WEBVTT

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Well, thank you so much.

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Thanks for that wonderful
introduction, Tony.

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It's an incredible honor
and pleasure to be here.

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I lived here for
a couple of years,

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about a decade ago
from 2004 to 2006

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when this building
was being built.

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And we left shortly
before it opened.

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And so this is the
first time I've

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seen it since it's been opened.

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And it's a strange and
pleasurable return.

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And I'm particularly
honored to be kicking off

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this wonderful new reading
series in translation,

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which is a wonderful addition
to the programming here.

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And so thank you.

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I'm going to read some
translations and some

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of my own poems.

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That book on the right-hand
side of the table there--

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is that big, thick book--

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is a book I started here
in Tucson, actually.

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And it took me about--

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it just came out in
2012, so that gives you

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a sense of how long it.

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It's a major anthology of 20th
century Italian poetry that

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starts at the beginning
of the 20th century

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and comes up to pretty
much the present day.

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And there's so many poets,
75 or so, poets in it.

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And whenever I read from it
I'm overwhelmed with who did--

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which ones of these many poets
that I love to choose to read.

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And I just decided today
to pick two of them

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I'm going to pick the
first poet in the book, who

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is Giovanni Pascoli
who straddled

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the 19th and 20th century.

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He's a major poet, a major
figure in Italian poetry,

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and was an enormous influence
on modern Italian poetry,

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but is virtually
unknown in English.

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There are some
translations of him,

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but they just-- he hasn't gotten
much attention in English.

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I don't think, in
general, he's been

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well-served by translation.

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And so I'm working
on, in addition

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to making him the first
poet in the anthology,

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I'm working on a
selection of his poems

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that I hope to finish in
the next couple of years.

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And so I'll read a
few poems by Pascoli.

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And then I'll read a few poems
by a contemporary poet who

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straddles the 20th
and 21st centuries,

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and her name is
Patrizia Cavalli.

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