WEBVTT

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So the last thing, it was
actually Whitman's ambition

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for American poetry.

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He said he wanted to
write a poetry big enough

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to include the name
of every drink served

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in every tavern in America.

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And he got really close to that.

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I'm trying to catch him,
but I'll never get there.

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"Bad zen boy, fritterer,
snagged, and sidetracked again.

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I'm not saying, I'm not saying.

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So I'm not watching
snow fall down

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inside my body, dark
and open to wind, right?

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I'm not saying alive,
I'm not saying dead.

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Big stretches of empty
space in his music.

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Wind cupping the snow up,
tossing and letting it fall.

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A downdraft through the
coffin he banged on.

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Here's the daily record.

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Big cottonwoods hopped up
suddenly in the hot wind.

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The palm tree clattering
shaking loose its birds,

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skeining away toward
the mountain like gum.

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The water below it,
clear, palm fronds adrift.

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Because you can look
all the way through it,

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right down to the bottom,
today's word is ersatz.

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There's no such thing.

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Flock, snow piled in drifts.

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Blossoms slamming down to
pound on the coffin-like snow.

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No, I'm just saying.

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Plus I'm liking Frost's
poem about the well.

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And this other poem by
Frost, I wrote it, Frost.

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These must not think
onto his dark bells, wind

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and the frozen lake.

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Think of sound's sleep and
the evening silences, snow

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and lovely, darkest miles.

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Right now, I don't like it.

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I like I'm not saying
alive, I'm not saying dead.

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A gust inside the mouth
for sure and head.

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It's a very quiet gust to which
you can listen to all the dust

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settle there inside your head
and upper arms apparently,

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which is pretty
strange, but no stranger

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than the man in this open
coffin, the poor monks

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smashing the lid.

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Or Richie, because the river
done brought you home as snow.

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Falling through the
cloth and singing

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praises of falling snow,
caught in updrafts blowing

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slanted right out of the
canvas, leaving ghost snow,

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which is not falling
in that other place.

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I'll ask my chihuahua.

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And we'll get back
to you on that."

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That's-- the chihuahua
is actually a hero

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of the manuscript.

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And then I [INAUDIBLE].

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