WEBVTT

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This next poem is very--

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I don't know how to explain it,
so I'm not even going to try.

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But I will say that in
the middle of the poem,

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Sally Mann makes an appearance--
she's a photographer who was

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a very controversial figure.

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She photographed her
children, often naked,

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on their farm in Virginia.

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And her work, especially
the Immediate Family photos,

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coincided with the
family values agenda

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and disturbed a lot of people.

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And if I end up talking
about the photography,

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I will end up talking
about Sally Mann.

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"And still I speak of it.

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This.

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This.

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This.

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This in which, in which, of
which, with which this will.

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A mother giving way
to the electrical.

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The seeping unrendering,
her heart rendering blood

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not reaching anymore.

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A father giving way
becoming gradually

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moving this way and that
by a wind no one can see.

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A grandmother down
a rabbit hole.

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Hello dear.

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She uses words to cover
the gaping, 'Who are you?

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And who am I?' until the tubes
into every word hole sustain

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her and malinger.

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This will help.

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A damp towel you use to wipe
the table for the next meal

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shreds and remains
itself everywhere.

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Becomes its own matter to clean
and remains a shoe's solvent.

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This will help you.

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Arrange the words.

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See them into something.

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Shape, meaningful,
predictive, protective.

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How they were
maybe at the scene.

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The scene to hold it,
to reconstruct, to stem.

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The diverted, the made
way for the giving way.

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Words make you watch.

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A grandmother surrounded by
family and live musicians.

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There is nothing
surprising in this,

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except everything
you are feeling.

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The giving way, the way, the
predictable but never before.

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You, this, she.

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Smaller and smaller.

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The healthy, the skin looser.

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Afraid to mention, to
say what is happening.

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As soon as you think you
know what is happening.

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You know you do not
know what is happening.

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But it is not happening to you.

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Afraid.

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It is happening to you.

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What?

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Your son says into
the dark from bed.

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What?

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You're telling me that
I will cease to exist?

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Isn't there any
way to stop this?

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How can this be?

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This will help you to be there.

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Watch, stay, wait into
the dark or the dim light,

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into the whatever
light there is.

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As the breathing changes.

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Yours, the mothers, the
fathers, the grandmothers,

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the other grandmothers,
the other mother.

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The machine, to hear
it, to stay here

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when you want to
go out screaming

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into the diminished environment.

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The way we have ruined
everything and the we that

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wants desperately against
everything you know is true,

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to be anything other than I.
You need to stay, stay here.

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See what is happening
to that one.

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The diminishing, giving
way, giving away.

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Need your words to reach into
where there are no words.

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There are no words,
people always say.

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Those are the words, they say.

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Those words, stay there,
stay in the unmade room.

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In the still, cardiac
place inside the inside.

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The loosening skin.

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The polar ice cap
slowly giving way.

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The way the world warming the
bodies one-by-one losing heat.

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Inside the giving way, inside
the way for a brief time.

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He, she, they, we, treated
each other, their selves.

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The polar diminishing,
animals, the vanishing.

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When were once hardy with a
sense of smell, touch, vision,

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feeling, taste,
future, that's it.

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The belief that there
will be something more.

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Something that does
not warm or cool.

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One second more of--

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After the initial success and
controversy, and the following

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success and
controversy surrounding

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her immediate
family photographs,

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Sally Mann decided
it was time to stop

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taking pictures of
her three children

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and move on to something else.

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But what?

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She looked.

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She waited.

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One day standing in the kitchen
of her Virginia farmhouse,

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the sheriff called
and told her there

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was an escaped convict on her
farm and she had to get out.

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At that very moment she saw him.

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Running.

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Running toward the house.

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Police running after him
as he ran toward the house.

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He shot, they shot
police shotgun.

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Hit to the hip, the convict
turned his pistol on himself.

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Later she touched the pool of
blood near the convicts head.

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It was surprisingly
dark, she said.

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When she touched it,
it moved, she said.

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She saw the ground take a sip.

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She began to photograph
the place where he died.

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She began to go to
the places nearby

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where many had died,
long or short ago,

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and photographed
those places using

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the materials photographers
had used during the Civil War.

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Then what?

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Then what?

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What remains?

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She was given
access to a facility

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in which someone was
studying the decomposition

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of human bodies.

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A facility in which
human bodies were strewn,

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laid out in the open, fly-eaten,
maggoted, at various stages.

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Sally Mann made photographs
of these bodies, plate

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after plate.

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Then the close-up long
exposures of her children again.

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But not children anymore, rather
living subjects and similar.

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Like her face, but not her face.

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Living in a serial from the
old timey process and the lens

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open.

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Stay.

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Stay.

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Stay.

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All the prints made and framed,
years of work crated and ready.

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And then the Pace
Gallery in New York

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canceled the show
at the last minute.

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Who wants to hang photos of
dead bodies from their walls?

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Who would buy these?

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It is the only time
in the documentary

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that Sally Mann cries on camera.

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Not when speaking about
the death of her father,

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or her favorite
dog, or the threats

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to charge her with child
pornography and take

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her children and all her
equipment into custody.

