WEBVTT

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So yeah, the stuff
I wanted to try--

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here, I'll try this one because
I did read this one once.

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I did a thing with the poet,
Yusef Komunyakaa, last week,

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and as part of it, I hung out
with some of the Princeton kids.

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This is where it was.

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And I gave them some assignment
for writing Yusefian odes.

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Do you guys know
Yusef Komunyakaa?

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You must know the
great Yusef Komunyakaa,

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one of our last lions.

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So I was like,
I'm going to do it

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and I'm going to
read it for him.

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So again, this is
something I haven't really

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sent out anywhere yet, but
it's how to write a Yusefian

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ode for Yusef Komunyakaa.

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You are pursuing a
feeling like the dust

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and the voice of Bob Kaufman,
plus the mud of the most fertile

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place you knew as a child.

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If you are unfamiliar
with poet Bob Kaufman,

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you may use the
dust from the grave

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of a grandfather plus
your damp, nostalgic dirt

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to approximate the feel
of the Yusefian ode.

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You are, pardon, the natural
and unnatural abrasions

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acquired in living the
life a Black boy born

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near enough to Mississippi
to learn to spell it quickly

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by age five.

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Does that make sense?

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You are, pardon, the natural
and unnatural abrasions

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acquired in living the life
of a Black boy born near

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enough to Mississippi
to spell it quickly

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by age five plus the
abrasions acquired

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in living when Emmett Till
was alive and living after.

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It is impossible
to speak of the ode

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as it relates to the
abrasions left by war.

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1/2 a cup of backwoods
Bogalusa moonshine,

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a thimble of communion wine, two
tablespoons of honey and a cup

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of river water that has
been struck by lightning,

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shaken with chunky ice in a
metal martini tumbler should

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result in a flickering
neon vernacular flowering

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in the mouth of the
aspiring old writer.

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Write nothing down for a week
after returning from a three day

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tour retracing Komunyakaa's path
around Bogalusa in the 1950s

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over a decade before he saw
what an old writer sees in war.

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Store notes on the
notes of jasmine

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saturating the air of
Bogalusa behind the nose

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bridge between your eyes and
just below your third eye.

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If you are unable to
kill or locate a gazelle,

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kill time, kill two birds with
one stone killed with kindness.

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Eavesdrop on other
people's prayer

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like dogwood scratching
at a church window.

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If you are afraid of who will
target who in this new world,

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the ode says how to prepare.

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The wine of heaven is the
color of brass and honey

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turning air to music.

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The Yusefian ode
asks you to sound

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like you're talking deeply
to your spirit, something

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beyond the body but
made in the wild

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and wrestled with faith in hand.

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Address your pet.

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Address your childhood pet.

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Address your alter ego.

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Address your ghost.

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Address your maggot.

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Address your lust.

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Watch your creature in
its setting, preyed on

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or preying with a version of
God casting the odor of death.

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Recall yourself as a child in
new weather, fangs and stingers

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at your borders,
grasping your first toy

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as sunlight throws your
shadow on the grass.

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A seed bed of secrets
troubles the soil.

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Wind and rumor swirl in
the drum of each ear.

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The compass of vision turns
on a swivel of questions.

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Break the seals,
paste it with history.

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Use the switchblade taken from
your grandmother's ashtray

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just after she was buried to
Jimmy, her locked desk drawer.

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Your ode should
echo the language

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inside her bills, private and
professional letters, scratched

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notes and poems.

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If you lack such a
resource, the ode

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may praise the idea
of your grandmother

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with the switchblade and
handwritten poems down her bra.

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Your first night in
Bogalusa you must

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sleep with a pair of
leeches pressed gently

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against your eyelids to
receive Yusefian visions.

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I saw a fishhook
piercing a pomegranate

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stuffed in the mouth of a boar.

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You have to let the ode climb
from the well in the wasteland.

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The water in the ode promises
another season of pomegranate,

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but must never be used
to savor the boar.

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The Yusefian elegy lives in
the cool and vulnerable falling

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shadow of the ode.

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Say something that hangs
over the burial ground just

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between the boughs and bowing.

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A way of keeping faith
is what the ode is after,

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at least at the beginning
of the poem's foray.

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A way of finding the
truth seems to be

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an offshoot, a root with no
ending at the end of the day.

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OK.

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So we'll go around.

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