WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.580 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.580 --> 00:00:05.820 align:middle line:84% REED WHITTEMORE: Edgar Allan Poe said that long poems aren't 00:00:05.820 --> 00:00:07.230 align:middle line:90% any good. 00:00:07.230 --> 00:00:08.550 align:middle line:90% I mean, short poems-- 00:00:08.550 --> 00:00:10.660 align:middle line:84% he said that short poems aren't any good. 00:00:10.660 --> 00:00:12.180 align:middle line:84% And then he turned around and said that long poems aren't 00:00:12.180 --> 00:00:12.810 align:middle line:90% any good. 00:00:12.810 --> 00:00:15.480 align:middle line:84% And long poems aren't any good, because they're 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:17.850 align:middle line:84% too long, and short poems, and so on. 00:00:17.850 --> 00:00:21.060 align:middle line:84% So he settled on 100 lines as the perfect poem. 00:00:21.060 --> 00:00:22.950 align:middle line:90% And he ended that all the time. 00:00:22.950 --> 00:00:23.910 align:middle line:90% Well, I can't do that. 00:00:23.910 --> 00:00:26.070 align:middle line:84% I don't think I have any poems 100 lines long. 00:00:26.070 --> 00:00:29.490 align:middle line:84% But I'm going to change now, over 00:00:29.490 --> 00:00:32.670 align:middle line:84% to a long poem, which he would disapprove of as much as the 00:00:32.670 --> 00:00:34.260 align:middle line:90% short. 00:00:34.260 --> 00:00:39.480 align:middle line:84% This poem is really a kind of an essay poem. 00:00:39.480 --> 00:00:45.210 align:middle line:84% It's the kind of thing which I've gotten 00:00:45.210 --> 00:00:46.800 align:middle line:90% pretty interested in lately. 00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:51.120 align:middle line:90% 00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:53.250 align:middle line:90% I don't know quite why. 00:00:53.250 --> 00:01:01.290 align:middle line:84% The lyric has its limits when you get older. 00:01:01.290 --> 00:01:04.450 align:middle line:84% And I've always found the essay form on the one hand, 00:01:04.450 --> 00:01:07.320 align:middle line:84% very congenial, and the lyric form on the other, 00:01:07.320 --> 00:01:08.380 align:middle line:90% very congenial. 00:01:08.380 --> 00:01:12.490 align:middle line:84% But what do you do when you want to do both? 00:01:12.490 --> 00:01:17.460 align:middle line:84% So as I've experimented in the last year or two, 00:01:17.460 --> 00:01:21.870 align:middle line:84% I've tended toward longer, more descriptive things, 00:01:21.870 --> 00:01:23.790 align:middle line:90% which are kind of in between. 00:01:23.790 --> 00:01:29.610 align:middle line:84% And here's the poem, which is in the form of a letter. 00:01:29.610 --> 00:01:31.180 align:middle line:84% I think the letter form is very nice. 00:01:31.180 --> 00:01:34.760 align:middle line:84% My little son wrote that letter to Dear Santa. 00:01:34.760 --> 00:01:39.330 align:middle line:84% I really am interested in the letter form as a medium 00:01:39.330 --> 00:01:43.770 align:middle line:90% to make verse more colloquial. 00:01:43.770 --> 00:01:47.010 align:middle line:90% So this is a letter to God. 00:01:47.010 --> 00:01:50.130 align:middle line:90% But don't let that scare you. 00:01:50.130 --> 00:01:52.230 align:middle line:90% It's really not. 00:01:52.230 --> 00:01:54.170 align:middle line:90% Well, yes it is. 00:01:54.170 --> 00:01:57.630 align:middle line:90% Anyway, it's a letter to God. 00:01:57.630 --> 00:02:02.490 align:middle line:84% And I wrote that at the MacDowell Colony too, 00:02:02.490 --> 00:02:07.410 align:middle line:84% it's quite a good place to write a poem. 00:02:07.410 --> 00:02:13.290 align:middle line:84% "Dear God, though I know you're a bad correspondent, 00:02:13.290 --> 00:02:15.630 align:middle line:90% I've decided to write you. 00:02:15.630 --> 00:02:17.460 align:middle line:90% Do with my words what you will. 