WEBVTT

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The next poem is
the same person.

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She's had that experience where
she almost died and has decided

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to go to a faith healer.

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It's a little bit
livelier kind of a poem

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because she's no longer--

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It's not-- The
crisis has passed.

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The reason I think I
wanted to write this poem,

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which I actually wrote
before the last one,

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is that I'm very interested
in religion in America

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and the various aberrations and
strange forms religion takes.

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I think a lot of Americans have
lost their orthodox religion,

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I know I did.

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And therefore they
we begin to turn

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to other strange
forms of worship

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and out of a need to believe in
something other than mortality.

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I think that explains a lot
of people like Jim and Tammy

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Bakker.

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And I was fascinated
with them for years.

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Before the whole
scandal broke, I

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used to watch them with sort
of a grotesque fascination,

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they were so
horribly fascinating.

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And the faith
healer in this poem

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is not quite so
nefarious and grotesque.

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He's actually kind of a mensch.

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He's kind of a good guy who
really wants to help people.

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Another interest that I think
comes through in the poem

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is my interest in the forms that
classicism takes in America.

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I call this book Palladium and
that was one of the reasons

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why, it's a reference
from the Greek Palladium.

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And one thing I'm
really interested in

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as I look around America
and the landscape

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are aspects like where
I live in the Midwest

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and on the East Coast too.

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I don't know about
here, probably not.

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But there are houses
that are ranch houses

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and very, very plain, as and
they'll have little columns

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all the way across
the front of the house

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is a sort of a gesture toward
those classical Doric columns.

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But a real aberration, a real
Americanization of classicism,

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and things too
like linoleum that

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looks like marble, and
even the classical forms

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like the golden arches, these
beautiful spherical forms

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and what we've made of
them in this country.

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And I think what got me started
thinking about this was that I

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grew up in Troy, New York.

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And having-- upstate New York
has all these classical name

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places like Ithaca,
and Syracuse, and Troy.

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And of course, the
cities are these places

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that are anything but grand.

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These old post-industrial
cities and the difference

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between the place
where I grew up,

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which was quite
impoverished, and depressed,

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and the idea that it once wanted
to be Troy, the grandeur that

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was Greece.

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That was sort of touching to me.

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So I think some of that
is behind this poem, which

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is an awfully long introduction,
but it's a rather long poem.

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It's called The Body Opulent.

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And the title refers
to the woman's body,

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but the body opulent
is also America.

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Mr. Silver owned a steel
plant and manipulated auras

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on the outskirts of Detroit.

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A faith healer.

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Perhaps he could heal mine.

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Through subdivisions trim
and brown as bouillon cubes,

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a defoliate zone where
heavy machinery depreciated,

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I took my heart.

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The waiting room contained
a cloudy sky made finite

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in linoleum, a kind
of American marble.

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Whatever lured me here?

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Well a month ago, I plunged
into a double dark nothing

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like sleep, since
sleep gives dividends

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of dream and free wake
ups. Coming to my body

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less tractable than a
grocery bag of sand,

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I knew I'd nearly made
the one stop shopping

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trip I'd heard so much about.

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Doctors pursued the elusive
verdict, their spooky machines

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awhir with purpose.

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Their glowing dyes showed fiery
tributaries riveting my heart.

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Arabesques of argon violet
crosshatched in patterns,

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so complex they
seemed quite random.

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It would take some faith to
unravel all that bafflement.

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Was it heretical to expect
things from this world,

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to want to live forever in the
cells' jewel glut, the body

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opulent, a squirming
heaven in each fist?

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Well, Mr. Silver spoke
first of psychics

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with the power to bend metal,
supernormally light lamps two

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miles away, draw
like famous artists

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and speed the growth of seeds.

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Though he could
do none of these,

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I sensed a Yankee optimism
when he mentioned his ability

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to diagnose and treat disease.

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Never mind preachers finding
devils under everybody's skin.

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Some things are
beyond our knowing.

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It's important to
believe, he said.

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When I agreed, he
seemed relieved.

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All right, sports fans, let's
see if these success stories go

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beyond conjecture, he said.

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I was to close my eyes and
meditate on something pleasant

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while he mediated over me.

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And though I tried to
snag my mind on sweetness,

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I kept thinking:
this is America,

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and I hadn't told anybody
where I was going.

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He put his hands around
my neck and squeezed.

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Each cell got busy singing
the dawn song of its name.

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My body suddenly felt
worth its weight in light.

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As if I held the sky
above an earthquake,

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the magenta glow made
by electric fields

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and shifting plates inside
each artery and vein.

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After 30 minutes, he backed
off to give the news.

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It's true, you have a
cardiac screw loose,

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but I'll tell you
what to do, smile,

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meditate like you did tonight.

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Remember, you don't have
to kiss anybody's fanny.

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You're going to be all right.

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By way of farewell,
blessing, or epiphany,

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he feelingly recited
Kipling's "If."

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Then his flashlight
led me through a maze

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of cold rolled metal,
polychromed partitions.

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Outside the night was
laced with bright fillips

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of pidgin English.

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Glass benders and bins among
transformers, standing burners,

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the din and smell of lightning
formed these lifesavers

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and double helices of neon, an
old fashioned, hard to stack,

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quickly cracking stuff.

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They vacuumed each tube of
impurities priming the inside

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with hot colored
phosphor, painted

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the spaces between
letters black.

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And they burned themselves,
welding adrenaline messages

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into night: "La Chambre Exotic
Dancers," "Warsaw Foot-Long."

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"Elijah's Hellenic Den"
looked the most respectable.

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When I opened the door, a waiter
raised a platter of flames.

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Opa, the patrons roared as
if their lungs were made

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of silk wrapped round a shout.

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Still hoping for
signs and wonders,

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I thought it might mean health
or life, an omen of survival.

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It's just something we
say, means like ole.

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Don't mean nothing,
the waiter told me.

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The appetizers were
dark and shiny,

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the wine local from grapes
grown in the Motor City,

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going by its nose of
Pennzoil and Prestone.

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A dubious sustenance,
yet I swallowed it

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like gospel that
somehow did me good.

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I was lucky then under the
enormous talk of Midwest sky

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to find my Nova in the lot, to
drive past emblems galvanizing

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night, the golden arches,
spirals, labyrinths and flags,

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the halos placed like logos
above service stations--

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Mobil, Gulf and Shell, the
freeway's glowing dot and dash,

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a path of crumbs to follow home.

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