Okay, so we know one thing that the trees have to tried to tell this couple, these two people who have met under the trees. And that first thing is that merely being there means something, which plays off of the earlier phrase of still performance. Speech as a still performance. A second thing that the trees say, because we've got a colon, then one back clause, then a semi colon and a second back clause, is what, Anna? That soon we may touch love explain. >> I think touch love explain kind of >> Takes us through in a very condensed sense, the different sort of stages of a relationship that touch maybe refers to kind of physical proximity, physical closeness. Physical love, even. Love, once you kind of transcend that. >> You go touch is context, sex. >> Right. >> Love. >> Kind of like what comes after that. >> [LAUGH]. >> Well love is like not just wanting to be there physically. But wanting to be there the next morning and make breakfast that's love to me. >> Not to use a 21st century cliche at all. >> No, of course not. >> Touch is a first order. >> Love is kind of- >> Love is a second order. >> That's maybe- >> And now isn't it interesting that John Ashford, speaking of love I just love this man, explain the third word. Wow. Go ahead, make some profound thing out of that. As long as it doesn't refer to breakfast in the morning, a cigarette afterwards. >> [LAUGH] I already blew out the first two, so let's see what I can do with this. >> Touch, love, explain. >> Explain, I guess, kind of to me means a desire to, I see the world my way, I'm going to tell you how I see it. Yeah, suppress the tendency to over read, back off, and say it in a phrase, what is explain? >> Explain is- >> You said it, but you said it in fancy words. >> This is how I see it. This is what I see, this is what this means to me. This is it's kind of a desire- >> How does explanation come in our lives? >> Explanation- >> Through what medium? >> Maybe teaching, this is how you do algebra. This is how you- >> But in this love context? >> But in the love context it's >> Amarice? >> What? >> She's getting out of this. [CROSSTALK] How about talk? Talk. >> Just talking? >> Talking. Come on now let's just go with your cliches about love. The morning after stuff. First one touches, sexual contact then love which is a higher than euros and then explain is talking. I think what he's saying here is that the trees are saying, I don't know how the trees know this, but they're saying. That first there's the. Sorry you don't have to do this. >> [LAUGH] >> But the stand in. First there's the incidental contact which is an accident really. sort of like a one night stand of trees. Ha ha. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> [CROSSTALK] >> Then there's something greater. What can be greater than love? And then for Ashberry, we get to. What, Amyris, what do we get to? >> Well I was thinking back to that idea of needing, an encounter as being far from the world. So the world provides us with a set list of definitions and ways of using language. But he says that touching and loving has to proceed any sort of effective communication, so there seems to be a need for intuitive understanding. >> His explanation is language. >> Yeah, his explanation is language. >> The highest order of relationship is language. I just find that to be terribly moving, especially for so young a poet to have thought that. And glad not to have invented such comeliness. Do we have that? Did I assign that? What does that mean? It's a funny- >> Well, the comeliness, the beauty of it is given, as opposed to having to somehow be created by. And it's moving for someone who is making this poem to appreciate and be thankful for that given beauty. It's there, it's real. >> The trees >> Yeah. I'm so glad I didn't have to invent this beauty. It's a funny thing to say, well we were relieved we didn't have to invent this fabulous scene. But glad, in that way, we are surrounded. Did I give that to anybody? I don't think so. So what do we do with that? There's a cause and effect relationship there and Ashbury is so great at messing around with cause and effect. Because we were happy about not having to create this given beauty. Because of that, we are surrounded. >> You can just be surrounded by it. That's all you have to, you just have to be. >> We're in a way, we're kind of like the trees right now, the two of us. All right? A still performance. A silence already filled with noises. Again that's still performance we're getting earlier. And now another instance. A canvas on which emerges a chorus of smiles. What is that? That's hard. Anybody want to take a shot at that? Dave? >> Just another paradox. Just a chorus of smiles. >> Chorus would be a musical trope. And a canvas is the place where we put something depicted, a visual. We have a canvas on which emerges a chorus of smiles. And I thought about this poem an awful lot so I'll just say what I think about this. Which is that the chorus, I'm seeing Ashbury, ut pictura poesis. Yeah as in painting someone poetry the relationship between painting and poetry for the New York school is very vital. And this is sort of an incidental version of that where, I see on the canvas corks and smiles, I almost see the somewhat semi circular strokes of cork. This is. Here are the trees being drawn. All right, a chorus of smiles. A winter morning. The chorus of smiles would be the few leaves. A winter morning. Placed in a puzzling light and moving. Who's got moving? >> I do. I think first the puzzling reminds me back of amazing. Maybe it's the Zs but they both seem to play off each other. But moving I think goes back to the still performance. And also means emotionally moving. >> Right it means both those things. First moving refers to the trees in their kind of, flowy relationship, right? Can you do that one more time? >> [LAUGH] >> Right, so that's moving. And what's moving, is the relationship to dance, of relationship. Together. Distance from the world, together. Touching, loving, explaining. So we learn that moving relationship from the trees. And secondly, emotionally moving, powerful. >> Could be the moving,the progression, touch, love, explain. >> How are days put on such reticence, these accents, seen their own defense. This is such a fabulously, almost incomprehensible and opaque. Couple of lines. So Emily, our days put on such reticence. First of all, there's that idiom. We don't put on reticence, usually. First of all, what's reticence? >> Reticence is being quiet, withholding, with