 There's a good argument to be made that most poems, in many languages, are ouds. Which simply means a poem that celebrates something. Celebrates, or extols, or ceremonializes, or even blesses, or revels in, or glorifies. Or just simply digs into whatever a poem is talking about. Be it a person, a place, a thing, an event, an idea. Could be it's a season, a bird, a state of mind. It could be a bad haircut, a scar, a stranger like John Doe. Your hometown, a pair of socks, your dog or cat, a blizzard, a diner, a sink full of dishes, even a bridge or the west wind. Now traditionally there are two kinds of ouds, public and private. What we call pindaric ouds, named after the 5th century BCE Greek poet Pindar, are ouds addressed to people or places or events of a public nature, like oud to King Charles, or oud to Serena Williams, or oud to the Empire State Building, or oud to the last astronauts to stand on the moon. You might say that pindaric ouds were early spoken word kinds of poems because they were performed on stage. A chorus moved from one side of the stage to the other, alternating the parts. Now you need a lot of infrastructure to pull off a pindaric oud, at least a stage and a microphone and a bunch of actors. Though that kind of poetry really hasn't been much in vogue since its most recent heyday 600 years ago in France. What we call Horatian ouds, named after the 1st century BCE Latin poet Quintus Horatius Flocus, are ouds addressed to private matters. And these are the kinds of poems we think of today as the contemporary oud. The 20th century Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was a master of the Horatian oud. He wrote an oud to his pencil, to a tomato, to an onion, to a broken down old movie theater, the dictionary, even to his shoelaces, and a bunch of other stuff he found lying around the house. I'm going to share a Neruda oud with you in a moment about a fish, but first remember you have public ouds and private ouds. Either way, here's how they all work. ouds move to one degree or another like a three-part dance. The old Greek terms for this were strophe, antistrophe, and epode. Think back to the staging of the Greek pindaric oud I was telling you about. The strophe is said by the chorus from one side of the stage, then they all dance over to the other side and say the antistrophe. And then they do the epode, where the poem ends, having danced back over somewhere near the middle of the stage. Now if you take away the stage, but keep the three-part movements, you have the order of the contemporary oud more or less. Another framing of this three-part movement is known as point, counterpoint, and stand. Articulate one thing, move in a different direction, and resolve it. I like to call this focus, refocus, and resolve. Now in English, the most famous poet of ouds is John Keats. He wrote several ouds over the spring, summer, and fall of 1819, less than two years before he died, very young, at the age of 25. Keats wrote an oud to laziness, an oud to his psyche, an oud to a bur, a nightingale, to a vase that's the grecian urn, to his feelings of sadness, and an oud to a season, autumn. In each of these, as with most modern ouds, what you need to know is not that ouds seek answers, but questions. To write an oud is to explore, delve into, probe, inspect, burrow, and sift whatever subject you want to with extreme consideration or immersion. So here's that fish oud by Pablo Neruda, written in Spanish, translated into English by Robin Robertson. And I'll end the video by reading it to you. And as I do, determine for yourself what might be its three parts of focus, refocus, and resolve, or turn, counter-turn, and stand, or strophe, antistrophe, and epode. This is the poem oud to a large tuna in the market by Pablo Neruda. Here, among the market vegetables, this torpedo from the ocean depths, a missile that swam, now lying in front of me dead. Surrounded by the earth's green froth, these lettuces, bunches of carrots, only you live through the sea's truth. Survive the unknown, the unfathomable darkness, the depths of the sea, the great abyss, the grand abime, only you, varnished, black-pitched witness to that deepest night. Only you, dark bullet barreled from the depths, carrying only your one wound, but resurgent, always renewed, locked into the current, fins fletched like wings in the torrent, in the coursing of the underwater dark, like a grieving arrow, sea javelin, a nervous, oiled harpoon, dead in front of me, catafalque king of my own ocean, once sappy as a sprung fur in the green turmoil, once sea to sea quake tidal wave, now simply dead remains. In the whole market, yours was the only shape left with purpose or direction in this jumbled ruin of nature. You are a solitary man of war among these frail vegetables, your flanks and prowl, black and slippery as if you were still a well-oiled ship of the wind, the only true machine of the sea, unflawed, undefiled, navigating now the waters of death. That's Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market by Pablo Neruda, translated by Robin Robertson.