WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.400 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.400 --> 00:00:05.660 align:middle line:84% Now I'll read from this recent book. 00:00:05.660 --> 00:00:11.400 align:middle line:84% I'll read the first poem in it, which Alison kindly referred to. 00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:17.990 align:middle line:84% It is called "Poem of Names," but I have to observe that this 00:00:17.990 --> 00:00:22.490 align:middle line:84% is the best water holder I've ever encountered at a poetry 00:00:22.490 --> 00:00:27.415 align:middle line:84% reading, and I would not prove worthy if I didn't use it. 00:00:27.415 --> 00:00:29.590 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:29.590 --> 00:00:31.490 align:middle line:90% 00:00:31.490 --> 00:00:34.040 align:middle line:84% Think what you like about the poems. 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:35.425 align:middle line:90% That's a good holder. 00:00:35.425 --> 00:00:37.814 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:37.814 --> 00:00:41.750 align:middle line:90% 00:00:41.750 --> 00:00:45.320 align:middle line:90% "Poem of Names." 00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:50.630 align:middle line:84% The bad rain fell on Osamu Shimomura. 00:00:50.630 --> 00:00:56.240 align:middle line:84% On the walk home from school it turned his white shirt black. 00:00:56.240 --> 00:01:01.280 align:middle line:84% Quote, "My grandmother got me quickly into a bath. 00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:05.150 align:middle line:84% It likely saved me from death by radiation." 00:01:05.150 --> 00:01:07.700 align:middle line:90% End quote. 00:01:07.700 --> 00:01:11.750 align:middle line:84% Tougaloo's Ernst Borinski would not discuss 00:01:11.750 --> 00:01:14.790 align:middle line:90% His family, killed by Nazis. 00:01:14.790 --> 00:01:17.120 align:middle line:90% Quote, "An area I 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:20.390 align:middle line:84% Have liquidated, for my mental health." 00:01:20.390 --> 00:01:23.300 align:middle line:90% End quote. 00:01:23.300 --> 00:01:28.160 align:middle line:84% Borinski's grave at Tougaloo a kind of shrine. 00:01:28.160 --> 00:01:33.690 align:middle line:84% Salma begat Boaz and Boaz begat Obed. 00:01:33.690 --> 00:01:40.040 align:middle line:84% Underground river of passion and retrenchment. 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:45.230 align:middle line:84% Thank you, Eliot, Simon & Hazel, for wanting 00:01:45.230 --> 00:01:49.490 align:middle line:84% To talk with me about my dying some day-- 00:01:49.490 --> 00:01:54.860 align:middle line:84% Your dog Bucky had been so cold when you touched his body. 00:01:54.860 --> 00:01:58.790 align:middle line:84% A compliment for me, that conversation. 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:02.990 align:middle line:84% It almost doesn't matter what we said. 00:02:02.990 --> 00:02:07.290 align:middle line:84% I thought of Milford, your great-grandpa, that time 00:02:07.290 --> 00:02:12.990 align:middle line:84% I asked him, did he believe in life after death? 00:02:12.990 --> 00:02:20.370 align:middle line:84% Quote, "I guess you are my life after death," he said. 00:02:20.370 --> 00:02:24.330 align:middle line:84% A boy named Christian, at a Q. & A. in Texas, 00:02:24.330 --> 00:02:29.500 align:middle line:84% Asked me, the visiting poet, "What motivates you-- 00:02:29.500 --> 00:02:33.090 align:middle line:84% What gets you out of bed each day?" 00:02:33.090 --> 00:02:34.920 align:middle line:90% Good question. 00:02:34.920 --> 00:02:39.660 align:middle line:84% The pride of Ernst Borinski of Mississippi. 00:02:39.660 --> 00:02:45.030 align:middle line:84% The shame of Nathan Forrest, of Pillow Hill. 00:02:45.030 --> 00:02:50.850 align:middle line:84% Willie Lee Rose, historian of Reconstruction. 00:02:50.850 --> 00:02:57.480 align:middle line:84% Congressman Pellegrino Rodino, called Pete. 00:02:57.480 --> 00:03:02.130 align:middle line:84% It's the dead people that motivate me, Christian: 00:03:02.130 --> 00:03:08.250 align:middle line:84% Dorothy Pinsky Wright, William Butler Yeats. 00:03:08.250 --> 00:03:14.370 align:middle line:84% As to your name, I remember Don Polk saying to me, 00:03:14.370 --> 00:03:17.530 align:middle line:84% "A lot of Jewish people think they're white, 00:03:17.530 --> 00:03:20.001 align:middle line:90% But they're not." 00:03:20.001 --> 00:03:22.110 align:middle line:90% End quote. 00:03:22.110 --> 00:03:27.390 align:middle line:90% In some ways Yeats was a jerk. 00:03:27.390 --> 00:03:30.100 align:middle line:90% Arphaxad begat Salah. 00:03:30.100 --> 00:03:32.940 align:middle line:90% Salah begat Eber. 00:03:32.940 --> 00:03:34.030 align:middle line:90% "Oh yeah?" 00:03:34.030 --> 00:03:37.830 align:middle line:84% Said Ruby to Don, "Well, most Black people 00:03:37.830 --> 00:03:39.245 align:middle line:90% Don't know they're goyim." 00:03:39.245 --> 00:03:42.030 align:middle line:90% 00:03:42.030 --> 00:03:44.070 align:middle line:90% Somebody said about 00:03:44.070 --> 00:03:48.210 align:middle line:84% Rodino and Sirica, "The night-school guys 00:03:48.210 --> 00:03:51.840 align:middle line:90% Are saving the country." 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:54.310 align:middle line:90% Borinski needed a job 00:03:54.310 --> 00:03:57.870 align:middle line:84% But no white school could offer him a position-- 00:03:57.870 --> 00:03:59.940 align:middle line:90% Tougaloo did. 00:03:59.940 --> 00:04:02.800 align:middle line:90% At his famous Forums there, 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:06.910 align:middle line:84% He asked his students to sit one chair apart 00:04:06.910 --> 00:04:11.260 align:middle line:84% So the white kids from Millsaps sat among them. 00:04:11.260 --> 00:04:19.209 align:middle line:84% Pete Seeger, Ralph Bunche, Joan Baez at the Forums. 00:04:19.209 --> 00:04:24.490 align:middle line:84% Rodino in the House impeaching Nixon. 00:04:24.490 --> 00:04:28.360 align:middle line:90% Pellegrino means pilgrim. 00:04:28.360 --> 00:04:30.160 align:middle line:90% Shimomura 00:04:30.160 --> 00:04:34.210 align:middle line:84% Discovered cells that made a jellyfish glow. 00:04:34.210 --> 00:04:39.040 align:middle line:84% He garnered a million samples in Puget Sound. 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:44.500 align:middle line:84% A protein in Aequorea victoria, embedded 00:04:44.500 --> 00:04:48.670 align:middle line:84% To glimmer in other life, transformed the study 00:04:48.670 --> 00:04:51.190 align:middle line:90% Of living things. 00:04:51.190 --> 00:04:54.550 align:middle line:90% Years later, the Exxon Valdez 00:04:54.550 --> 00:05:00.190 align:middle line:84% Oil spill left nearly all those Aequorea dead, 00:05:00.190 --> 00:05:04.490 align:middle line:84% A poisoning that Shimomura indicted-- 00:05:04.490 --> 00:05:09.840 align:middle line:84% He whose grandma had washed away the ashes. 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:11.000 align:middle line:90%