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:19.470 align:middle line:90% Do you have a file? 00:02:19.470 --> 00:02:21.270 align:middle line:84% Then don't imagine me sitting down here 00:02:21.270 --> 00:02:23.160 align:middle line:90% pining away for an answer. 00:02:23.160 --> 00:02:26.940 align:middle line:84% It's not that kind of letter, but a common poetic 00:02:26.940 --> 00:02:30.390 align:middle line:84% trick you would know about if you kept up, 00:02:30.390 --> 00:02:35.550 align:middle line:84% for talking at large to one's self, without feeling ill. 00:02:35.550 --> 00:02:38.400 align:middle line:84% A number of other poets have tried such things, whose names I 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:40.650 align:middle line:84% won't mention, and not one of them 00:02:40.650 --> 00:02:45.570 align:middle line:84% would have been happy with your reply, nor I. So don't worry. 00:02:45.570 --> 00:02:51.030 align:middle line:84% I'll do the worrying about you, and art, and man, especially 00:02:51.030 --> 00:02:52.140 align:middle line:90% man. 00:02:52.140 --> 00:02:55.560 align:middle line:90% You fly your atoms. 00:02:55.560 --> 00:02:59.820 align:middle line:84% Your sun is coming up now after a drab dawn. 00:02:59.820 --> 00:03:04.770 align:middle line:84% My dog is out on the steps eating a soldier, plastic. 00:03:04.770 --> 00:03:10.290 align:middle line:84% I feel headachy, constipated, mildly depressed, dull. 00:03:10.290 --> 00:03:14.160 align:middle line:84% As usual, I'm at my desk, looking north at a blank wall 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:15.960 align:middle line:90% for art's sake. 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.890 align:middle line:84% Art being what many walls and other uninterrupted densities 00:03:19.890 --> 00:03:23.730 align:middle line:84% are for: to turn the eyes back in boredom 00:03:23.730 --> 00:03:27.510 align:middle line:84% to the more or less boring self, where the treasure-- if there's 00:03:27.510 --> 00:03:31.200 align:middle line:84% a treasure-- lies, if it hasn't been stolen, 00:03:31.200 --> 00:03:33.120 align:middle line:84% waiting for Tom Sawyer, who doesn't 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:37.020 align:middle line:84% exist, to come along with a chart with an x on it 00:03:37.020 --> 00:03:39.060 align:middle line:90% and dig up. 00:03:39.060 --> 00:03:42.300 align:middle line:84% Out past the wall is a pretty thick stand 00:03:42.300 --> 00:03:45.750 align:middle line:84% of pine, which makes a good wall, too. 00:03:45.750 --> 00:03:47.880 align:middle line:84% My acres are jammed with artists. 00:03:47.880 --> 00:03:52.350 align:middle line:84% Most of them younger, armed with palettes and Steinways, 00:03:52.350 --> 00:03:54.840 align:middle line:90% looking at walls. 00:03:54.840 --> 00:03:56.250 align:middle line:90% I wish them good hunting. 00:03:56.250 --> 00:03:58.110 align:middle line:90% I envy them some. 00:03:58.110 --> 00:04:00.900 align:middle line:84% I suppose I'd trade walls or cells with any of them 00:04:00.900 --> 00:04:03.480 align:middle line:84% in a minute, if asked, so I could 00:04:03.480 --> 00:04:08.640 align:middle line:84% write a big lovely ode or sonata to treasurable me. 