I must undertake the adult role of bearing witness to everything else. Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish.
Death is divestment, death is communion.
It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego. They may be screwed up about race, but they're not as annoyingly screwed up as David Shields. But he's talking about more than that. I don't think that's what confessional poetry is about at all. He's presenting himself as a representative human being.