WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.820 align:middle line:90%


00:00:09.820 --> 00:00:18.330 align:middle line:84%
This poem was actually inspired
by a poem by Robinson Jeffers.

00:00:18.330 --> 00:00:21.360 align:middle line:84%
Since I've moved back
to the West Coast,

00:00:21.360 --> 00:00:29.550 align:middle line:84%
after three years
of exile in Boston,

00:00:29.550 --> 00:00:33.480 align:middle line:84%
I've become more
and more enamored of

00:00:33.480 --> 00:00:39.390 align:middle line:84%
not just California but
California's literary history.

00:00:39.390 --> 00:00:45.990 align:middle line:84%
And Robinson Jeffers is
someone whose poetry I admire

00:00:45.990 --> 00:00:48.870 align:middle line:90%
more and more as I get older.

00:00:48.870 --> 00:00:53.940 align:middle line:84%
He has a poem called "Shine,
Perishing Republic," which

00:00:53.940 --> 00:01:00.910 align:middle line:84%
is a very dark assessment
of the United States

00:01:00.910 --> 00:01:02.620 align:middle line:90%
at that time in history.

00:01:02.620 --> 00:01:06.880 align:middle line:84%
And you can imagine what it
was like to read that poem

00:01:06.880 --> 00:01:11.920 align:middle line:84%
and think about the
idea of republic

00:01:11.920 --> 00:01:15.445 align:middle line:84%
in the context of the
George W. Bush regime.

00:01:15.445 --> 00:01:17.950 align:middle line:90%


00:01:17.950 --> 00:01:19.680 align:middle line:90%
This is called "Republic."

00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:23.780 align:middle line:90%


00:01:23.780 --> 00:01:28.560 align:middle line:84%
Soon industry and
agriculture converged,

00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:31.680 align:middle line:84%
and the combustion
engine sowed the dirt

00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:36.880 align:middle line:84%
clod truck farms green with
onion tops and chicory.

00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:40.120 align:middle line:84%
Mowed the hay, fed
the swine and mutton

00:01:40.120 --> 00:01:44.080 align:middle line:84%
through belts and shoots,
cleared the blue oak

00:01:44.080 --> 00:01:48.130 align:middle line:84%
and the chaparral, chipped
the wood for mulch,

00:01:48.130 --> 00:01:51.670 align:middle line:84%
back-filled the marshes,
replacing buck bean

00:01:51.670 --> 00:01:57.340 align:middle line:84%
with dent corn, removed the
unsavory foliage of quag,

00:01:57.340 --> 00:02:02.530 align:middle line:84%
made the land into a
production, made it produce,

00:02:02.530 --> 00:02:08.320 align:middle line:84%
pistoned and oiled and forged
against its own nature.

00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:14.650 align:middle line:84%
And with enterprise, built
silos, stockyards, warehouses,

00:02:14.650 --> 00:02:18.490 align:middle line:84%
processing plants, abattoirs,
walk-in refrigerators,

00:02:18.490 --> 00:02:22.910 align:middle line:84%
canneries, mills, and
centers of distribution.

00:02:22.910 --> 00:02:26.690 align:middle line:84%
It meant something,
in spite of machinery,

00:02:26.690 --> 00:02:31.670 align:middle line:84%
to say "the country,"
to say "apple season."

00:02:31.670 --> 00:02:34.760 align:middle line:84%
Though what it meant was
a kind of nose-thumbing

00:02:34.760 --> 00:02:39.620 align:middle line:84%
and a kind of sweetness as
when one says "how quaint"

00:02:39.620 --> 00:02:45.414 align:middle line:84%
knowing that a refined listener
understands the double-ness.

00:02:45.414 --> 00:02:49.090 align:middle line:84%
And the leveling of
the land in doing it

00:02:49.090 --> 00:02:54.850 align:middle line:84%
in sameness cured malaria as
the standing water in low glades

00:02:54.850 --> 00:02:58.570 align:middle line:84%
disappeared, as the
musk eggs drained.

00:02:58.570 --> 00:03:01.480 align:middle line:84%
Typhoid and yellow
fever decreased.

