> 00:29:57.610 align:middle line:90% on his desk. 00:29:57.610 --> 00:29:59.640 align:middle line:90% He wasn't praying, he told me. 00:29:59.640 --> 00:30:03.660 align:middle line:84% He was waiting for the names to sink in so one morning he could 00:30:03.660 --> 00:30:06.990 align:middle line:90% say suddenly to each one, Hi. 00:30:06.990 --> 00:30:09.750 align:middle line:84% Because it's good to be remembered by anyone, 00:30:09.750 --> 00:30:12.630 align:middle line:84% for the name and the spirit are inseparable. 00:30:12.630 --> 00:30:16.140 align:middle line:84% By the time we are old, we have known so many people 00:30:16.140 --> 00:30:20.640 align:middle line:84% by name we could baptize each flake of falling snow 00:30:20.640 --> 00:30:22.650 align:middle line:90% while waiting for a bus. 00:30:22.650 --> 00:30:24.300 align:middle line:90% They grew away from me. 00:30:24.300 --> 00:30:25.950 align:middle line:90% They became snow. 00:30:25.950 --> 00:30:30.150 align:middle line:84% Fuzzy at this distance, just beyond my reach, waiting 00:30:30.150 --> 00:30:33.255 align:middle line:90% to be called upon again. 00:30:33.255 --> 00:30:37.135 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:30:37.135 --> 00:30:43.930 align:middle line:90% 00:30:43.930 --> 00:30:46.810 align:middle line:84% This is a poem called "The Chateau 00:30:46.810 --> 00:30:48.790 align:middle line:90% Near the Top of the Hill." 00:30:48.790 --> 00:30:50.560 align:middle line:84% And it's almost like a short story. 00:30:50.560 --> 00:30:55.060 align:middle line:90% 00:30:55.060 --> 00:30:59.290 align:middle line:84% We had seen it in a movie, the chateau on the hill 00:30:59.290 --> 00:31:01.270 align:middle line:90% in a Mediterranean city. 00:31:01.270 --> 00:31:03.520 align:middle line:84% And we wanted to visit it, to live 00:31:03.520 --> 00:31:08.290 align:middle line:84% in it even or outside its stuccoed walls, ancient seeming, 00:31:08.290 --> 00:31:11.120 align:middle line:84% especially at certain times of day. 00:31:11.120 --> 00:31:14.560 align:middle line:84% So my companions, my friend and her little boy, 00:31:14.560 --> 00:31:18.190 align:middle line:84% were both quiet and disquieted by the scene. 00:31:18.190 --> 00:31:22.780 align:middle line:84% On pedestals, several plaster busts of men and women who must 00:31:22.780 --> 00:31:25.060 align:middle line:90% have been important at one time. 00:31:25.060 --> 00:31:28.960 align:middle line:84% And hedges bordering disused garden plots. 00:31:28.960 --> 00:31:34.030 align:middle line:84% And creepers reaching out to snag a jacket sleeve also 00:31:34.030 --> 00:31:35.960 align:middle line:90% lush and unattended. 00:31:35.960 --> 00:31:40.960 align:middle line:84% We imagined God's overgrown Eden after the fall. 00:31:40.960 --> 00:31:43.480 align:middle line:90% We reached it by concrete steps. 00:31:43.480 --> 00:31:45.820 align:middle line:84% The scrolled railings were rusted, 00:31:45.820 --> 00:31:48.790 align:middle line:84% some yanked by the weather from their sockets. 00:31:48.790 --> 00:31:51.640 align:middle line:84% And the steps, although they kept going up, 00:31:51.640 --> 00:31:55.360 align:middle line:84% seemed to have no goal, until they ended abruptly 00:31:55.360 --> 00:31:59.020 align:middle line:84% at the doorway where the old woman was standing. 00:31:59.020 --> 00:32:01.630 align:middle line:84% I'm Jewish, she told us, speaking 00:32:01.630 --> 00:32:05.860 align:middle line:84% English in what I heard as biblical accents swarming 00:32:05.860 --> 00:32:08.350 align:middle line:90% with sand and psalms. 00:32:08.350 --> 00:32:11.920 align:middle line:84% She stood as if expecting us and she was thinking 00:32:11.920 --> 00:32:16.180 align:middle line:84% the no thoughts of the very wise, or so we believed, 00:32:16.180 --> 00:32:18.340 align:middle line:90% being tourists, seekers-- 00:32:18.340 --> 00:32:22.690 align:middle line:84% Old mysterious of daydreams realized. 00:32:22.690 --> 00:32:25.120 align:middle line:84% Each evening we arrived, her face 00:32:25.120 --> 00:32:28.360 align:middle line:84% lay in the shadows of the elephant-leafed tree. 00:32:28.360 --> 00:32:29.980 align:middle line:84% So we didn't know whether she was 00:32:29.980 --> 00:32:34.450 align:middle line:84% glad to see us because she lived alone and was sometimes seeking 00:32:34.450 --> 00:32:39.820 align:middle line:84% company, even the company of strangers, 00:32:39.820 --> 00:32:44.590 align:middle line:84% or whether, in shadow, she was frowning at our interruption. 00:32:44.590 --> 00:32:46.990 align:middle line:84% Nevertheless, the light in the front sitting 00:32:46.990 --> 00:32:49.780 align:middle line:84% room at that time of evening always 00:32:49.780 --> 00:32:52.420 align:middle line:84% had a golden cast because of the light 00:32:52.420 --> 00:32:55.570 align:middle line:84% through the crosshatch windows, and later as we 00:32:55.570 --> 00:32:58.390 align:middle line:84% sat, because of the gold service of the tea 00:32:58.390 --> 00:33:02.800 align:middle line:84% set and the golden figures on the chessboard on a low table 00:33:02.800 --> 00:33:04.630 align:middle line:90% behind the sofa. 00:33:04.630 --> 00:33:07.630 align:middle line:84% The figures hadn't been moved since we'd been visiting 00:33:07.630 --> 00:33:09.790 align:middle line:90% for what must have been a week. 00:33:09.790 --> 00:33:13.750 align:middle line:84% And the boy always sat himself down before the chess set 00:33:13.750 --> 00:33:16.150 align:middle line:84% and stroked each piece delicately 00:33:16.150 --> 00:33:20.260 align:middle line:84% as if they were miniature kittens frozen in time. 00:33:20.260 --> 00:33:24.310 align:middle line:84% A diversion the adult conversation which, such as it 00:33:24.310 --> 00:33:27.130 align:middle line:90% was, always began the same way. 00:33:27.130 --> 00:33:28.960 align:middle line:90% It became almost irritating. 