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:12.210 align:middle line:84% Not asked, I must sit here, self old, 00:04:12.210 --> 00:04:14.550 align:middle line:84% and try to take solace from the knowledge 00:04:14.550 --> 00:04:18.089 align:middle line:84% that at least my wall has little of me left behind it. 00:04:18.089 --> 00:04:21.000 align:middle line:90% 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:23.940 align:middle line:84% One can't make an easy living exploring 00:04:23.940 --> 00:04:26.460 align:middle line:90% the self, that's for sure. 00:04:26.460 --> 00:04:29.045 align:middle line:84% Which may be the reason such explorations enchant 00:04:29.045 --> 00:04:32.400 align:middle line:90% us so much, too much. 00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:35.370 align:middle line:84% We take a big healthy hunk of artist, 00:04:35.370 --> 00:04:40.650 align:middle line:84% who likes to talk, drink, make love, play tennis, and so on. 00:04:40.650 --> 00:04:42.630 align:middle line:90% What do we tell him? 00:04:42.630 --> 00:04:44.640 align:middle line:90% We make him a patient. 00:04:44.640 --> 00:04:47.010 align:middle line:84% We say, you need to be alone desperately. 00:04:47.010 --> 00:04:48.570 align:middle line:90% You need privacy. 00:04:48.570 --> 00:04:49.290 align:middle line:90% Take a month. 00:04:49.290 --> 00:04:50.340 align:middle line:90% Take two, three. 00:04:50.340 --> 00:04:51.870 align:middle line:90% Get away someplace. 00:04:51.870 --> 00:04:53.790 align:middle line:90% New Hampshire's nice. 00:04:53.790 --> 00:04:55.140 align:middle line:90% Get away, and get to it. 00:04:55.140 --> 00:04:58.560 align:middle line:84% Write, paint, sculpt, create, create. 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:01.030 align:middle line:84% And of course, he does get to, like mad. 00:05:01.030 --> 00:05:02.170 align:middle line:90% Who wouldn't? 00:05:02.170 --> 00:05:05.200 align:middle line:84% The woods are lovely, dark, deep. 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:08.140 align:middle line:84% Just dandy in every respect, except for the life in them 00:05:08.140 --> 00:05:11.710 align:middle line:84% becomes a kind of irrelevance, or a sigh. 00:05:11.710 --> 00:05:15.250 align:middle line:84% The patient is well, perhaps even happy, but just barely 00:05:15.250 --> 00:05:17.000 align:middle line:90% breathing. 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:21.100 align:middle line:84% These are all art, and his art is all art and shows it. 00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:23.380 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, fed up, he thinks he'd be better off-- 00:05:23.380 --> 00:05:24.610 align:middle line:90% though he wouldn't be-- 00:05:24.610 --> 00:05:28.150 align:middle line:84% if he set up shop in the middle of some city sidewalk. 00:05:28.150 --> 00:05:31.480 align:middle line:84% At least he'd be looking at people, other people. 00:05:31.480 --> 00:05:35.380 align:middle line:84% The self gets so tiresome, as your son 00:05:35.380 --> 00:05:39.970 align:middle line:84% and a number of other religious leaders have pointed out. 00:05:39.970 --> 00:05:42.670 align:middle line:84% I should tell him, I should join with them, perhaps. 00:05:42.670 --> 00:05:44.980 align:middle line:84% Sign on the dotted line, be part of a lump, 00:05:44.980 --> 00:05:48.100 align:middle line:84% piously anonymous, selflessly sacrificial, 00:05:48.100 --> 00:05:51.436 align:middle line:90% forgiving, and not writing. 00:05:51.436 --> 00:05:53.980 align:middle line:84% For I wouldn't write then, not a bit. 00:05:53.980 --> 00:05:58.450 align:middle line:84% Art, at least American art, and this is the curse of it, 00:05:58.450 --> 00:06:00.550 align:middle line:84% derives its force mostly from those 00:06:00.550 --> 00:06:03.010 align:middle line:90% who'd be gods on their own. 00:06:03.010 --> 00:06:06.550 align:middle line:84% We're lucky, of course, terribly lucky to be so well fixed, 00:06:06.550 --> 00:06:11.740 align:middle line:84% that playing at God isn't necessarily mad, paranoid. 00:06:11.740 --> 00:06:14.710 align:middle line:84% That perhaps we'd be luckier less lucky. 00:06:14.710 --> 00:06:16.900 align:middle line:90% I don't mean salt mines. 