WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.220 align:middle line:84% I'm not saying this in a commercial spirit, 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:05.760 align:middle line:84% but you should all buy this book. 00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:07.640 align:middle line:90% Really. 00:00:07.640 --> 00:00:11.060 align:middle line:84% In the back of the book is a DVD. 00:00:11.060 --> 00:00:13.650 align:middle line:84% There are four or five minute video segments on it. 00:00:13.650 --> 00:00:16.520 align:middle line:84% You will see a construction worker talking about Whitman 00:00:16.520 --> 00:00:21.290 align:middle line:84% and reading Whitman, a Cambodian-American immigrant 00:00:21.290 --> 00:00:24.680 align:middle line:84% young woman, who talks about a Langston Hughes poem. 00:00:24.680 --> 00:00:27.680 align:middle line:84% A Jamaican immigrant, a guy who reads a Sylvia Plath poem, 00:00:27.680 --> 00:00:29.570 align:middle line:90% just amazingly well. 00:00:29.570 --> 00:00:32.330 align:middle line:90% US Marine, Steve Conteaguero. 00:00:32.330 --> 00:00:35.480 align:middle line:84% He was a US Marine with a Hispanic surname. 00:00:35.480 --> 00:00:38.150 align:middle line:84% He reads William Butler Yeats' poem "Politics" 00:00:38.150 --> 00:00:39.770 align:middle line:84% and talks very movingly about it. 00:00:39.770 --> 00:00:41.660 align:middle line:90% What is your name? 00:00:41.660 --> 00:00:42.830 align:middle line:90% Dolly Spaulding. 00:00:42.830 --> 00:00:46.100 align:middle line:90% 00:00:46.100 --> 00:00:47.600 align:middle line:84% Yeah, and which poem did you choose? 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:50.890 align:middle line:90% 00:00:50.890 --> 00:00:52.420 align:middle line:84% Yeah, what was your poem, darling? 00:00:52.420 --> 00:00:55.093 align:middle line:90% 00:00:55.093 --> 00:00:56.510 align:middle line:84% Are you going to read it, or am I? 00:00:56.510 --> 00:00:59.150 align:middle line:90% 00:00:59.150 --> 00:01:01.005 align:middle line:84% I don't know if that's exactly right. 00:01:01.005 --> 00:01:02.630 align:middle line:84% I'll say a little bit about the project 00:01:02.630 --> 00:01:04.630 align:middle line:84% and then I'll try to cajole you into reading it. 00:01:04.630 --> 00:01:07.580 align:middle line:90% 00:01:07.580 --> 00:01:11.390 align:middle line:84% The project I invited Americans to write 00:01:11.390 --> 00:01:17.220 align:middle line:84% to me, name, title, and author of a poem that the person loved 00:01:17.220 --> 00:01:20.250 align:middle line:84% and a few sentences about why that particular poem was 00:01:20.250 --> 00:01:23.040 align:middle line:84% important to that particular person. 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:27.450 align:middle line:84% My advertising budget was about $4. 00:01:27.450 --> 00:01:29.580 align:middle line:84% And I got-- and the Library of Congress 00:01:29.580 --> 00:01:31.500 align:middle line:84% doesn't support anything like that. 00:01:31.500 --> 00:01:34.140 align:middle line:84% The poet laureate officially is in the Library of Congress, 00:01:34.140 --> 00:01:37.410 align:middle line:84% but they don't give you any-- you don't have a secretary-- 00:01:37.410 --> 00:01:39.610 align:middle line:90% it's a sham thing. 00:01:39.610 --> 00:01:40.410 align:middle line:90% It really is. 00:01:40.410 --> 00:01:43.800 align:middle line:90% 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:46.350 align:middle line:84% I got tens of thousands of letters and emails 00:01:46.350 --> 00:01:48.210 align:middle line:90% including one from Dolly. 00:01:48.210 --> 00:01:51.720 align:middle line:84% And I'll tell you how we chose the people 00:01:51.720 --> 00:01:53.490 align:middle line:90% after she reads the poem. 00:01:53.490 --> 00:01:55.410 align:middle line:84% I told the people who are helping me 00:01:55.410 --> 00:01:58.080 align:middle line:84% and I made my main criteria in the choices 00:01:58.080 --> 00:02:01.470 align:middle line:84% was, the interest of the relationship between the person 00:02:01.470 --> 00:02:02.670 align:middle line:90% and the poem. 00:02:02.670 --> 00:02:04.920 align:middle line:84% And, Dolly, I don't think there's 00:02:04.920 --> 00:02:06.105 align:middle line:90% any way out of this for you. 00:02:06.105 --> 00:02:07.230 align:middle line:90% I think you're just doomed. 00:02:07.230 --> 00:02:14.310 align:middle line:90% 00:02:14.310 --> 00:02:18.480 align:middle line:84% First, I'll read you what I said, a couple of sentences. 