00:33:28.960 --> 00:33:31.010 align:middle line:90% And we'd glance at each other. 00:33:31.010 --> 00:33:33.670 align:middle line:84% I'm a foreigner and have always been. 00:33:33.670 --> 00:33:36.190 align:middle line:90% I've lived here a long time. 00:33:36.190 --> 00:33:38.530 align:middle line:84% Then we'd go to the window and look out 00:33:38.530 --> 00:33:41.320 align:middle line:84% at the lights of the city just coming on, 00:33:41.320 --> 00:33:43.540 align:middle line:90% street by curved street. 00:33:43.540 --> 00:33:46.930 align:middle line:84% So it made a sort of map of people's lives. 00:33:46.930 --> 00:33:48.370 align:middle line:90% A stage set. 00:33:48.370 --> 00:33:52.330 align:middle line:84% Little restaurants and shops and the crowded-in apartment 00:33:52.330 --> 00:33:55.690 align:middle line:84% buildings with people beginning to chop the carrots 00:33:55.690 --> 00:34:00.610 align:middle line:84% and onions, skin the eggplant, pour the first glass of wine. 00:34:00.610 --> 00:34:05.020 align:middle line:84% And in one window, two women were sometimes kissing. 00:34:05.020 --> 00:34:08.949 align:middle line:84% And beyond them the sea, serene and reasonable, 00:34:08.949 --> 00:34:10.870 align:middle line:90% corroding the shore. 00:34:10.870 --> 00:34:13.389 align:middle line:90% Our conversation always went on. 00:34:13.389 --> 00:34:16.360 align:middle line:84% What have you been doing since I last saw you? 00:34:16.360 --> 00:34:18.159 align:middle line:90% Entertain me. 00:34:18.159 --> 00:34:21.580 align:middle line:84% And my companion would begin the story of our trip 00:34:21.580 --> 00:34:23.300 align:middle line:90% all over again. 00:34:23.300 --> 00:34:27.400 align:middle line:84% We came to America to find this place we saw in a movie. 00:34:27.400 --> 00:34:29.425 align:middle line:90% We were unhappy with our lives. 00:34:29.425 --> 00:34:33.214 align:middle line:90% 00:34:33.214 --> 00:34:37.150 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:34:37.150 --> 00:34:39.620 align:middle line:90% 00:34:39.620 --> 00:34:43.067 align:middle line:84% You know how when you go to the seashore or a nice place 00:34:43.067 --> 00:34:44.900 align:middle line:84% with a stream in the country and you pick up 00:34:44.900 --> 00:34:46.400 align:middle line:90% all these beautiful rocks-- 00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:48.170 align:middle line:84% wet rocks-- and they're real pretty. 00:34:48.170 --> 00:34:50.420 align:middle line:84% And then you take them home and they're dry 00:34:50.420 --> 00:34:52.909 align:middle line:84% and they don't look so pretty anymore. 00:34:52.909 --> 00:34:57.050 align:middle line:84% Well, that's the metaphor behind this poem. 00:34:57.050 --> 00:35:00.850 align:middle line:90% "Like Water On a Rock." 00:35:00.850 --> 00:35:04.600 align:middle line:84% This is for the middle aged among us. 00:35:04.600 --> 00:35:07.840 align:middle line:84% The homely man sees the beautiful passing woman 00:35:07.840 --> 00:35:10.210 align:middle line:90% as otherworldly creature. 00:35:10.210 --> 00:35:14.740 align:middle line:84% But to the homely man, the homely woman is also beautiful. 00:35:14.740 --> 00:35:18.250 align:middle line:84% But of an order of beauty that can be lived with 00:35:18.250 --> 00:35:22.030 align:middle line:84% and sniffed at like a pillow or a towel 00:35:22.030 --> 00:35:24.730 align:middle line:84% that can best be appreciated close up, 00:35:24.730 --> 00:35:27.010 align:middle line:90% like a rock or a flower. 00:35:27.010 --> 00:35:30.400 align:middle line:84% And when you drip a little water on the rock on Saturday 00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:33.010 align:middle line:84% night before you take it out to dinner, 00:35:33.010 --> 00:35:35.155 align:middle line:84% the rock looks beautiful for a while. 00:35:35.155 --> 00:35:36.770 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:35:36.770 --> 00:35:37.270 align:middle line:90% 00:35:37.270 --> 00:35:38.830 align:middle line:90% The same with the flower. 00:35:38.830 --> 00:35:43.060 align:middle line:84% For days you pass by it in its little pot, the jonquil, 00:35:43.060 --> 00:35:46.930 align:middle line:84% and sniff its unpleasant odor and remark to your wife, 00:35:46.930 --> 00:35:48.400 align:middle line:90% how beautiful. 00:35:48.400 --> 00:35:50.710 align:middle line:90% Then in a week or so it's gone. 00:35:50.710 --> 00:35:54.160 align:middle line:84% But you don't say to your wife, it's gone, it's dead, 00:35:54.160 --> 00:35:55.480 align:middle line:90% our little flower. 