00:03:01.480 --> 00:03:06.340 align:middle line:84%
Even milk sickness abated thanks
to the rise of the feeding pin.

00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:12.460 align:middle line:84%
Cattle no longer grazing
on white snake root.

00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:16.480 align:middle line:84%
Vanquished the germs that
bedeviled the rural areas.

00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:20.440 align:middle line:84%
The rural areas also
vanquished, made

00:03:20.440 --> 00:03:26.140 align:middle line:84%
monochromatic and
mechanized, made suburban.

00:03:26.140 --> 00:03:30.130 align:middle line:84%
Now, the illnesses we contract
are chronic illnesses--

00:03:30.130 --> 00:03:33.650 align:middle line:84%
dyspepsia, arthritis, heart
disease, kidney disease,

00:03:33.650 --> 00:03:37.390 align:middle line:84%
high blood pressure, asthma,
chronic pain, allergies,

00:03:37.390 --> 00:03:42.880 align:middle line:84%
anxiety, emphysema, diabetes,
cirrhosis, Lyme disease, AIDS,

00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:46.880 align:middle line:84%
chronic fatigue syndrome,
malnutrition, morbid obesity,

00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:49.990 align:middle line:84%
hypertension, cancers
of the various kinds--

00:03:49.990 --> 00:03:53.740 align:middle line:84%
bladder, bone, eye, lymph,
mouth, ovary, thyroid, liver,

00:03:53.740 --> 00:03:58.330 align:middle line:84%
colon, bile duct,
lung, breast, throat,

00:03:58.330 --> 00:04:01.750 align:middle line:90%
and sundry areas of the brain.

00:04:01.750 --> 00:04:05.410 align:middle line:84%
No better at accounting
for death and no worse.

00:04:05.410 --> 00:04:07.030 align:middle line:90%
We still die.

00:04:07.030 --> 00:04:11.380 align:middle line:84%
We carry our uninhabited
mortal frames back to the land,

00:04:11.380 --> 00:04:13.720 align:middle line:90%
cover them in sod.

00:04:13.720 --> 00:04:16.750 align:middle line:84%
We take the land to
the brink of our dying.

00:04:16.750 --> 00:04:20.860 align:middle line:84%
It stands watch
dutifully, artfully,

00:04:20.860 --> 00:04:23.980 align:middle line:84%
enriched with sewer
sludge and urea

00:04:23.980 --> 00:04:28.560 align:middle line:84%
to green against
eternity of green.

00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:30.600 align:middle line:90%
Hocus pocus.

00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:35.730 align:middle line:84%
Here is a pig in a farrowing
crate, eating its own feces.

00:04:35.730 --> 00:04:39.450 align:middle line:84%
Human in its ability to
litter inside a cage,

00:04:39.450 --> 00:04:45.550 align:middle line:84%
to nest, to grow gravid,
and to throw its young.

00:04:45.550 --> 00:04:49.330 align:middle line:84%
I know I should be mindful
of dangerous analogy.

00:04:49.330 --> 00:04:52.450 align:middle line:84%
The pig is only the
pig, and we aren't

00:04:52.450 --> 00:04:55.360 align:middle line:84%
merely the wide
open field flattened

00:04:55.360 --> 00:04:59.430 align:middle line:90%
to a space resembling nothing.

00:04:59.430 --> 00:05:02.700 align:middle line:84%
You want me to tell you
the marvels of invention,

00:05:02.700 --> 00:05:08.590 align:middle line:84%
that we persevere, that the
time of flourishing is at hand.

00:05:08.590 --> 00:05:11.530 align:middle line:90%
I should like to think it.

00:05:11.530 --> 00:05:14.560 align:middle line:84%
Meanwhile, where have
I put the notebook

00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:16.540 align:middle line:90%
on which I was scribbling?

00:05:16.540 --> 00:05:21.110 align:middle line:84%
It began like the
smell of droppings

00:05:21.110 --> 00:05:24.070 align:middle line:90%
and that narrow country road.

00:05:24.070 --> 00:05:27.000 align:middle line:90%