WEBVTT

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[LAUGHTER]

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Thank you.

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Thank you to every one of you.

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I am very grateful
to all of you.

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Thank you, Lisa.

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I'm going to spend about 10
minutes on each of two books.

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And the first book is
a book of translations

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called "Against the Current".

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It's by Tedi Lopez Mills.

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And because these
poems are very long,

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I'm going to read two
of them and precede them

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with a little bit of an
introduction I wrote for them.

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"Against the current is a
Baroque and speculative work

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toned with deep skepticism.

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Its principal mood
is the subjunctive,

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the mood of futurity,
contingency,

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and wishful thinking.

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In this, her eighth
book of poems,

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celebrated Mexican
author Tedi Lopez Mills

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uses forceful intricate fancies
to engage a sequence of deeply

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felt problems from
political to familial

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and existential to ecological.

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The problems of which
"Against the Current"

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forms apart include
how to be, how

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to love, how to
acknowledge violence,

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how to compass identity,
and how to exist

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alongside the non-human.

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The biggest one, I
believe, as introduced

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by the central
character of the brother

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in relationship to the speaker
and by the central allegory

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of a wrathful elusive
river is how to be angry,

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how to be furious, and yet
how to contain this fury,

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channel it within the
confines of a human person who

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can be albeit
simultaneously recognized

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as such because the
poem's distrust any form

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of direct advice even when
it is offered from one self

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to oneself.

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In "Against the Current",
to say how to is also

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to imply its opposite--

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how to not love, for
example, or how to not be.

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As the title suggests, to
read "Against the Current"

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is to undertake a
productive struggle.

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The book proposes a
pessimistic reading of reality

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in which cynicism and
falsehoods predominate.

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Within the pessimism,
there is possibility,

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in one sense, constrained,
and in another, unbridled.

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Like water, the
poems hold so much.

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Observing the multitude
of images float by,

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we readers can throw
in our own concerns

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and see them become a
part of the mix reflected

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in the water's mirror.

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Mindful of all that
this water contains

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finely tuned
philosophy and allegory

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as well as motor oil
and plastic bottles,

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scorn and betrayal, material
and emotional detritus.

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We might choose with care that
concerns desires and fears

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that we project onto the poems
of "Against the Current".

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Rivers flow to the ocean,
the source of life.

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If we throw what we
choose into the water,

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we know where it
will be carried."

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