pertaining with something. >> Right. Right. >> It's in some way It's the opposite of explaining, it's the enter the type of higher order relationship he was talking about. >> So it's shyness, which might have something to do with this emerging relationship, but it's also a kind of unwillingness or incapacity to say a lot. And that fits with this poem so far how? >> The unwillingness to speak is to some extent and unwillingness to engage in this transcendent relationship he's talking about. >> Our day is put on such reticence. Max, can you just paraphrase that line, put on our day >> Our daily [CROSSTALK] >> Our teams create this error I mean just to go to what Emily was saying. The reticence is here in opposition to explanation perhaps the highest order of love that their days or daily routines just create this sort of air of reservation of sort of avoiding this moment that he just sort of really profound, insightful moment that he just has by chance. >> And so he didn't know he was a post-modern poet who was really focused on language and idiom and talking Common sense. We would think this really fits with the nature poem, the idea that we can stand by the trees, and if we just stop talking and be quiet and reticent we will hear the trees telling us about their relationship. It's obviously more than that, but that's one of the things yoiu get here. Because of that Ameri these accents seem their own defense. What does that mean? I love that line. What does it mean? >> The way I interpreted defense was it seems to create an opposition in spaces or in languages, so standard language versus poetic language perhaps. And so he's created this space far from the world. In the poem, and I think the accents refer to maybe the accents of light of understanding that we've gleaned from it- >> That's very nice. >> By thinking of it associatively. >> That's very nice, let's go a little further. Anybody ever hear of a defense of poetry? Uh-oh, uh-oh. Well, Sidney wrote a defense of poesy and Shelley wrote one too. It becomes an arts poetic. It becomes a way of saying why poetry's important to us, a defense of poetry, okay. So these accents seem in their own defense is a kind of way of saying, the fancy word one would use is autotelic. This is the way of saying that the poetry means what it means up in itself. It doesn't need any external, biographical, historical, contextual information in order to mean. It means because it is what it is. All right, so accents see their own defense, and that context could mean what? >> I think it places emphasis on the musicality of it as well. It's again removing us from that semantic space into a sound space. >> All you need to do is hear the lyricism of this poem. The way I read it, I emphasized the lyricism, expert who reads in a monotone doesn't emphasize the lyricism, but I did. So you hear this absolutely gorgeous prose that if you look at it once means nothing. Now what does he mean? What is he saying? Why does he mess up these idioms? Why is he speaking so incomprehensibly? And of course, the answer is in the poem which is a defense of poetry, which is that if you listen and actually use meaning less systematically, less conventionally. In the sound of that itself, you will hear a defense of what we do, and that is the relationship. These accents seen their own defense, let's push on accents just a little more. Anybody, accents? Maurice said it referred to the sound of the poem? >> I also think when you kind of look at it on maybe a slightly smaller scale in terms of perhaps the two individuals, and the poem accents are things that are valuable, everyone has the same accent. So it's kind of maybe pointing to that arbitrariness, that kind of drive- >> Okay, so you're referring to the way we talk, and the way we stress. Accents. If you were to do a metrical study of this poem, what would you do with your pen? >> You'd put accent marks where the stresses fall. >> And what would the accent mark look like? Like a- >> An accent. It would come from the top right to the bottom left. An accent. Right? So, and glad not to have vented such comeliness we are, sorry, we are surrounded. A silence already filled with noises a canvas on which emerges a chorus of smiles, there are your accents. These accents match these. These accents. Go, man. >> We're back to these? >> Yeah, these, but now it's these accents. >> Well this is where, this is the >> It's great how the vees is the first word of the first line and the last line. And so he's finally, he's taking us back to the vees that we first assumed were the trees. >> So what are the accents? >> Yes, are not just the trees. >> But the lines of the poems. >> The lines of the poem. Vees accents. Seen your own defense. So I am going to read the poem again by way of conclusion, all right? And I want you to hear the accents. I don't mean accents like the metrics. I want you to hear the lyricism of the poem and forget about the fact that it doesn't make conventional sense. And then draw the conclusion that the trees tell us, which is, one imagines the trees. Doing a somewhat still performance there, the whispering to us. Relate meaning comes from relation. The relation is arbitrary. These accents are the defense of poetry. This is all you need. Here we go. I'll just say that Ashbury wrote this in 1948. I think he was 22 years old. He was a senior in college, just so you can be jealous. Some trees. These are amazing. Each join in a neighbor as though speech were a still performance. Arranging, by chance, to meet as far this morning from the world as agreeing with it, you and I are suddenly what the trees try to tell us we are. That they're merely being there means something. That soon we may touch love explain. And glad not to have invented such comeliness, we are surrounded, with silence already filled with noises. A canvas on which emerges a chorus of smiles, a winter morning. Placed in a puzzling light and moving. Our days put on such reticence these accents seem their own defense. When I read what seems to be incomprehensible poetry, and we're going to get some of that in chapter nine. All I can think of is maybe I should just attend to the words. And listen better. And then my relationship, the you and I relationship that is potentially the poet and the reader, gets formed by the Sid Corman-like arbitrary connection that we have. And in a sense, Ashbury is saying stay with me. We have left the world and we are now in the poem. And we have a connection. If I detain you, you will understand what I mean.
