So the last thing, it was actually Whitman's ambition
for American poetry.
He said he wanted to write a poetry big enough
to include the name of every drink served
in every tavern in America.
And he got really close to that.
I'm trying to catch him, but I'll never get there.
"Bad zen boy, fritterer, snagged, and sidetracked again.
I'm not saying, I'm not saying.
So I'm not watching snow fall down
inside my body, dark and open to wind, right?
I'm not saying alive, I'm not saying dead.
Big stretches of empty space in his music.
Wind cupping the snow up, tossing and letting it fall.
A downdraft through the coffin he banged on.
Here's the daily record.
Big cottonwoods hopped up suddenly in the hot wind.
The palm tree clattering shaking loose its birds,
skeining away toward the mountain like gum.
The water below it, clear, palm fronds adrift.
Because you can look all the way through it,
right down to the bottom, today's word is ersatz.
There's no such thing.
Flock, snow piled in drifts.
Blossoms slamming down to pound on the coffin-like snow.
No, I'm just saying.
Plus I'm liking Frost's poem about the well.
And this other poem by Frost, I wrote it, Frost.
These must not think onto his dark bells, wind
and the frozen lake.
Think of sound's sleep and the evening silences, snow
and lovely, darkest miles.
Right now, I don't like it.
I like I'm not saying alive, I'm not saying dead.
A gust inside the mouth for sure and head.
It's a very quiet gust to which you can listen to all the dust
settle there inside your head and upper arms apparently,
which is pretty strange, but no stranger
than the man in this open coffin, the poor monks
smashing the lid.
Or Richie, because the river done brought you home as snow.
Falling through the cloth and singing
praises of falling snow, caught in updrafts blowing
slanted right out of the canvas, leaving ghost snow,
which is not falling in that other place.
I'll ask my chihuahua.
And we'll get back to you on that."
That's-- the chihuahua is actually a hero
of the manuscript.
And then I [INAUDIBLE].