WEBVTT

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Timer's going off, OK.

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Thank you, Whitney.

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That was really wonderful.

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I appreciate it.

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And thank you to
the Poetry Center.

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Fred, it's a pleasure to
have gotten to know you

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and to read with you tonight.

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And thank you, Annie and
Gail and everyone here.

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And thanks for coming out
to hear this work tonight.

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I'm going to read 10
minutes from the book

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and then 10 minutes of very new
work, because what excites me

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as a writer is to test out some
new terrain here before you.

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So I'm going to get some
use out of this as well.

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The thing that I
want to say is that I

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created this form for the book,
this "Please Advise Stop,"

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before my dad died suddenly
of pneumonia, which

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to me is an amazing
fact of my experience

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of the process of writing.

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And it became the
perfect vehicle for me

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to enter the grief and the
guilt and the dynamic work

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of suffering and sorrow
that I needed to do,

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but that I didn't
have a process to do.

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And so it's a book that in
many ways saved my life,

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and that was available to me
as a gift from whatever you

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want to say, whomever
you want to say.

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And so I just want
to share that, even

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in the struggle with
my father's death,

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there was a sense of
renewal and promise,

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that that was possible.

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So a few poems--

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"Please Advise Stop."

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"Pale fingers of
inheritance do not

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disintegrate until
they touch us stop.

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Meaning collapses on
the inhale, please.

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Gestures too quick to
catch are the guarantors

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of the given stop.

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The true keeps calm
biding its story stop.

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The arsonist's perspiration
stains the sky black, please.

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The gray-and-white
patched cat licks her paw

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until value becomes
again incalculable stop.

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I wasn't traveling
westward, only

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into the power of
it's place names stop.

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The water puddle sways like
an earthbound kite stop.

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The stickiness of this
instant seals within it

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every expression of its menace.

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Please advise."

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So that's one of the poems that
I wrote before my dad died.

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And I was working
with attempting

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to find a form
that would help me

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be more concise in my writing.

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And so that's what
I thought this was.

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