00:35:55.480 --> 00:35:58.510 align:middle line:84% You simply move on with your life. 00:35:58.510 --> 00:36:01.420 align:middle line:84% So it is with marriage, with aging. 00:36:01.420 --> 00:36:04.030 align:middle line:84% You wake up one morning and your wife 00:36:04.030 --> 00:36:08.200 align:middle line:84% has gotten so tubby you can't see her face anymore. 00:36:08.200 --> 00:36:11.950 align:middle line:84% And your husband, those cute little lines running down 00:36:11.950 --> 00:36:15.460 align:middle line:84% from the sides of his nose to the sides of his mouth 00:36:15.460 --> 00:36:20.710 align:middle line:84% have become rivulets, washes, canyons, riverbeds. 00:36:20.710 --> 00:36:23.500 align:middle line:84% Therefore, late in life we tend to go 00:36:23.500 --> 00:36:27.970 align:middle line:84% around blind with our watering cans, wearing our slippers, 00:36:27.970 --> 00:36:31.236 align:middle line:84% kissing the rocks, kissing the flowers. 00:36:31.236 --> 00:36:35.180 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:36:35.180 --> 00:36:46.530 align:middle line:90% 00:36:46.530 --> 00:36:49.050 align:middle line:90% This is a rather long poem. 00:36:49.050 --> 00:36:50.760 align:middle line:84% So I hope I can keep your attention. 00:36:50.760 --> 00:36:53.840 align:middle line:90% This is a narrative. 00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:55.490 align:middle line:90% And it's called, "Cruelty." 00:36:55.490 --> 00:36:59.100 align:middle line:90% And it's about junkies. 00:36:59.100 --> 00:37:02.190 align:middle line:84% He stole money from a dying woman. 00:37:02.190 --> 00:37:06.240 align:middle line:84% I'm sure it was summer because we were all sweaty and irritable 00:37:06.240 --> 00:37:09.720 align:middle line:84% in a sort of jerky hurry, like junkies always are. 00:37:09.720 --> 00:37:13.320 align:middle line:84% My friend and the dope-dealer and his girlfriend, the dying 00:37:13.320 --> 00:37:16.320 align:middle line:84% woman, and me who always came along. 00:37:16.320 --> 00:37:21.000 align:middle line:84% And also because I remember the smell of the nose-opening ether 00:37:21.000 --> 00:37:23.670 align:middle line:84% they used to cut heroin with mixing 00:37:23.670 --> 00:37:27.360 align:middle line:84% with the bitter, smelly, grape-ade effusions 00:37:27.360 --> 00:37:30.480 align:middle line:84% off the purple flowers of a jacaranda tree, 00:37:30.480 --> 00:37:34.080 align:middle line:84% whose top brushed the window of the dealer's third floor 00:37:34.080 --> 00:37:34.920 align:middle line:90% apartment. 00:37:34.920 --> 00:37:38.730 align:middle line:84% And the tingle of mold that rises from a carpet when 00:37:38.730 --> 00:37:40.650 align:middle line:90% spring is over. 00:37:40.650 --> 00:37:43.650 align:middle line:84% The dying woman was a short black stub 00:37:43.650 --> 00:37:47.790 align:middle line:84% dressed like a clerk or a secretary on her lunch break. 00:37:47.790 --> 00:37:51.060 align:middle line:84% Someone who works every day without complaint. 00:37:51.060 --> 00:37:53.340 align:middle line:84% And because I didn't know her very well, 00:37:53.340 --> 00:37:57.030 align:middle line:84% I could say that maybe she also lived in a rundown dump 00:37:57.030 --> 00:38:00.240 align:middle line:84% like this, with a lumpy sofa she slept on, 00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:04.800 align:middle line:84% and a TV set, and a table with one wooden chair for eating. 00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:07.620 align:middle line:84% But I imagine she kept her place clean, 00:38:07.620 --> 00:38:10.980 align:middle line:84% dusted and swept because that's how she looked 00:38:10.980 --> 00:38:13.290 align:middle line:84% with her flowered blouse tucked in 00:38:13.290 --> 00:38:16.500 align:middle line:84% and her straight skirt pulled below her knees 00:38:16.500 --> 00:38:20.520 align:middle line:84% even as she was nodding into an overdose like someone 00:38:20.520 --> 00:38:24.930 align:middle line:90% falling into an afternoon nap. 00:38:24.930 --> 00:38:29.310 align:middle line:84% When the nodding stopped her head spasmed and jerked back 00:38:29.310 --> 00:38:34.080 align:middle line:84% and her eyes, stuck open for a moment, showed only the whites. 00:38:34.080 --> 00:38:37.680 align:middle line:84% When the dealer began slapping her hard across the face, 00:38:37.680 --> 00:38:41.310 align:middle line:84% I knew there was no cruelty in it, only panic. 00:38:41.310 --> 00:38:45.540 align:middle line:84% And beneath the panic, the sure knowledge of his trade. 00:38:45.540 --> 00:38:49.620 align:middle line:84% When he ripped off her blouse and pinched her purple nipples 00:38:49.620 --> 00:38:52.770 align:middle line:84% hard enough to almost tear them off too, 00:38:52.770 --> 00:38:55.860 align:middle line:84% there was no cruelty in that either. 00:38:55.860 --> 00:39:00.240 align:middle line:84% I can only picture her now as a rag doll being tortured 00:39:00.240 --> 00:39:02.100 align:middle line:90% by a frightened child. 