WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.990 --> 00:00:04.770 align:middle line:84% I've been on the road too much, and one of the things about that 00:00:04.770 --> 00:00:07.770 align:middle line:84% is that you-- well actually, one of the pleasures of it 00:00:07.770 --> 00:00:11.010 align:middle line:84% is a certain taste you develop for the different signs 00:00:11.010 --> 00:00:11.670 align:middle line:90% of towns. 00:00:11.670 --> 00:00:14.162 align:middle line:84% And I love signs anyway, it's one of the reasons 00:00:14.162 --> 00:00:15.120 align:middle line:90% it's in the title here. 00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:18.840 align:middle line:84% And for example, I never even really realized, 00:00:18.840 --> 00:00:21.180 align:middle line:84% even though my brother was a Mason for years, 00:00:21.180 --> 00:00:22.980 align:middle line:90% I had no idea what that meant. 00:00:22.980 --> 00:00:26.140 align:middle line:84% You're not supposed to know what it means. 00:00:26.140 --> 00:00:27.760 align:middle line:84% I mean, I started thinking about it, 00:00:27.760 --> 00:00:30.890 align:middle line:84% I knew he didn't build walls, that I was sure of. 00:00:30.890 --> 00:00:34.180 align:middle line:84% But I didn't know what it was all about, I still don't know. 00:00:34.180 --> 00:00:37.540 align:middle line:84% But now I realize that these signs outside of towns, 00:00:37.540 --> 00:00:39.280 align:middle line:84% they say these three adjectives that 00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:42.400 align:middle line:84% make me feel as though I could live there. 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:46.060 align:middle line:84% It says, "Ancient, free, and accepted." 00:00:46.060 --> 00:00:51.760 align:middle line:84% I think, I've earned at least two out of three of those. 00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:54.400 align:middle line:84% But I mean, in Iowa City, I arrived in Iowa City 00:00:54.400 --> 00:00:57.730 align:middle line:84% the first thing I went to this diner place, 00:00:57.730 --> 00:00:59.350 align:middle line:84% and there were two ministers there. 00:00:59.350 --> 00:01:01.353 align:middle line:84% There were like actually four or five ministers, 00:01:01.353 --> 00:01:02.770 align:middle line:84% but only two of them were talking. 00:01:02.770 --> 00:01:06.950 align:middle line:84% The others were thinking, which is good. 00:01:06.950 --> 00:01:08.530 align:middle line:84% And it seemed that they were talking 00:01:08.530 --> 00:01:12.097 align:middle line:84% about how hard it was to be a minister, or a pastor today, 00:01:12.097 --> 00:01:14.680 align:middle line:84% how many different duties they had, and the parishioners never 00:01:14.680 --> 00:01:18.340 align:middle line:84% realized, and how quick they had to be to get everything done. 00:01:18.340 --> 00:01:20.913 align:middle line:84% And then one guy turned to the other and he said, 00:01:20.913 --> 00:01:23.080 align:middle line:84% there's nothing worse than arriving for your wedding 00:01:23.080 --> 00:01:25.210 align:middle line:84% and seeing a body being carried out. 00:01:25.210 --> 00:01:28.070 align:middle line:90% 00:01:28.070 --> 00:01:33.205 align:middle line:84% That prepared me for the Writers' Workshop. 00:01:33.205 --> 00:01:38.460 align:middle line:90% 00:01:38.460 --> 00:01:41.610 align:middle line:84% So this is the poem that got written in Iowa 00:01:41.610 --> 00:01:45.270 align:middle line:84% and has rain, and flus, and things in it. 00:01:45.270 --> 00:01:48.750 align:middle line:90% 00:01:48.750 --> 00:01:54.990 align:middle line:84% Preparatory for marriage, it's not death. 00:01:54.990 --> 00:01:57.390 align:middle line:90% "Window: Thing as Participle." 00:01:57.390 --> 00:01:59.280 align:middle line:84% For a long time I had this idea that "thing" 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:02.010 align:middle line:84% was a great word because it looks like a present participle, 00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:04.944 align:middle line:90% but there was a verb, to fu-. 