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ESSAY: AT NIGHT THE AUTOPORTRAIT AT NIGHT, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Each evening from my bed I calculated & compared
Last Line: Second elbow
Subject(s): Essays; Soul


Each evening from my bed I calculated & compared
the state of my soul with the state
of Kansas, because a place also
carries a name. Did my body make an objection to traveling
across Texas internal conditions in which I abstracted myself Chicago

I never had to force myself to immigrate to the inside
thought // like a possum // playing dead // leaving as little as possible living
at a surface // which might be burned //

a lamp, a desk ... entered the eye ... to prove something ... was going on ...
outside the skin Baltimore

Deployed over the gutted city: an immense crude sky, scene
of some crime or other, a brusk separation parented by nature knowing
nothing or understanding
nothing requires some concentration except the things the heart can do
directly Between the dark

& the bed approaching each place or thing my eyes
(a body) must accustom themselves anew ...... If a being could be the product
of a ground one tastes, then I was Texas developing

a vague science of joy or beauty

Forgetting the particulars that make it go

a paysage abandons a window to get an inkling
of the sky or the sky's

second elbow





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