WEBVTT

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And it's in this poem
that strange things

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like allusions to Melville
start popping up into my head.

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And at that point, I
make certain decisions.

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In other words,
I make a decision

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to embrace the theme
that comes from talking

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about the American
experience, weaving

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in literature, historical
events, and that stuff.

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So I start off on
a short series.

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And the first poem in
that series is called "He

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Imagined the Gorgeous
Pattern of the New Skin

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and Settled for America."

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I get a little braver
at this point, I guess.

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I have a feeling I have
my hands on something.

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The persona that speaks is
essentially a middle class

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male, not particularly
influential.

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But it's very
important, I think,

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that it be something like
that middle aged male, not

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particularly influential.

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Because I think those fantasies
are the very important

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fantasies that defined America.

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The influential have a
way of padding themselves

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against dealing
with certain things.

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And this particular
guy begins to, I guess,

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confront the nature
of the American epic.

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And to talk about America
and the male personality

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means you have to talk
about male anxieties

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as it relates to women.

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American males are
terrified of women,

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as are most males in the world.

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And it's really so silly.

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"The quiet which is
my wife endures--

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I have hurt nothing,
unless we have touched.

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It is the indicative
mood, after desire.

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The Deerslayer now middle-aged
has become lonesome and white

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again, rising up out of the
continent that is Chingachgook.

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Red-skinned, red-eyed,
morning light the myth that

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has happened to the democratic.

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The Black man over there--

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slaughtered in the
hills of my wife.

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Imagination black and breathing.

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I am slaughtered in his wife.

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It has happened to meaning.

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Fit to be Satan--

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now-- Cooper,
Hawthorne, Melville's.

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I wear my dark-skinned hat--

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irreconcilable.

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In the final phase, Satanic.

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It seems to fit me right.

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To walk away alone into
the sunset of our bleeding

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children.

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