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Thank you.

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Keith Waldrop is the author of
more than 20 books of poetry.

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Recent books are
Transcendental Studies

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from University of
California Press, which

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won the National Book Award, The
Real Subject, and the trilogy,

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The Locality Principle,
Silhouette of the Bridge,

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and Semiramis If I Remember.

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Siglio Press has also
recently published

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a book of his amazing collages
called Several Gravities.

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He's translated Baudelaire's
Flowers of Evil and Paris

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Spleen, Little Poems in Prose
from Wesleyan University Press,

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as well as books by contemporary
French poets Anne-Marie

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Albiach, Claude Royet-Journoud,
and many others.

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And he teaches at
Brown University.

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In a very short space,
Keith Waldrop's poems

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masterfully create
an intimate address

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and also conjure allusions
to that something missing,

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which completes any perfect,
poetic dialogue or moving still

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life.

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He reminds us of that
unmistakable third presence,

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reservation, misgiving,
the intangible which

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no one else will visit kindly.

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Someone is absent,
treading, dead,

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possibly it is us
or the speaker.

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We are stealthily brought
along to disquieting thoughts.

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With a fluidity, and
an ease, and a wit one

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would never think
possible, we are

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brought to concise meditations
on mortality and philosophy

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to laments, lyrics, and
metaphysical haunts.

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In reading his work,
we are compelled

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to ask, what is stretched?

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What is stolen?

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What is distortion?

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What is real?

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Nothing more often
than a voice which

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dictates something
we wish to be true

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collapsed by something
we know to be true,

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sifting through dangerous
mental proclivities,

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always with reassurances,
charm, nodding

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towards the disastrous
consequences,

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and longing for that
which remains unfound,

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where are the edges
of perception?

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His voice, it meanders
through thickets

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of time, the question
as an anchor that

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undoes and also propels us.

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His work provides us always
with excellent poetic company

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and humor amid the most
tumultuous and brooding

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of human landscapes.

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In his newest book,
he writes, "it

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is not in my power
to give the reader

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any account of pleasure."

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With this, I strongly disagree,
and instead, I will quote,

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"he is one of
poetry's bold knights

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who've not their
hearts in their boots."

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Please welcome Keith Waldrop.

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[APPLAUSE]

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