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The State of American Poetry
1.If you approach along one of the usual paths, you’ll notice what at first appear to be tumbled walls, broken chimneys, and a series of ruined fortresses or perhaps religious buildings. These are, in fact, the fossilized remains of the previous inhabitants of the region, who were nearly the size of dinosaurs. The current inhabitants live and work in their forefathers’ massive, abandoned bodies until those structures collapse into dust, a practice that anthropologists consider unique. And because each generation necessarily occupies less space than the one that preceded it (which must now be used as a dwelling), the inhabitants have been getting steadily smaller and smaller. Presumably this progression can’t continue beyond a certain stage, but if so, that stage hasn’t yet been reached. Indeed, some theorists have argued that the process will continue indefinitely, until everything vital in the country has been either been reduced to minimum size and maximum density, like a dwarf star, or been drained away entirely, leaving the last inhabitant as weightless as a ghost.
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