00:06:16.900 --> 00:06:20.380 align:middle line:84% I don't mean schools of hard knocks, every poet boy a paper 00:06:20.380 --> 00:06:21.970 align:middle line:90% route. 00:06:21.970 --> 00:06:25.480 align:middle line:84% Though I must say that as I get older and they get younger, 00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:30.550 align:middle line:84% they keep looking softer and softer to me, more parasitic. 00:06:30.550 --> 00:06:35.680 align:middle line:84% What I mean is that if there had been no woods, no ready refuge 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:40.660 align:middle line:84% for our artists, if the chance for seclusion, separation, 00:06:40.660 --> 00:06:44.470 align:middle line:84% removal had never been dangled, then we 00:06:44.470 --> 00:06:46.990 align:middle line:84% wouldn't be stuck with our God myth. 00:06:46.990 --> 00:06:49.090 align:middle line:90% Our art would be different. 00:06:49.090 --> 00:06:51.850 align:middle line:84% We'd be happily adjusted little social slaves, 00:06:51.850 --> 00:06:55.210 align:middle line:84% busily creating lovely works of engagement, 00:06:55.210 --> 00:06:58.900 align:middle line:84% like a good slave should, rather than woods work. 00:06:58.900 --> 00:07:01.610 align:middle line:90% 00:07:01.610 --> 00:07:04.540 align:middle line:84% So here I am chomping for slavery? 00:07:04.540 --> 00:07:08.860 align:middle line:84% Well, poor thing, she's had a bad press lately. 00:07:08.860 --> 00:07:11.920 align:middle line:84% The press is free, except when it's tied up. 00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:14.860 align:middle line:90% So are students and dogs. 00:07:14.860 --> 00:07:15.610 align:middle line:90% I'm free. 00:07:15.610 --> 00:07:18.880 align:middle line:90% We're all free, except mostly. 00:07:18.880 --> 00:07:23.260 align:middle line:84% Free not to go to church, free to vote for Johnson, 00:07:23.260 --> 00:07:27.220 align:middle line:84% free to smoke, though they're working on that, 00:07:27.220 --> 00:07:32.170 align:middle line:84% free to write naughty words, so we hate slavery. 00:07:32.170 --> 00:07:37.510 align:middle line:84% But the rhythm of things is slave, good or bad, but slave. 00:07:37.510 --> 00:07:41.650 align:middle line:84% An artist without the rhythm, trapped in his free woods, 00:07:41.650 --> 00:07:44.560 align:middle line:84% is a fortunate lost soul in an absolutely 00:07:44.560 --> 00:07:48.220 align:middle line:84% top-notch, first-class, free Siberia, 00:07:48.220 --> 00:07:51.160 align:middle line:84% with the Constitution and the Supreme Courts slaving 00:07:51.160 --> 00:07:53.210 align:middle line:90% over time to keep him there. 00:07:53.210 --> 00:07:55.600 align:middle line:84% And the big foundation spending all sorts of money 00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:57.220 align:middle line:90% to keep him there. 00:07:57.220 --> 00:08:00.370 align:middle line:84% Keep him off the rhythmical beat for his own sweet sake, who 00:08:00.370 --> 00:08:04.540 align:middle line:84% most needs to be, in the name of freedom. 00:08:04.540 --> 00:08:06.160 align:middle line:90% Enough. 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:08.890 align:middle line:84% I can hear 47 congressmen asking me cuttingly 00:08:08.890 --> 00:08:12.790 align:middle line:84% if I'd live in the real Siberia by choice. 00:08:12.790 --> 00:08:14.080 align:middle line:90% Of course not. 00:08:14.080 --> 00:08:17.590 align:middle line:90% I can't speak the language. 00:08:17.590 --> 00:08:19.750 align:middle line:90% I don't know a soul there. 00:08:19.750 --> 00:08:22.000 align:middle line:90% I couldn't get my car repaired. