WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.410 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.410 --> 00:00:03.540 align:middle line:84% I think I'll read just two more poems. 00:00:03.540 --> 00:00:08.560 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:10.678 align:middle line:84% Here's another one from Palladium. 00:00:10.678 --> 00:00:16.660 align:middle line:90% 00:00:16.660 --> 00:00:22.000 align:middle line:84% In this poem, I was trying a formal experiment. 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:23.757 align:middle line:90% That's part of what's happening. 00:00:23.757 --> 00:00:26.380 align:middle line:90% 00:00:26.380 --> 00:00:31.030 align:middle line:84% And what it was was to see if I could use different levels 00:00:31.030 --> 00:00:32.830 align:middle line:90% of diction in the poem. 00:00:32.830 --> 00:00:35.260 align:middle line:84% I wanted to start out using some scientific-- 00:00:35.260 --> 00:00:36.760 align:middle line:84% of course, this wasn't so conscious. 00:00:36.760 --> 00:00:38.770 align:middle line:84% I say it now like I planned all this in advance, 00:00:38.770 --> 00:00:41.450 align:middle line:84% but, really, it just developed as I saw the material 00:00:41.450 --> 00:00:42.670 align:middle line:90% and what I was working with. 00:00:42.670 --> 00:00:46.390 align:middle line:84% And then I realized this might be an interesting thing to try. 00:00:46.390 --> 00:00:49.840 align:middle line:84% I wanted to try to bring in some scientific diction 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:53.890 align:middle line:84% and religious biblical diction, and also some other registers 00:00:53.890 --> 00:00:56.980 align:middle line:84% of diction, more poetic, lyrical. 00:00:56.980 --> 00:01:01.780 align:middle line:84% It begins in kind of a cynical tone and proceeds 00:01:01.780 --> 00:01:04.810 align:middle line:84% and becomes more sincere and more feeling 00:01:04.810 --> 00:01:06.135 align:middle line:90% as the poem goes on. 00:01:06.135 --> 00:01:07.510 align:middle line:84% And I wanted to see if that could 00:01:07.510 --> 00:01:09.910 align:middle line:84% work without disintegrating entirely. 00:01:09.910 --> 00:01:12.670 align:middle line:90% 00:01:12.670 --> 00:01:14.230 align:middle line:84% Everyone knows the world is ending. 00:01:14.230 --> 00:01:16.790 align:middle line:90% 00:01:16.790 --> 00:01:19.130 align:middle line:90% Everyone always thought so. 00:01:19.130 --> 00:01:21.980 align:middle line:90% Yet here's the world. 00:01:21.980 --> 00:01:26.270 align:middle line:84% Where fundamentalists flick slideshows in darkened gyms, 00:01:26.270 --> 00:01:30.170 align:middle line:84% flash end time messages of bliss, tribulation, 00:01:30.170 --> 00:01:33.650 align:middle line:84% through the trembling bleachers: Christ 00:01:33.650 --> 00:01:37.580 align:middle line:84% will come by satellite TV, bearing millennial weather 00:01:37.580 --> 00:01:41.630 align:middle line:84% before plagues of false prophets and real locusts 00:01:41.630 --> 00:01:44.930 align:middle line:84% botch the cosmic climate, which ecologists predict 00:01:44.930 --> 00:01:47.390 align:middle line:84% is already withering from the greenhouse effect 00:01:47.390 --> 00:01:51.170 align:middle line:84% as fossil fuels seal in the sun's heat and acid rains 00:01:51.170 --> 00:01:53.075 align:middle line:90% give lakes the cyanotic blues. 00:01:53.075 --> 00:01:55.920 align:middle line:90% 00:01:55.920 --> 00:02:00.690 align:middle line:84% When talk turns this way, my mother speaks in memories, 00:02:00.690 --> 00:02:05.490 align:middle line:84% each thought a focused mote in the apocalypse's iridescent 00:02:05.490 --> 00:02:07.380 align:middle line:90% fizz. 00:02:07.380 --> 00:02:11.100 align:middle line:84% She's trying to restore a world to glory, 00:02:11.100 --> 00:02:15.910 align:middle line:84% but the facts shift with each telling of her probable gospel. 00:02:15.910 --> 00:02:17.910 align:middle line:84% Well, some stories have been trinkets in my mind 00:02:17.910 --> 00:02:18.810 align:middle line:90% since childhood. 00:02:18.810 --> 00:02:21.225 align:middle line:90% 00:02:21.225 --> 00:02:22.850 align:middle line:84% Yet what clings is not how she couldn't 00:02:22.850 --> 00:02:25.250 align:middle line:84% go near the sink for months without tears 00:02:25.250 --> 00:02:28.100 align:middle line:84% when her mother died, or how she feared she wouldn't get 00:02:28.100 --> 00:02:30.560 align:middle line:84% her own beribboned kindergarten chair, 00:02:30.560 --> 00:02:34.250 align:middle line:84% but the grief and the skull, like radium and lead. 00:02:34.250 --> 00:02:37.130 align:middle line:84% And the visible dumb love, like water and crystal, 00:02:37.130 --> 00:02:39.140 align:middle line:90% at one with what holds it. 00:02:39.140 --> 00:02:44.180 align:middle line:84% The triumph of worlds beyond words. 00:02:44.180 --> 00:02:47.540 align:middle line:84% Memory entices because ending is its antonym. 00:02:47.540 --> 00:02:49.910 align:middle line:84% We're here to learn the Earth by heart. 00:02:49.910 --> 00:02:53.840 align:middle line:84% And everything is crying, mind me, mind me. 00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:58.700 align:middle line:84% Yet the brain selects and shimmers to the touch of hand 00:02:58.700 --> 00:03:03.620 align:middle line:84% on skin, while numbing the constant stroke of clothes. 00:03:03.620 --> 00:03:08.040 align:middle line:84% Thoughts frame and flash before the dark snaps back. 00:03:08.040 --> 00:03:09.830 align:middle line:84% The dress with lace tears she adored, 00:03:09.830 --> 00:03:11.360 align:middle line:84% and the girl with one just like it. 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:14.300 align:middle line:84% The night she woke to see my father walk down the drive, 00:03:14.300 --> 00:03:17.750 align:middle line:84% and the second she remembered he had died. 00:03:17.750 --> 00:03:22.880 align:middle line:84% So long as we keep chanting the words, those worlds will live. 00:03:22.880 --> 00:03:28.100 align:middle line:84% But just so long, so long, so long. 00:03:28.100 --> 00:03:32.090 align:middle line:84% Each instant waves through our nature and is nothing. 00:03:32.090 --> 00:03:36.380 align:middle line:84% But in the love, the grief, under and above the mother 00:03:36.380 --> 00:03:41.780 align:middle line:84% tongue, a permanence hums, the steady mysterious, 00:03:41.780 --> 00:03:44.360 align:middle line:90% the coherent starlight.