WEBVTT

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Well it's pleasant to be here.

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I want to dedicate this reading
to some poets in the audience.

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It's always remarkable
when poets show up

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at poetry readings.

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They-- it's like eating too
much cheesecake, normally.

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And the poets I'd like to thank,
of course Diane Wakoski, whose

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work I've read for years,
and Michael Cuddihy,

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and Bill Roecker,
Neil Claremont.

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I'm going to read a few books.

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Or incidentally,
for people who have

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an itchy something or another, I
read one hour flat, 60 minutes.

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At which time a giant
picture appears behind me,

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advertising nostrums against
suspicion and hostility,

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also my own soon to appear
seven volume history of rain,

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or something.

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I anyway get tired.

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I get a sort of a feedback, like
people get out of microphones.

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You know, when a
microphone screams

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like a stuck pig, an
actual pig, a barnyard pig,

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and I can't read
anymore than that.

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So a couple short poems from
my first book, Plainsong, which

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I really don't like anymore.

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So I read very little
very little from it,

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but one little poem called
"Credo After Ezra Pound",

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a poem I always think
about just before I read.

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"Credo".

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"Go, my songs, to the
young and insolent.

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Speak of the love
of final things.

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Do not betray me
as a dancer, drunk,

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is dumb to his clumsiness."