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:26.110 align:middle line:90% And you know how cold it gets. 00:08:26.110 --> 00:08:29.920 align:middle line:84% Cold, cold for the cell, slavery, 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:33.669 align:middle line:84% that many, many the slave places south of Siberia, 00:08:33.669 --> 00:08:37.210 align:middle line:84% and many of the cold ways to those cold places, war, 00:08:37.210 --> 00:08:39.220 align:middle line:90% for example. 00:08:39.220 --> 00:08:44.560 align:middle line:84% There's a war bumbling near right now, as always, the war. 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:48.190 align:middle line:90% And can the self keep clear? 00:08:48.190 --> 00:08:51.820 align:middle line:84% It can sit-in, sit down, lie in, lie down, 00:08:51.820 --> 00:08:55.210 align:middle line:84% march in front of the White House, make speeches. 00:08:55.210 --> 00:08:57.820 align:middle line:84% But when the war comes, if it comes, with the solemn 00:08:57.820 --> 00:09:02.110 align:middle line:84% Pentagon faces crowding the papers like a locust plague, 00:09:02.110 --> 00:09:05.350 align:middle line:84% and everyone climbing, cocky, to defend to the death of self 00:09:05.350 --> 00:09:10.120 align:middle line:84% from its unredeemable enemies in our nearly-eternal horse opera, 00:09:10.120 --> 00:09:13.450 align:middle line:90% then toodle, toodle, bang, pop. 00:09:13.450 --> 00:09:18.130 align:middle line:84% The ships, troops, guns, bombs, savings bonds, and casualties 00:09:18.130 --> 00:09:21.130 align:middle line:84% take over and darken the landscape. 00:09:21.130 --> 00:09:23.740 align:middle line:84% And not the tiniest self in the smallest, 00:09:23.740 --> 00:09:29.680 align:middle line:84% artiest, most New-Hampshirian hole can keep clear. 00:09:29.680 --> 00:09:32.470 align:middle line:90% Self in a war? 00:09:32.470 --> 00:09:36.640 align:middle line:90% There's vanity just thinking it. 00:09:36.640 --> 00:09:43.021 align:middle line:84% And as to that breezy, happy, pastoral alternative, peace, 00:09:43.021 --> 00:09:48.880 align:middle line:84% imagine a bright, blue day, a justice day, a right day, 00:09:48.880 --> 00:09:53.200 align:middle line:84% a day when a bruised peach would go to court, 00:09:53.200 --> 00:09:55.300 align:middle line:84% and the patrons of art are out on the streets 00:09:55.300 --> 00:09:57.940 align:middle line:84% commissioning portraits for upstairs halls, 00:09:57.940 --> 00:10:01.370 align:middle line:84% plays for long riviera yacht trips, 00:10:01.370 --> 00:10:05.810 align:middle line:84% while Shakespeare pans out alarmingly from Central Park, 00:10:05.810 --> 00:10:07.730 align:middle line:84% and General Motors buys a controlling 00:10:07.730 --> 00:10:11.240 align:middle line:84% interest in the Association of Literary Magazines of America. 00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:14.390 align:middle line:90% 00:10:14.390 --> 00:10:19.430 align:middle line:84% Imagine that blue, blue day and the self with its wall, 00:10:19.430 --> 00:10:24.110 align:middle line:84% staring all day into blankness, then tearing up paper, 00:10:24.110 --> 00:10:27.230 align:middle line:84% blackening canvases, fiendishly chopping up 00:10:27.230 --> 00:10:30.980 align:middle line:90% granite in sheer impotence. 00:10:30.980 --> 00:10:34.940 align:middle line:84% Imagine it grinding home in your loveliest sunset 00:10:34.940 --> 00:10:38.480 align:middle line:84% to kick the dog in the yard and blow down the pretty home-- 00:10:38.480 --> 00:10:39.720 align:middle line:90% woof! 00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:43.370 align:middle line:84% --with the children inside with TV and the wife in the kitchen. 00:10:43.370 --> 00:10:44.900 align:middle line:90% Pow! 00:10:44.900 --> 00:10:49.160 align:middle line:84% And have a quick 6 drinks and rage off to a bad movie 00:10:49.160 --> 00:10:54.620 align:middle line:84% to return again, again to clamber all lonely into its bed 00:10:54.620 --> 00:10:57.080 align:middle line:84% where it falls asleep reading a roadmap. 