00:39:02.100 --> 00:39:04.950 align:middle line:84% Or the child herself being beaten up 00:39:04.950 --> 00:39:07.470 align:middle line:84% by a drunken mother for her own good 00:39:07.470 --> 00:39:09.570 align:middle line:90% because her mother loves her. 00:39:09.570 --> 00:39:12.780 align:middle line:84% The way the dying woman's body moved only 00:39:12.780 --> 00:39:14.400 align:middle line:90% when the dealer moved it. 00:39:14.400 --> 00:39:18.690 align:middle line:84% Then failing to revive her, he lugged her deadweight 00:39:18.690 --> 00:39:23.910 align:middle line:84% into the shower and ran ice cold water over her half-naked body 00:39:23.910 --> 00:39:26.520 align:middle line:84% which was so black I thought it, too, 00:39:26.520 --> 00:39:30.690 align:middle line:84% was purple glistening under the shower spray. 00:39:30.690 --> 00:39:33.690 align:middle line:84% When the dealer positioned himself like a boxer, 00:39:33.690 --> 00:39:37.620 align:middle line:84% he set his feet just so and jabbed methodically 00:39:37.620 --> 00:39:39.820 align:middle line:90% her wet and slippery body. 00:39:39.820 --> 00:39:43.350 align:middle line:84% And while we watched, she kept falling and the dealer 00:39:43.350 --> 00:39:48.660 align:middle line:84% kept lifting her up to lean her against the wall unbearably. 00:39:48.660 --> 00:39:50.370 align:middle line:90% This is when it happened. 00:39:50.370 --> 00:39:54.030 align:middle line:84% The one moment I keep thinking about like a window 00:39:54.030 --> 00:39:57.060 align:middle line:84% within a window on a terrible event, 00:39:57.060 --> 00:39:59.400 align:middle line:90% although 40 years have passed. 00:39:59.400 --> 00:40:03.270 align:middle line:84% As I tell myself the story of that summer and still 00:40:03.270 --> 00:40:07.890 align:middle line:84% feel jittery about it as though I might still get caught or feel 00:40:07.890 --> 00:40:11.130 align:middle line:90% empty or not in my body at all. 00:40:11.130 --> 00:40:14.280 align:middle line:84% This is when my friend picked up the dying woman's 00:40:14.280 --> 00:40:19.020 align:middle line:84% black plastic imitation patent leather purse from the floor 00:40:19.020 --> 00:40:22.650 align:middle line:84% and rifled it and held up the small wad of bills 00:40:22.650 --> 00:40:25.410 align:middle line:84% like a birthday present to himself, 00:40:25.410 --> 00:40:30.060 align:middle line:84% or a prize won at the amusement park, and grinned at me. 00:40:30.060 --> 00:40:33.330 align:middle line:84% Then we moved on to the next connection's apartment 00:40:33.330 --> 00:40:37.410 align:middle line:84% and bought some dope and I watched him shoot it up. 00:40:37.410 --> 00:40:40.770 align:middle line:84% I remember that afterwards we always walked around, 00:40:40.770 --> 00:40:44.310 align:middle line:84% we always stopped to play with the little kids on the street. 00:40:44.310 --> 00:40:47.160 align:middle line:84% We'd talk and flirt with that buzzing knot 00:40:47.160 --> 00:40:50.820 align:middle line:84% of girls who hung around in front of the grocery store. 00:40:50.820 --> 00:40:53.460 align:middle line:90% Maybe we'd bait a barking dog. 00:40:53.460 --> 00:40:57.330 align:middle line:84% Or talk with a vagrant to hear where he had been. 00:40:57.330 --> 00:40:58.710 align:middle line:90% The woman died. 00:40:58.710 --> 00:41:01.050 align:middle line:84% I don't know what happened to the dealer. 00:41:01.050 --> 00:41:03.270 align:middle line:90% My friend is dead now too. 00:41:03.270 --> 00:41:06.030 align:middle line:84% 10 years later, shot in the chest 00:41:06.030 --> 00:41:09.000 align:middle line:84% in an alley by a teenage boy he was 00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:11.280 align:middle line:90% blackmailing for being queer. 00:41:11.280 --> 00:41:14.970 align:middle line:84% And if anyone got what he deserved, my friend did. 00:41:14.970 --> 00:41:17.730 align:middle line:84% If ever you can say such a thing. 00:41:17.730 --> 00:41:19.890 align:middle line:84% And what about me, you might ask? 00:41:19.890 --> 00:41:23.370 align:middle line:84% I didn't run to the telephone if there even was one 00:41:23.370 --> 00:41:28.440 align:middle line:84% and dial 9-1-1 which they didn't have back then and yell, hey, 00:41:28.440 --> 00:41:31.540 align:middle line:84% there's a woman here dying of an overdose. 00:41:31.540 --> 00:41:34.950 align:middle line:84% I didn't do any more than shake my head and purse 00:41:34.950 --> 00:41:38.610 align:middle line:84% my lips like a schoolteacher at a naughty boy. 00:41:38.610 --> 00:41:42.390 align:middle line:84% Let's go get in trouble, he used to say afterwards, 00:41:42.390 --> 00:41:45.870 align:middle line:84% after the dope walking and the little bouts of talk. 00:41:45.870 --> 00:41:47.580 align:middle line:90% And we'd move on. 00:41:47.580 --> 00:41:48.690 align:middle line:90% Moving on. 00:41:48.690 --> 00:41:49.830 align:middle line:90% That was it. 00:41:49.830 --> 00:41:55.030 align:middle line:84% That was the cruelest thing I did in those days. 00:41:55.030 --> 00:41:58.545 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:41:58.545 --> 00:42:06.980 align:middle line:90% 00:42:06.980 --> 00:42:07.940 align:middle line:90% Seventh-inning stretch. 00:42:07.940 --> 00:42:11.900 align:middle line:90% 00:42:11.900 --> 00:42:15.560 align:middle line:84% This also seems to use a similar image from one of the poems. 