WEBVTT

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The funny thing about
having a lot of papers

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that you shuffle
around, is sometimes

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the wrong papers get in.

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Then you go, whack, I know that
this is rather a strange thing

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right in the middle of my
poem, because I was looking

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at them a few minutes ago
in a classroom down the hall

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of, Dear Santa, can I please
have electric mode master?

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Combat boot page 482, and
a zero N-night fighter page

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404 and an old seven
attache case, page 505.

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And a UNCLE gun, page 505,
and a Normandy campaign.

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This goes on up to a whole page.

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This is my little
son wrote this.

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I suppose that one
of the things that I

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do quite often in my
verse aside from Santa,

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is the relationship of
me to everybody else,

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the problem keeps coming up.

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The poet is always dealing with
himself, and exploring himself.

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I suppose that's a
very egotistical act,

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but it is also the act which
everybody expects of the poet.

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I think it's his job in
a way to explore himself.

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He explores himself in
relation to things outside,

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call it the other.

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I'm going to read a poem
about the other in a while.

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And in doing so, the
other, quite frequently

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emerges as authority.

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Some kind or another,
governments, armies,

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or literary authorities.

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And I was a kind of rebel,
least when I was younger.

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I've taken great delight in
attacking literary authority.

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I was on TV this afternoon,
and I read an attack

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on Lord Alfred Tennyson.

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Now I'll read you a little
attack on William Wordsworth,

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if I can find it.

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This is called "Wordsworth
and The Woman."

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I was reading up there in the
MacDowell Colony Wordsworth,

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in an appropriate setting,
and reading the Prelude.

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And I ran across this
statement in Prelude.

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Traveling southward
from our pastoral hills,

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I heard and for the
first time in my life,

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the voice of a woman
utter blasphemy.

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I shuddered.

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That's in the Prelude, book 7.

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And when I read it,
I sort of reacted.

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Now it's true.

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It's true, and it's all
to work to its credit,

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that the role of woman
was very different then.

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And so were not expected
to perform as men did then,

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that they weren't
supposed to swear,

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but still the
statement annoyed me.

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So I wrote this poem.

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Old shuddering Wordsworth,
I'm in your country.

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I've got rocks, trees,
little hedgerows

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and the big sky, under which
I too can be solemn, Godly,

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portentous when I'm angry.

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You make me angry.

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I read you beside a
simple pastoral fire,

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160 years after you shuddered.

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And I say that, by
God, an honest woman

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or man who'd fit God's scheme
has a duty to blaspheme.

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But when I see what an honest
woman or man puts up with

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in the name of God, and
the Son and the Holy Ghost,

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and 1,000 other pieties,
including those of yours out

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in the hedgerows, I don't even
need to think if God gives

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a damn, to know that
if He has pleasures,

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He'd have pleasure in
seeing you shudder.

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An honest woman or a man
has a moral duty, man,

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to use God's name in vain,
when the establishment which

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put His name on their
doors are vain, including

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that temple of rocks and
fastidious naturals of yours,

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man.

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So from the other ranks,
I send to the girl who

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defiled that temple: thanks.

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