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:20.790 align:middle line:84% I'm a lifelong inveterate fan of jazz, 00:02:20.790 --> 00:02:22.650 align:middle line:90% and an unapologetic beatnik. 00:02:22.650 --> 00:02:27.990 align:middle line:84% This poem is evocative of the time, the place, the ambience. 00:02:27.990 --> 00:02:29.348 align:middle line:90% That's all I said. 00:02:29.348 --> 00:02:31.140 align:middle line:84% And I was like, and then I got this letter. 00:02:31.140 --> 00:02:34.270 align:middle line:84% I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe this. 00:02:34.270 --> 00:02:38.340 align:middle line:84% So here's the poem, "The Day Lady Died" by Frank O'Hara. 00:02:38.340 --> 00:02:40.860 align:middle line:84% It is 12:20 in New York, a Friday, 00:02:40.860 --> 00:02:42.180 align:middle line:90% three days after Bastille Day. 00:02:42.180 --> 00:02:47.400 align:middle line:84% Yes, it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine because I won't get 00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:50.565 align:middle line:84% off the 4:19 at East Hampton at 7:15, 00:02:50.565 --> 00:02:53.190 align:middle line:84% and then go straight to dinner, and I don't know the people who 00:02:53.190 --> 00:02:54.630 align:middle line:90% will feed me. 00:02:54.630 --> 00:02:57.450 align:middle line:84% I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun 00:02:57.450 --> 00:02:59.160 align:middle line:84% and have a hamburger and a malted 00:02:59.160 --> 00:03:01.020 align:middle line:84% and buy an ugly New World Writing 00:03:01.020 --> 00:03:03.810 align:middle line:84% to see what the poets in Ghana are doing these days. 00:03:03.810 --> 00:03:06.480 align:middle line:84% I go on to the bank and Ms. Stillwagon, 00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:10.050 align:middle line:84% first named Linda I once heard, doesn't even look up my balance 00:03:10.050 --> 00:03:12.510 align:middle line:84% for once in her life, and in the Golden Griffin, 00:03:12.510 --> 00:03:15.960 align:middle line:84% I get a little Verlaine for Patsy, with drawings by Bonnard, 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.650 align:middle line:84% although I do think of Hesiod, translated, 00:03:19.650 --> 00:03:23.580 align:middle line:84% Richmond Lattimore or Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon 00:03:23.580 --> 00:03:26.370 align:middle line:84% or Les Negres of Genet, but I don't. 00:03:26.370 --> 00:03:28.470 align:middle line:84% I stick with Verlaine after practically going 00:03:28.470 --> 00:03:30.540 align:middle line:90% to sleep with quandariness. 00:03:30.540 --> 00:03:33.660 align:middle line:84% And for Mike, I just strolled into the Park Lane liquor store 00:03:33.660 --> 00:03:35.190 align:middle line:84% and asked for a bottle of Strega, 00:03:35.190 --> 00:03:37.500 align:middle line:84% and when I go back where I came from to Sixth 00:03:37.500 --> 00:03:40.410 align:middle line:84% Avenue and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theater 00:03:40.410 --> 00:03:42.600 align:middle line:84% and casually asks for a carton of Gauloises 00:03:42.600 --> 00:03:45.540 align:middle line:84% and a carton of Picayunes, And a New York Post with her face 00:03:45.540 --> 00:03:46.540 align:middle line:90% on it. 00:03:46.540 --> 00:03:48.540 align:middle line:84% And I am sweating a lot by now and thinking 00:03:48.540 --> 00:03:51.240 align:middle line:84% of leaning on the john door in the five spot 00:03:51.240 --> 00:03:53.610 align:middle line:84% while she whispered a song along the keyboard 00:03:53.610 --> 00:03:58.996 align:middle line:84% to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing. 00:03:58.996 --> 00:04:00.992 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:00.992 --> 00:04:04.490 align:middle line:90% 00:04:04.490 --> 00:04:06.770 align:middle line:84% And everyone and I stopped breathing. 00:04:06.770 --> 00:04:13.130 align:middle line:84% Well, we did have these thousands of letters, 00:04:13.130 --> 00:04:15.050 align:middle line:84% though the Library of Congress didn't 00:04:15.050 --> 00:04:19.490 align:middle line:84% do anything, my University, Boston University did. 00:04:19.490 --> 00:04:21.589 align:middle line:84% They gave me computers and they gave me 00:04:21.589 --> 00:04:24.380 align:middle line:90% graduate students-- slaves. 