00:42:15.560 --> 00:42:19.220 align:middle line:90% It's called, "Spit on a Rock." 00:42:19.220 --> 00:42:21.740 align:middle line:84% Wouldn't we all just for a little while 00:42:21.740 --> 00:42:23.660 align:middle line:90% like to be emptied out? 00:42:23.660 --> 00:42:27.440 align:middle line:84% To lie like a bear in the sun without memories. 00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:31.070 align:middle line:84% Those heavy trinkets without obligations, 00:42:31.070 --> 00:42:35.630 align:middle line:84% those fogged-up mirrors in our bedrooms and our baths. 00:42:35.630 --> 00:42:38.690 align:middle line:84% Like a heavy bear in sunlight in the forest, 00:42:38.690 --> 00:42:42.860 align:middle line:84% fur-thickened, well-fattened, smiling our bear 00:42:42.860 --> 00:42:47.120 align:middle line:84% smiles and be stupid and sensual for a while. 00:42:47.120 --> 00:42:50.000 align:middle line:84% Instead, we go around with our troubles, 00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:52.340 align:middle line:90% our hopes, our prayers. 00:42:52.340 --> 00:42:55.850 align:middle line:84% We wear them like heavy coats though it is summer. 00:42:55.850 --> 00:42:57.890 align:middle line:90% It is Saturday. 00:42:57.890 --> 00:43:02.060 align:middle line:84% The driven, deranged, teenaged Joan of Arc 00:43:02.060 --> 00:43:05.390 align:middle line:84% they called the little flea must have done it 00:43:05.390 --> 00:43:10.100 align:middle line:84% at least once on a day neglected by the history books. 00:43:10.100 --> 00:43:15.170 align:middle line:84% Must have emptied herself out like a long sigh, like a morning 00:43:15.170 --> 00:43:19.280 align:middle line:84% pee, and sat there in the French forest before the battle 00:43:19.280 --> 00:43:21.230 align:middle line:90% not thinking of anything. 00:43:21.230 --> 00:43:25.190 align:middle line:84% To fortify herself against the impending flames 00:43:25.190 --> 00:43:28.910 align:middle line:84% and the subsequent obligations to history. 00:43:28.910 --> 00:43:32.110 align:middle line:84% In such moments, the coming battle fields 00:43:32.110 --> 00:43:35.360 align:middle line:84% are trees so rooted in serenity they 00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:37.400 align:middle line:90% can't move against each other. 00:43:37.400 --> 00:43:38.930 align:middle line:90% Their arms wave. 00:43:38.930 --> 00:43:42.630 align:middle line:84% Hello, or goodbye, it doesn't matter. 00:43:42.630 --> 00:43:45.020 align:middle line:84% And in a hollow between two birches 00:43:45.020 --> 00:43:48.770 align:middle line:84% lies the bear, my totem animal, on this Saturday 00:43:48.770 --> 00:43:50.300 align:middle line:90% of wishful thinking. 00:43:50.300 --> 00:43:53.270 align:middle line:84% He is scratching one itch, forgetting it, 00:43:53.270 --> 00:43:55.070 align:middle line:90% scratching at another. 00:43:55.070 --> 00:43:58.490 align:middle line:84% He sticks out his tongue and the honey comes to it 00:43:58.490 --> 00:44:03.110 align:middle line:84% and the bees sing their useless frenzied song. 00:44:03.110 --> 00:44:06.380 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, in the forest far enough away, 00:44:06.380 --> 00:44:08.960 align:middle line:84% the bear can't catch their scent. 00:44:08.960 --> 00:44:13.280 align:middle line:84% Groups of soldiers on horseback with swords and lances 00:44:13.280 --> 00:44:17.330 align:middle line:84% are moving slowly and heavily towards one another. 00:44:17.330 --> 00:44:19.850 align:middle line:84% And the man who has taken up the rear, 00:44:19.850 --> 00:44:23.960 align:middle line:84% a farmer in his former life, alights from his horse, 00:44:23.960 --> 00:44:26.600 align:middle line:84% bends and picks up a rounded rock, 00:44:26.600 --> 00:44:30.770 align:middle line:84% then snaps off a dead flower whose name he once knew 00:44:30.770 --> 00:44:34.370 align:middle line:84% and for this moment doesn't care to remember. 00:44:34.370 --> 00:44:39.140 align:middle line:84% Cleans his teeth with a dry stem, spits on the rock, 00:44:39.140 --> 00:44:43.490 align:middle line:84% shines it with his elbow, and says to no one in particular, 00:44:43.490 --> 00:44:47.210 align:middle line:84% to the trees, fine flower you got there, mother nature. 00:44:47.210 --> 00:44:47.990 align:middle line:90% Fine rock. 00:44:47.990 --> 00:44:51.008 align:middle line:90% 00:44:51.008 --> 00:44:51.870 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:44:51.870 --> 00:44:52.370 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:44:52.370 --> 00:44:56.202 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:44:56.202 --> 00:45:01.480 align:middle line:90% 00:45:01.480 --> 00:45:04.330 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read two more poems. 00:45:04.330 --> 00:45:07.540 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "The Wandering Jew." 00:45:07.540 --> 00:45:13.330 align:middle line:84% And it describes something like an out-of-body experience. 00:45:13.330 --> 00:45:19.210 align:middle line:84% And there's one allusion in here that you might not know. 00:45:19.210 --> 00:45:21.790 align:middle line:90% Josephus is mentioned. 