00:10:57.080 --> 00:11:00.800 align:middle line:90% 00:11:00.800 --> 00:11:04.760 align:middle line:84% You're really quite lucky, you know, not to look like a king 00:11:04.760 --> 00:11:07.010 align:middle line:90% anymore. 00:11:07.010 --> 00:11:09.230 align:middle line:84% If you did, I would hold you responsible for these 00:11:09.230 --> 00:11:11.930 align:middle line:84% ambiguities in what might have been a nice, clean, 00:11:11.930 --> 00:11:15.590 align:middle line:84% well-lighted place, with the self competing trumpeting out 00:11:15.590 --> 00:11:17.660 align:middle line:90% of the jukebox at 2:00. 00:11:17.660 --> 00:11:21.170 align:middle line:84% And society's slavery, responsibility at 3:00, 00:11:21.170 --> 00:11:23.030 align:middle line:90% 'round the clock. 00:11:23.030 --> 00:11:27.260 align:middle line:84% A pleasing alternation, peacefully handled, no factions, 00:11:27.260 --> 00:11:30.410 align:middle line:84% disputes, everyone awfully polite, 00:11:30.410 --> 00:11:33.440 align:middle line:90% ladies and anarchists dancing. 00:11:33.440 --> 00:11:37.280 align:middle line:84% As things stand, when your moon goes over, 00:11:37.280 --> 00:11:41.600 align:middle line:84% and your sun, and the shelf items click into position, 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:46.130 align:middle line:84% the sunflower, leaf, cloud, woodchuck, 00:11:46.130 --> 00:11:49.220 align:middle line:84% the self, in its freedom, can slave 00:11:49.220 --> 00:11:51.660 align:middle line:84% at its own absurdity at such depths 00:11:51.660 --> 00:11:55.730 align:middle line:84% that in such imperial darkness, Liberty Hall, 00:11:55.730 --> 00:11:59.330 align:middle line:84% as any old Egyptian slave master would gawk at, 00:11:59.330 --> 00:12:01.690 align:middle line:90% or you, for that matter. 00:12:01.690 --> 00:12:03.790 align:middle line:90% Enough. 00:12:03.790 --> 00:12:05.720 align:middle line:90% I'll write you a book later. 00:12:05.720 --> 00:12:08.120 align:middle line:90% It's too muggy now. 00:12:08.120 --> 00:12:09.830 align:middle line:84% All the bits and pieces of nature, 00:12:09.830 --> 00:12:13.070 align:middle line:84% that in a better world than this one would be yours, 00:12:13.070 --> 00:12:15.890 align:middle line:90% are indefinite at the edges. 00:12:15.890 --> 00:12:17.550 align:middle line:90% I can see no artists at all. 00:12:17.550 --> 00:12:20.120 align:middle line:84% But I know that they're out there, struggling 00:12:20.120 --> 00:12:24.032 align:middle line:84% against the heat in the walls to retain their integrity, 00:12:24.032 --> 00:12:26.240 align:middle line:84% which some of them know, and some of them don't know, 00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:29.140 align:middle line:90% that they can't possibly keep. 00:12:29.140 --> 00:12:33.440 align:middle line:84% But going hard at it anyway, as I am. 00:12:33.440 --> 00:12:36.750 align:middle line:84% I don't know what else to tell you. 00:12:36.750 --> 00:12:43.970 align:middle line:84% I look all around me and inside, and I'm shamed, mostly. 00:12:43.970 --> 00:12:48.560 align:middle line:84% Not by country, or freedom, not by congressmen-- 00:12:48.560 --> 00:12:50.990 align:middle line:90% them I'll put in the book-- 00:12:50.990 --> 00:12:54.140 align:middle line:84% but by the spectacle of the self. 00:12:54.140 --> 00:12:58.250 align:middle line:84% The pompous self, the minuscule godlet, 00:12:58.250 --> 00:13:04.220 align:middle line:84% strutting behind the wall, and with unmitigated gall, 00:13:04.220 --> 00:13:09.290 align:middle line:84% surviving, thriving, bragging, beating his chest, despite all. 00:13:09.290 --> 00:13:12.200 align:middle line:90% 00:13:12.200 --> 00:13:16.500 align:middle line:90% Dear God, could you bless him?" 00:13:16.500 --> 00:13:17.000 align:middle line:90%