00:02:04.944 --> 00:02:08.009 align:middle line:90% 00:02:08.009 --> 00:02:09.509 align:middle line:84% I sort of love the idea that "thing" 00:02:09.509 --> 00:02:14.400 align:middle line:84% could be animated that way that could make your skin crawl. 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:15.990 align:middle line:90% But I was sick that year. 00:02:15.990 --> 00:02:20.040 align:middle line:90% 00:02:20.040 --> 00:02:24.430 align:middle line:90% "Window: Thing as Participle." 00:02:24.430 --> 00:02:29.680 align:middle line:84% "Welling, and flowing, and fastening to the window itself 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:31.690 align:middle line:90% became the fever. 00:02:31.690 --> 00:02:36.970 align:middle line:84% Faces waved and surfed across its surface. 00:02:36.970 --> 00:02:39.610 align:middle line:84% Stop that, she rebuked herself, people are only 00:02:39.610 --> 00:02:41.590 align:middle line:84% passing on the sidewalk, people are simply 00:02:41.590 --> 00:02:42.850 align:middle line:90% walking on the side paths. 00:02:42.850 --> 00:02:46.930 align:middle line:84% Yes, that's all you're seeing, so much water in an eye. 00:02:46.930 --> 00:02:49.720 align:middle line:84% But then the sneezes rose from somewhere 00:02:49.720 --> 00:02:53.110 align:middle line:84% to attack whole buildings, schools and churches, 00:02:53.110 --> 00:02:58.090 align:middle line:84% massive stonework, City Hall, whatever stood to be racked. 00:02:58.090 --> 00:02:59.680 align:middle line:90% Did no one notice? 00:02:59.680 --> 00:03:01.780 align:middle line:90% They were all at risk. 00:03:01.780 --> 00:03:05.740 align:middle line:84% Whatever the window held could tremble. 00:03:05.740 --> 00:03:10.330 align:middle line:84% Mortified, she sat in the eye of the storm with steam 00:03:10.330 --> 00:03:15.250 align:middle line:84% from cups of cure to drape or dramatize her time away. 00:03:15.250 --> 00:03:19.780 align:middle line:84% But still the window went on streaming all these bundled half 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:24.610 align:middle line:84% lives by in one continuous unraveling of differences 00:03:24.610 --> 00:03:29.800 align:middle line:84% of higher, lower, light, or darker faces framed in fur, 00:03:29.800 --> 00:03:31.540 align:middle line:90% or bared of head. 00:03:31.540 --> 00:03:34.840 align:middle line:84% Blown blond, or blasted black, each one 00:03:34.840 --> 00:03:40.240 align:middle line:84% appointed in a halo's freeze burn, or an aura's sun chill 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:43.870 align:middle line:84% each, one with its hunch of forehead 00:03:43.870 --> 00:03:48.280 align:middle line:84% over only two hot coals per person. 00:03:48.280 --> 00:03:55.300 align:middle line:84% Humankind was understandable in this unending sentence of an EEG 00:03:55.300 --> 00:03:58.570 align:middle line:90% she witnessed scrolling by. 00:03:58.570 --> 00:04:03.790 align:middle line:84% It was, at each new moment, modeled into spikes 00:04:03.790 --> 00:04:05.950 align:middle line:90% of single mindedness. 00:04:05.950 --> 00:04:08.380 align:middle line:84% But every bobbing of discreteness 00:04:08.380 --> 00:04:11.530 align:middle line:84% in the flow, each block or chunk, each head, 00:04:11.530 --> 00:04:15.580 align:middle line:84% she knew, she knew, had its own helixing 00:04:15.580 --> 00:04:18.640 align:middle line:84% and coils of orienting endlessness, 00:04:18.640 --> 00:04:22.690 align:middle line:84% its moving windows of reflective flux, 00:04:22.690 --> 00:04:26.020 align:middle line:90% and its own someone in a fix. 00:04:26.020 --> 00:04:28.840 align:middle line:84% That figure underlying everything, 00:04:28.840 --> 00:04:33.610 align:middle line:84% that glimpse in brown, or blue, with fringe of lash, 00:04:33.610 --> 00:04:39.010 align:middle line:84% a holy icon cries of self, and image irrecoverably, 00:04:39.010 --> 00:04:42.070 align:middle line:84% shimmeringly still, it is so deeply 00:04:42.070 --> 00:04:45.420 align:middle line:90% plunged into the nominative.