00:45:21.790 --> 00:45:26.260 align:middle line:84% He was born in 37 AD and lived till about 100 AD. 00:45:26.260 --> 00:45:29.230 align:middle line:84% He was a Jewish historian and a general 00:45:29.230 --> 00:45:34.840 align:middle line:84% who wrote and miswrote about the Jews at the time. 00:45:34.840 --> 00:45:37.840 align:middle line:90% "The Wandering Jew." 00:45:37.840 --> 00:45:41.890 align:middle line:84% Don't believe in anything but the evidence of your senses. 00:45:41.890 --> 00:45:44.170 align:middle line:84% Licked in through the eyes, ears, 00:45:44.170 --> 00:45:47.320 align:middle line:84% skin, mouth, then planted chemically, 00:45:47.320 --> 00:45:50.320 align:middle line:84% then merged, turned on like a light bulb, 00:45:50.320 --> 00:45:54.115 align:middle line:84% and retrieved when needed to be able to go on simply 00:45:54.115 --> 00:45:55.660 align:middle line:90% with your life. 00:45:55.660 --> 00:45:58.870 align:middle line:84% And remember that even memory is suspect. 00:45:58.870 --> 00:46:00.280 align:middle line:90% Even history. 00:46:00.280 --> 00:46:04.660 align:middle line:84% Even Josephus who told our edited tale to the world. 00:46:04.660 --> 00:46:06.550 align:middle line:90% And stories, too. 00:46:06.550 --> 00:46:10.810 align:middle line:84% I did this and she did that, and murmurs in the dark, 00:46:10.810 --> 00:46:15.260 align:middle line:84% and exclamations in the light, even when it is our memory, 00:46:15.260 --> 00:46:19.150 align:middle line:90% our lesions, joys, cravings. 00:46:19.150 --> 00:46:20.980 align:middle line:90% But one moment in time. 00:46:20.980 --> 00:46:25.060 align:middle line:84% May the third, 1968, around seven PM. 00:46:25.060 --> 00:46:28.260 align:middle line:90% 00:46:28.260 --> 00:46:31.230 align:middle line:90% "The Wandering Jew." 00:46:31.230 --> 00:46:35.340 align:middle line:84% Don't believe in anything but the evidence of your senses. 00:46:35.340 --> 00:46:37.620 align:middle line:84% Licked in through the eyes, ears, 00:46:37.620 --> 00:46:40.170 align:middle line:84% skin, mouth, then planted chemically, 00:46:40.170 --> 00:46:43.110 align:middle line:84% then merged, turned on like a light bulb, 00:46:43.110 --> 00:46:47.190 align:middle line:84% and retrieved when needed to be able to go on simply 00:46:47.190 --> 00:46:48.810 align:middle line:90% with your life. 00:46:48.810 --> 00:46:51.990 align:middle line:84% And remember that even memory is suspect. 00:46:51.990 --> 00:46:53.400 align:middle line:90% Even history. 00:46:53.400 --> 00:46:57.720 align:middle line:84% Even Josephus who told our edited tale to the world. 00:46:57.720 --> 00:46:59.550 align:middle line:90% And stories, too. 00:46:59.550 --> 00:47:03.750 align:middle line:84% I did this and she did that, and murmurs in the dark, 00:47:03.750 --> 00:47:08.140 align:middle line:84% and exclamations in the light, even when it is our memory, 00:47:08.140 --> 00:47:12.060 align:middle line:90% our lesions, joys, cravings. 00:47:12.060 --> 00:47:13.800 align:middle line:90% But one moment in time. 00:47:13.800 --> 00:47:18.150 align:middle line:84% May the third, 1968, around seven PM. 00:47:18.150 --> 00:47:22.650 align:middle line:84% And I know I was sober walking down Hillside Avenue where 00:47:22.650 --> 00:47:24.510 align:middle line:90% such things happen. 00:47:24.510 --> 00:47:28.380 align:middle line:84% Dusk, after supper, feeling pleasantly full. 00:47:28.380 --> 00:47:31.950 align:middle line:84% And me not so much thinking as letting the mind 00:47:31.950 --> 00:47:34.410 align:middle line:90% do its random clerical work. 00:47:34.410 --> 00:47:35.730 align:middle line:90% And I was struck. 00:47:35.730 --> 00:47:36.600 align:middle line:90% Wham. 00:47:36.600 --> 00:47:41.160 align:middle line:84% As by an actual hammer blow pushing me into another time, 00:47:41.160 --> 00:47:43.830 align:middle line:84% another place, where I was shorter, 00:47:43.830 --> 00:47:48.720 align:middle line:84% skinnier, bearded, a Jew, with a Jew's jumpy thoughts. 00:47:48.720 --> 00:47:52.290 align:middle line:84% And no wife, no children, no parents. 00:47:52.290 --> 00:47:55.740 align:middle line:84% With a first name only, a short name like, 00:47:55.740 --> 00:47:59.520 align:middle line:84% a bark or command called out in the street. 00:47:59.520 --> 00:48:02.500 align:middle line:84% I looked up and no one was there. 00:48:02.500 --> 00:48:07.050 align:middle line:84% So I walked down the 3 stone stairs and hauled out the box. 00:48:07.050 --> 00:48:08.340 align:middle line:90% Raw gold. 00:48:08.340 --> 00:48:13.680 align:middle line:84% Fat, irregular chunks, yellow as flowers, grained with soot. 00:48:13.680 --> 00:48:16.980 align:middle line:84% And the tools of my trade walked here 00:48:16.980 --> 00:48:19.410 align:middle line:84% on the longest journey of my life 00:48:19.410 --> 00:48:24.900 align:middle line:84% from Vilna, city of learned men, Jerusalem of the North. 00:48:24.900 --> 00:48:27.180 align:middle line:90% Outside, it was Paris. 00:48:27.180 --> 00:48:33.300 align:middle line:84% The year was 1366 and I, Goldschmidt, now resided 00:48:33.300 --> 00:48:36.780 align:middle line:84% in a large and livid city not my own. 00:48:36.780 --> 00:48:40.680 align:middle line:84% Where dogs barked and soldiers strolled around 00:48:40.680 --> 00:48:44.820 align:middle line:84% in 3s and filthy women sold them for supper. 