00:04:24.380 --> 00:04:28.190 align:middle line:84% The slaves were chained to the computers, 00:04:28.190 --> 00:04:33.780 align:middle line:84% and they actually ranked the letters, Dolly, from one 00:04:33.780 --> 00:04:34.850 align:middle line:90% to five. 00:04:34.850 --> 00:04:38.890 align:middle line:84% And the criterion I gave them was 00:04:38.890 --> 00:04:42.130 align:middle line:84% the interest of the relationship between the person and the poem. 00:04:42.130 --> 00:04:44.320 align:middle line:84% What you said evoked a whole year, a whole taste, 00:04:44.320 --> 00:04:49.210 align:middle line:84% the whole understood O'Hara's passion, et cetera. 00:04:49.210 --> 00:04:54.730 align:middle line:84% Then so they narrowed it down to like 1,000, 00:04:54.730 --> 00:04:57.790 align:middle line:84% and I had a database that I could then put in my computer 00:04:57.790 --> 00:05:01.030 align:middle line:84% and I could read the whole letters that people wrote. 00:05:01.030 --> 00:05:04.570 align:middle line:84% And that's the basis of the three anthologies. 00:05:04.570 --> 00:05:07.310 align:middle line:84% These anthologies by the way, the first one Americans Favor-- 00:05:07.310 --> 00:05:08.470 align:middle line:90% This is the third one. 00:05:08.470 --> 00:05:12.280 align:middle line:84% They're published by WW Norton and Company, not 00:05:12.280 --> 00:05:14.320 align:middle line:90% a charitable institution. 00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:16.880 align:middle line:84% They publish these because they make money on them. 00:05:16.880 --> 00:05:19.830 align:middle line:84% The first one is now in its 20th printing. 00:05:19.830 --> 00:05:20.715 align:middle line:90% I'm happy to say. 00:05:20.715 --> 00:05:24.720 align:middle line:90% 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:27.390 align:middle line:84% For the videos, we never-- we were 00:05:27.390 --> 00:05:29.908 align:middle line:84% supposed to make 100 and never raised 00:05:29.908 --> 00:05:31.200 align:middle line:90% the money to make the other 50. 00:05:31.200 --> 00:05:34.050 align:middle line:84% So they're all made on the East Coast and the West Coast, LA, 00:05:34.050 --> 00:05:38.545 align:middle line:84% San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Washington, New York, Boston, 00:05:38.545 --> 00:05:39.045 align:middle line:90% Hartford. 00:05:39.045 --> 00:05:41.970 align:middle line:90% 00:05:41.970 --> 00:05:44.430 align:middle line:84% The Clinton White House Millennium association 00:05:44.430 --> 00:05:48.180 align:middle line:84% celebration and the NEA let us make the ones we did make. 00:05:48.180 --> 00:05:52.320 align:middle line:84% My executive director, Juanita Anderson, 00:05:52.320 --> 00:05:56.800 align:middle line:84% of Legacy Productions then in Roxbury, Massachusetts. 00:05:56.800 --> 00:05:59.410 align:middle line:84% Juanita has what are called interview skills. 00:05:59.410 --> 00:06:03.520 align:middle line:84% So I gave her 70 names to make the 50 videos. 00:06:03.520 --> 00:06:06.370 align:middle line:84% She calls the people up and she guesses which 00:06:06.370 --> 00:06:08.860 align:middle line:90% ones will be good to film. 00:06:08.860 --> 00:06:10.870 align:middle line:90% And she's a Black woman. 00:06:10.870 --> 00:06:12.910 align:middle line:84% She's used to having to stretch a book. 00:06:12.910 --> 00:06:21.430 align:middle line:84% She managed to make about 250 minutes of video for $500,000. 00:06:21.430 --> 00:06:25.780 align:middle line:84% Very often, the people who we were shooting fed the crew. 00:06:25.780 --> 00:06:29.050 align:middle line:84% And rather than pay plane fare, sending crew 00:06:29.050 --> 00:06:32.380 align:middle line:84% around the country or motels, we had regional producers-- 00:06:32.380 --> 00:06:36.020 align:middle line:84% she knew in each region who the people were, who could do it. 00:06:36.020 --> 00:06:40.150 align:middle line:84% We had a production school at BU for about four or five days, 00:06:40.150 --> 00:06:42.370 align:middle line:90% we flew all of them to Boston. 00:06:42.370 --> 00:06:46.510 align:middle line:84% Juanita talked to them about lighting and lenses and shots. 00:06:46.510 --> 00:06:48.220 align:middle line:90% They had a library of shots. 00:06:48.220 --> 00:06:50.020 align:middle line:84% And I talked to them about the project 00:06:50.020 --> 00:06:52.090 align:middle line:84% and we had a favorite poem reading in Boston 00:06:52.090 --> 00:06:54.010 align:middle line:84% where we had President of the University 00:06:54.010 --> 00:06:57.610 align:middle line:84% and little kid and the construction worker who happened 00:06:57.610 --> 00:07:00.640 align:middle line:84% was in Boston, so they could see what the idea was. 00:07:00.640 --> 00:07:03.130 align:middle line:84% And you can tell from the videos, they got the idea. 00:07:03.130 --> 00:07:05.460 align:middle line:90% It worked out very well.