WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you guys, so much.

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And thank you, so much, Katie.

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Katie is a great editor.

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I was explaining-- I was
doing a little interview

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with the Wildcat, earlier,
and just explaining, I mean,

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the benefit of having a really
strong editor is that they

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save you from
embarrassing yourself

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on the page in many ways.

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And it can be humiliating,
to sort of have

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to confront that, some of
your own texts and so on.

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But it's great to get
those kind of worked out,

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before you guys have
to confront them.

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Oh good.

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Excellent.

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So I'm going to read
two poems from, that

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is sort of like inspired by,
such as it is, the movie,

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Predator.

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[LAUGHTER]

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There we go.

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Coming back.

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OK.

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I've been working
on this project

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about the movie, Predator, which
is an amazing movie, that I

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hope you all see, if you
have not seen it, 1987.

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Two future governors,
not the only movie

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that has two future governors.

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I mean the other one is The
Running Man, of course, which

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has the same future governors.

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And the odd thing about
the movie, Predator,

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is, if you read the novelization
for the movie, Predator,

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it was written by the
poet, Paul Monette, who's

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a really pretty brilliant poet.

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And he did it for the money.

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But he's a gay poet,
and it's a very erotic.

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It's an erotic
movie, to begin with,

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and it's a really
erotic novelization,

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which I recommend.

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So this first poem is called,
"Predator Versus Alien Versus

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Predator," which is a book
by Michael Robbins, who's

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a pretty good poet.

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And it has a little
quote from that.

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"Praise this world,
Rilke says, the jerk."

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From Michael Robbins's,
Alien Versus Predator.

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This is predator, talking
back, "Your language is not

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trivial for me, but
I read the book.

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It didn't seem to get it right.

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The poet doesn't care
for the inner life, such

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as it is, of my foe, my kind,
or the quality of strife

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between our worlds.

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What is it like to be
the other creature?

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What is it like to
be anything at all?

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To have a fist emerge
from your mouth

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and punch right through a
skull, to require a human host

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to reproduce.

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I've traveled long
to bring you here,

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to bring you news
from another world.

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The news is that
you are not alone.

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You are also not entirely good,
or very good, or good for much

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at all.

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You're good for mulch, for
sieving the incredible muchness

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of your world into waterless
hand sanitizers, that

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erase disease and
vanish from your palm.

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In the roasted
pistachios, open just

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enough to finish with a nail.

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To drones filling
schools with hellfire

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meant for militants
followed by apologies.

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For the ergonomics
of electric switches,

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clicks, the magic of turducken,
sonatinas and sestinas,

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hiccup fetishists on the
internet, a pale peach slip

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slipping off a girl in Budapest,
and then again in Marrakesh,

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as I watched her
through an open window.

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As she stripped, I wondered what
heat her clothes and thoughts

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concealed.

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Your Edvard Munch, he
could illustrate a scream.

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He knew, how under duress, the
throat opens like a flower.

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I once dreamt of meeting
him, tracing his canvases,

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so like a skin with just
the tip of a mandible.

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Then taking him as a
souvenir for the trophy case,

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but I understand I
am too late for that.

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Another of my kind
claimed him years ago.

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Before he died, I
would have asked,

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what else the mouth is good for,
where the inner life is kept.

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The spinal column doesn't hold
it, nor the skull for long.

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That a song heard on your
radio can induce in me

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a state of mind, it means
there's something here

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beyond the spectra I can see.

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If I could open you
and enter, I would.

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You, too, are perishable good."

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So the image behind me,
I have a bunch of images.

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I want to have visual aids,
so as to upstage Kate.

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And so this is a screenshot.

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I've been watching
predator over and over

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and kind of going frame
by frame through it

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and kind of picking up some of
the more interesting frames.

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And this is one of them.

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