00:48:44.820 --> 00:48:48.030 align:middle line:84% And at the alley's end, I entered a door. 00:48:48.030 --> 00:48:52.230 align:middle line:84% And there among the men, men just like me, foreigners 00:48:52.230 --> 00:48:55.830 align:middle line:84% all muttering in the world's seven languages, 00:48:55.830 --> 00:48:57.390 align:middle line:90% I began to pray. 00:48:57.390 --> 00:49:02.640 align:middle line:84% Shema Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 00:49:02.640 --> 00:49:05.190 align:middle line:84% Then out from my brain into a lamp 00:49:05.190 --> 00:49:07.800 align:middle line:90% lit street, Hillside Avenue. 00:49:07.800 --> 00:49:11.880 align:middle line:84% I have lived here all my life in memory and forgetfulness. 00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:17.010 align:middle line:84% A familiar boy and a familiar man but always a stranger. 00:49:17.010 --> 00:49:20.100 align:middle line:84% A dog barked, straining at its leash. 00:49:20.100 --> 00:49:22.530 align:middle line:84% Behind the windows, my neighbors were 00:49:22.530 --> 00:49:27.720 align:middle line:84% settling in, washing dishes, reading the transcript telegram. 00:49:27.720 --> 00:49:32.670 align:middle line:84% I felt dizzy, nauseous, anonymous, lost. 00:49:32.670 --> 00:49:34.960 align:middle line:84% I haven't mentioned this to anyone. 00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:37.380 align:middle line:90% And I have no further curiosity. 00:49:37.380 --> 00:49:41.310 align:middle line:84% For I know that this was me before I was me. 00:49:41.310 --> 00:49:45.870 align:middle line:84% A simple man with a trade who would sit for hours at a bench, 00:49:45.870 --> 00:49:50.670 align:middle line:84% bent, working a nugget into the circle that signifies 00:49:50.670 --> 00:49:54.420 align:middle line:90% certain eternal arrangements. 00:49:54.420 --> 00:49:57.300 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:49:57.300 --> 00:50:00.670 align:middle line:90% 00:50:00.670 --> 00:50:01.960 align:middle line:90% And this is the last poem. 00:50:01.960 --> 00:50:05.470 align:middle line:90% It's also rather long. 00:50:05.470 --> 00:50:06.730 align:middle line:90% And it's about my mother. 00:50:06.730 --> 00:50:09.160 align:middle line:84% And I wish if you meet my mother that you don't tell her 00:50:09.160 --> 00:50:14.110 align:middle line:84% that I wrote this poem and read it before a large crowd. 00:50:14.110 --> 00:50:16.030 align:middle line:84% Because she would be embarrassed. 00:50:16.030 --> 00:50:18.520 align:middle line:84% The poem is-- and I'm embarrassed too-- 00:50:18.520 --> 00:50:19.765 align:middle line:90% the poem is called, "Taboo." 00:50:19.765 --> 00:50:22.860 align:middle line:90% 00:50:22.860 --> 00:50:27.780 align:middle line:84% In this photograph of my mother posed and taken by my father 00:50:27.780 --> 00:50:32.520 align:middle line:84% several years before I was born when they were or were not yet 00:50:32.520 --> 00:50:36.810 align:middle line:84% married, depending upon who is telling the story, 00:50:36.810 --> 00:50:41.220 align:middle line:84% my mother is standing, is still standing because of the way 00:50:41.220 --> 00:50:45.930 align:middle line:84% photographs make chumps of us, fool us into thinking time 00:50:45.930 --> 00:50:49.290 align:middle line:84% has taken its summer vacation and the subject 00:50:49.290 --> 00:50:51.900 align:middle line:84% of the photograph is locked in the dead center 00:50:51.900 --> 00:50:53.460 align:middle line:90% of the warp of time. 00:50:53.460 --> 00:50:56.340 align:middle line:84% And you have only to reach out and take her hand 00:50:56.340 --> 00:50:59.340 align:middle line:84% and tell her it's time to get moving, get dressed, honey, 00:50:59.340 --> 00:51:01.590 align:middle line:90% we're going home. 00:51:01.590 --> 00:51:05.310 align:middle line:84% My mother stands with her long back, flank, and legs 00:51:05.310 --> 00:51:09.390 align:middle line:84% to the camera and her face both haughty and coy 00:51:09.390 --> 00:51:14.790 align:middle line:84% in profile in front of a mass of mountain rock under an opaque, 00:51:14.790 --> 00:51:17.730 align:middle line:84% embellishing waterfall whose drops 00:51:17.730 --> 00:51:20.200 align:middle line:90% scatter over her shoulders. 00:51:20.200 --> 00:51:24.270 align:middle line:84% She is wearing nothing but a white bathing cap which I 00:51:24.270 --> 00:51:28.890 align:middle line:84% imagine was either a bow to nicety or a brilliant perverse 00:51:28.890 --> 00:51:30.420 align:middle line:90% touch of my father's. 00:51:30.420 --> 00:51:33.000 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:40.920 align:middle line:84% The photograph in black and white circa 1939 00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:44.160 align:middle line:84% has been enlarged and so is a bit grainy. 00:51:44.160 --> 00:51:47.130 align:middle line:84% And it seems as though her smooth back which 00:51:47.130 --> 00:51:50.850 align:middle line:84% conspires with the water to make her appear even more 00:51:50.850 --> 00:51:54.960 align:middle line:84% beautiful and more vulnerable to the eye is disintegrating. 