WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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All right, I'm going
to read one more.

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This is the last
poem in the book.

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It is about the really big blue
couch that Franny and I bought.

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[LAUGHS]

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It doesn't seem like it's
about that, but it is.

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[LAUGHS]

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It's called For the Record.

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For the record, I
don't know how I

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began, how I entered this
life of making repeatedly

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the gesture of
turning the same gold

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light through the
same window so that it

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might come to matter less.

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The turning, the easy epiphany,
which by definition cannot be.

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I admit there is a certain
artfulness I lack fundamentally,

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and by virtue of my lack
of dedication to the idea,

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a poem might carry anything.

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Look at me, I have no boat.

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I have only the old news a
poem might strike readily, like

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a match, or like a hammer.

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Minuscule hammering against a
dumbbell, me who would not sing.

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Or that's what I said, didn't I?

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During the lean years,
I was fed and fed,

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but couldn't, for the life
of me, I couldn't swallow.

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I buried what was given me in a
series of someone else's yards,

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readying I said for the
winters come and gone.

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Love, the poem is not a craft I
steer to reach you, here I am.

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For years, my father
was always threatening

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to take us, my sister and
I, to see the Liberty Bell.

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It was a kind of joke
I didn't understand,

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the bell that rang
apocryphally for freedom.

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And then, in the long wake for
spectacle, stood in for freedom.

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All those years, I
refused to look at it.

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I was so bored.

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Another symbol cracked under the
weight of what it stands for,

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standing being
its only function.

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Love, I'm writing to you
from our living room,

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our extravagant blue couch.

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I'm trying to be unafraid.

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A little hammer hitting
the same note until I,

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which is not the
same I, can hear it.

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And if not exactly believe
it is meant for us,

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then, nonetheless,
live as though.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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