WEBVTT

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OK, so, after a
while, I did actually

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run out of Billy
Collins poems to parody.

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So-- but what I
started to discover

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was that many contemporary
American poets

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have written poets that-- poems
that thematize China in a way

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very similar to these.

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And in fact, after a
while, I didn't even

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have to find the poems myself.

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People would send
me emails saying,

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Tim, Tim, have
you seen this one?

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And-- you know, because
I became that guy who

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parodies these poems.

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So I have another stack of
probably another 100 poems

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that I could easily
write a sequel with.

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But this is "Chinese
Silence Number 32"

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after a poem by Alan
Shapiro called "Flowerpot".

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"I lie back in the
sagging mattress that

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holds the bell of my body like
a bell unrung for 50 years

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and wonder if it's still OK
to call someone a Chinaman.

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I guess these days, they
don't all wear coolie hats

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and hide their blushing
faces behind bamboo fans.

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But when I turn
on my television,

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they all still look
the same, the same

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as when Fu Manchu ran
his long fingernails

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across a white man's chest.

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Someone is saying something
about the balance of payments

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and our national debt.

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I remember when it was just
the Russian bomb that scared

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us and not the silent Chinaman.

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I can say that, right?

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Dark, empty eyes, slanting
down into the void.

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I fear that he will swallow
me whole, my snuffling nose,

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my trembling arms, my bones
in the rickshaw of his gut.

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And everything in
the world I know

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falls like a hail of missiles
into the Chinaman's stomach

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that will never fill."

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