00:51:54.960 --> 00:51:58.620 align:middle line:84% Although she is quite young, maybe 17, 00:51:58.620 --> 00:52:00.750 align:middle line:84% I will know from later photographs 00:52:00.750 --> 00:52:03.120 align:middle line:84% that her hair tucked under the cap 00:52:03.120 --> 00:52:06.210 align:middle line:84% is full and auburn and long with waves 00:52:06.210 --> 00:52:09.460 align:middle line:84% here and there in an unruly falling. 00:52:09.460 --> 00:52:12.210 align:middle line:84% But I will still be too young to possess 00:52:12.210 --> 00:52:16.170 align:middle line:84% with all of memories, obligations, and privileges 00:52:16.170 --> 00:52:20.520 align:middle line:84% any actual memory of such events as the picnics 00:52:20.520 --> 00:52:23.130 align:middle line:90% and parades my father favored. 00:52:23.130 --> 00:52:26.100 align:middle line:84% And I would never see her actual body. 00:52:26.100 --> 00:52:30.120 align:middle line:84% Because it is probably a dangerous thing for a son 00:52:30.120 --> 00:52:33.420 align:middle line:90% to see his mother's naked body. 00:52:33.420 --> 00:52:36.810 align:middle line:84% Psychologists speak of the primal event. 00:52:36.810 --> 00:52:39.810 align:middle line:84% That moment or moments in which a child 00:52:39.810 --> 00:52:43.725 align:middle line:84% hears through the closed door the muffled sounds of sex 00:52:43.725 --> 00:52:45.870 align:middle line:90% and know suddenly. 00:52:45.870 --> 00:52:48.150 align:middle line:90% What does the child know? 00:52:48.150 --> 00:52:51.570 align:middle line:84% It sounds as though some terrible wounding is taking 00:52:51.570 --> 00:52:54.000 align:middle line:84% place and the child wants to burst 00:52:54.000 --> 00:52:57.900 align:middle line:84% in like a hero, chain mail on a huge horse 00:52:57.900 --> 00:53:01.290 align:middle line:84% that has ridden out of the etching in a library book 00:53:01.290 --> 00:53:02.820 align:middle line:90% and save his mother. 00:53:02.820 --> 00:53:06.330 align:middle line:84% Throw his body between his father's and hers, 00:53:06.330 --> 00:53:08.940 align:middle line:84% to cover his mother's body with his own. 00:53:08.940 --> 00:53:12.630 align:middle line:84% And for a while, or so they say, the child 00:53:12.630 --> 00:53:15.240 align:middle line:84% will both hate and fear the father 00:53:15.240 --> 00:53:18.210 align:middle line:90% and wish to take his place. 00:53:18.210 --> 00:53:21.030 align:middle line:84% I can't see her breasts, but know 00:53:21.030 --> 00:53:25.170 align:middle line:84% they are as large and overripe as melons in a field 00:53:25.170 --> 00:53:28.830 align:middle line:84% because my proud father told me this as a child. 00:53:28.830 --> 00:53:33.420 align:middle line:84% And because lately, in her old age, 00:53:33.420 --> 00:53:37.575 align:middle line:84% she complains that her breasts pull her shoulders down 00:53:37.575 --> 00:53:41.460 align:middle line:84% in a traitorous falling and make them ache. 00:53:41.460 --> 00:53:45.150 align:middle line:84% They're my burden, she said last night in the kitchen, 00:53:45.150 --> 00:53:48.330 align:middle line:84% holding them up in both hands, smiling, 00:53:48.330 --> 00:53:51.390 align:middle line:84% as though what was once pride is still 00:53:51.390 --> 00:53:56.970 align:middle line:84% pride but the exempting pride of having outlived the body. 00:53:56.970 --> 00:54:01.020 align:middle line:84% I would like and would not like to cover the naked and shapely, 00:54:01.020 --> 00:54:05.250 align:middle line:84% as yet unrepentant, distracting body of my mother, 00:54:05.250 --> 00:54:09.840 align:middle line:84% shimmering and disintegrating in this old photograph I dug up 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:13.440 align:middle line:84% from the bottom of the pile in the basement of my parents' 00:54:13.440 --> 00:54:14.280 align:middle line:90% house. 00:54:14.280 --> 00:54:18.810 align:middle line:84% My father at 87 is blind and emaciated 00:54:18.810 --> 00:54:23.310 align:middle line:84% and slowly metastasizing upstairs in his narrow bed, 00:54:23.310 --> 00:54:24.240 align:middle line:90% dying. 00:54:24.240 --> 00:54:29.550 align:middle line:84% And my mother at 83 is, for this particular eternity, 00:54:29.550 --> 00:54:32.970 align:middle line:84% the beautiful naked water-splashed woman 00:54:32.970 --> 00:54:34.380 align:middle line:90% in this photograph. 00:54:34.380 --> 00:54:38.220 align:middle line:84% It both embarrasses me and draws me in. 00:54:38.220 --> 00:54:41.670 align:middle line:84% The thick black leather bound cover of the album 00:54:41.670 --> 00:54:46.020 align:middle line:84% is embossed with a golden bird, a blazing phoenix, 00:54:46.020 --> 00:54:51.420 align:middle line:84% hesitating in its upwards flight drawn for a moment to its ashes 00:54:51.420 --> 00:54:56.640 align:middle line:84% down below before it moves on, as it surely must. 00:54:56.640 --> 00:54:57.690 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:54:57.690 --> 00:55:01.340 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:55:01.340 --> 00:55:21.392 align:middle line:90%