WEBVTT

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So "The Stuff of
Hollywood" began as--

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it was really
supposed to be a book

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about gun violence in America.

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And the longer it took for
me to write these poems,

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it kind of morphed into a
book about America, violence,

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Hollywood, and Trump.

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Part of the project or
part of my own project

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as a poet that
writes political work

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is, how can I
interrogate myself?

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I think that memoirs do this.

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But I don't think
poets do it much.

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And particularly, I don't think
political poets do it much,

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where we're always rightfully
so kind of pointing

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the finger this way at things
that need to be called out.

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But we don't often look at
the ways that we're complicit.

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And so part of my project was to
interrogate my own complicity.

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So I'm going to read a poem,
a section from "The Stuff

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of Hollywood."

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I spoke with this
morning earlier

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today Claire McLane's
honors class.

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And a student asked me
which poem in this book

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was my favorite poem.

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And it's this piece
that I'm going

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to write right now because I
think it's working in a way

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as a political poem that's
a little bit more complex.

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Every summer as a child, I
burned ants, hordes of them.

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A needle is stuck
into my bruised skin,

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this with the pills
thins the blood.

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There is so much
blood everywhere.

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The medical chart reads hypoxia.

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Hypoxia means a body
deprived of adequate oxygen.

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They are Black boys, my nephews.

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I want to call each of them.

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I don't know what I would say.

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The officer in the
Michael Brown case

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lost it, not the
indictment but his mind.

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It was the
temperature, the heat.

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I am familiar with numbers.

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Barack Hussein Obama became the
44th president of the United

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States.

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Eric Garner was 43 when killed.

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He said "I can't
breathe" 11 times.

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It feels like the '60s--

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the temperature, the heat.

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The '60s-- decade of
dogs, fire hoses, batons,

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crosses adorned with fire.

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The ants posed no threat to
me, no bites or stings on skin.

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In front of the house, they
congregated on the sidewalks

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where the ice cream was placed.

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Then I would set them on fire.

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Chokehold, barred unilaterally
in New York City in 1993,

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the same year Eric
Garner turned 23.

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The criminal justice system is
little less than a postmodern

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auction block.

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Matches, ants-- the
only power I had.

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At the beginning
of the workweek,

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the custodian saunters
into the office,

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upset about those illegals
who will cause a government

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shutdown.

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He is Black.

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I tell him, he
should know better,

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only after he has walked away.

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Do I admit too much
to say I probably

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would have shot him dead too in
Missouri, not because of skin

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or poverty but because of anger,
pungent blossom planted deep

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in dirt the color of blood?

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Three months after
Garner's murder

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on the streets of Staten Island,
while bedridden in the nation's

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capital with three blood
clots in my right leg

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and one in each lung, I
began to think about power,

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what it means to
have it and what

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it means to misuse it
against another living thing.

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Their deaths were
quick, ant bodies

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crumpling like paper in a hand.

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The lungs can be drawn as if
they were butterfly wings.

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Butterflies are good luck but
their lives span generally

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no more than a month.

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At some point, the
ant burning stopped.

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Reciting the pledge ended too.

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In thinking about power
and my own complicities,

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maybe the story about
ants is too easy.

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Yes, someone on the opposite
side of the camera shouts,

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give or take a
couple of numbers,

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the oxygen level of a human
shouldn't fall below 90%.

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As oxygen lessens from the
pressure of an arm braced

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around a neck or
as a bullet settles

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into its resting place in the
body, time moves in slow motion.

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I can't breathe.

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Three stresses or beats, two
if the eye is swallowed up,

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rendered virtually non-existent.

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Cigarettes, Staten
Island, and Minneapolis

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are bad for one's health.

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The untaxed cigarette-- didn't
we fight the British over taxes?

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Did I say we?

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Yeah, I said we.

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[APPLAUSE]

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