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She says, I think my work's
important, but maybe it isn't.

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Maybe it's important, but
no-one wants to see it.

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She wipes her nose.

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The inclusion of
this information

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helps you navigate the aboutness
of this poem, and maybe

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the whyness.

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It is a transmission
from the poet to you.

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A kind of decomposition
of the poet, for the poet

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is not the you,
and is no I either.

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The poet takes this opportunity
to say the following.

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This morning, standing in a
hot shower hoping the heat

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would enter her body and
be trapped there somehow.

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Even for an hour, even
minutes, but knowing

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that it would dissipate.

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Unlike the arsenic,
mercury, BPAs

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that her cells won't give up.

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Which is the poem?

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Which is the poet?

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How does anything get inside
anything else or anyone?

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And how does anyone,
anything get out?

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You're telling me I
will cease to exist?

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The boy asks into the night,
into you, pressing his face

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into you, into the dark, his
breathing catching, uneven.

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Not for a very long
time, you offer.

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It is a short time.

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It is no time.

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There are rocks and
trees and polar ice caps.

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It is no time at all
and it is too short.

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It will feel like a long, long
time, you tell the little boy.

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Maybe you will be
ready, you tell the boy.

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Maybe you will feel
ready to give way,

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to let your muscles give way.

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Even your heart to
stop beating and let

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go of a sense of future.

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Away from the invisible, holding
tight, the clutching to others,

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we cling, the way you
cling to the little boy.

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The night.

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The voice.

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His words.

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The poem will help you.

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The mark you make in
the present, the weight

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of your body, the way you
press into the present, the way

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you with your in and out
of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen

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make a kind of gravity that
holds you to this planet.

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A clinging to
others, even as you

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repel as single
bodies and entities.

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This is the meaning of anything.

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The fabric of imaginary
between owning perceivable

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which are past and future.

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This poem will help you
die, asserts the poet,

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who is not sure of anything.

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Take it, she says.

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The music of the room,
the live musicians,

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the nurse reading a book
into the space, the stranger,

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the doctor, the daughter,
the friend, the gurney down

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the brightly lit.

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The home bedroom
with hospital bed,

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the box, the plot, the visiting
hour, the hours, the breath.

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What did you think
was going to happen?

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What did you think?

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There was another
way of bearing up,

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a giving way, the
giving way to what?

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The suddenly, the slowly,
the you, the using.

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Someone else's pain is
worse, is other, is lesser,

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is a blessing.

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The you who dreams, the
gone away souls, back again.

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The you who goes on toward
your own room, bed, stranger,

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daughter, doctor, friend.

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We have made paintings of this.

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And all the stories in the
world, and none of them.

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None of all the
stories in the world

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are the stories of what happens
next are the stories of we,

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in face of.

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You wrote in fact of,
but it is the face of it.

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The fact of it is not faceable.

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You never can know what it
was like for anyone else.

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You never knew fear, bat,
birth, pleasure of anyone else.

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You have always been alone
in a dark with a young boy

00:11:07.450 --> 00:11:09.830 align:middle line:90%
asking, how is this possible?

00:11:09.830 --> 00:11:13.030 align:middle line:84%
You have always been alone
in a room wanting anyone,

00:11:13.030 --> 00:11:16.030 align:middle line:84%
any small other to ask
anything of you, which

00:11:16.030 --> 00:11:20.140 align:middle line:84%
is the only thing that
makes you sure, you're you.

00:11:20.140 --> 00:11:21.310 align:middle line:90%
There.

00:11:21.310 --> 00:11:22.420 align:middle line:90%
Here.

00:11:22.420 --> 00:11:23.717 align:middle line:90%
Hearing a you.

00:11:23.717 --> 00:11:27.160 align:middle line:90%
The you, you are.

00:11:27.160 --> 00:11:33.370 align:middle line:84%
Hasn't anyone ever tried
to stop this, the boy asks?

00:11:33.370 --> 00:11:35.680 align:middle line:90%
Yes, you say.

00:11:35.680 --> 00:11:38.200 align:middle line:90%
People try but--

00:11:38.200 --> 00:11:41.950 align:middle line:84%
What happens after,
the boy asks?

00:11:41.950 --> 00:11:45.010 align:middle line:90%
No-one knows, you say.

00:11:45.010 --> 00:11:48.400 align:middle line:84%
After all this time,
really, he asks?

00:11:48.400 --> 00:11:51.310 align:middle line:90%
Really, you say.

00:11:51.310 --> 00:11:53.410 align:middle line:84%
And you're doing
nothing about this?

00:11:53.410 --> 00:11:56.080 align:middle line:90%


00:11:56.080 --> 00:12:00.700 align:middle line:84%
Later you write a poem called,
this poem will help you die.

00:12:00.700 --> 00:12:04.000 align:middle line:84%
To hang on the wall
for no-one to buy.

00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:05.740 align:middle line:90%
It is this poem.

00:12:05.740 --> 00:12:06.910 align:middle line:90%
Take it.

00:12:06.910 --> 00:12:08.910 align:middle line:90%
Take it in."

00:12:08.910 --> 00:12:11.290 align:middle line:90%