WEBVTT

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Why don't you?

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You want me to start?

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OK, so I'll read some
of these labor poems.

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So this is a manuscript
called "Undocumentaries."

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The excerpt from this is
called "Undocumentary,"

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and it was published
by Dos Press.

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And it's for sale
here, somewhere.

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It's a chapbook.

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And then,
"Undocumentaries" is being

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published by Shearsman
Books in the spring.

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So if you're interested,
it'll be somewhere.

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I'm sure it'll be sold on
Amazon like everything else is.

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So this isn't really a labor
problem, but maybe it is.

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It's a very sort of
working-class reference,

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because nobody hangs
their clothes out

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to dry anymore, right?

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[INTERPOSING VOICES]

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Oh, they do?

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Oh, that's good, that's good.

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So this is called
"Confessional Poem,"

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and this was a response to--

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I think it was a
poem or something

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I read, where this woman
invokes her mother,

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saying that you can always
tell the kind of private life

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of a woman by what
kind of underwear

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she hangs on the line.

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And I thought, well, why?

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So she has big bloomers-- she
may have a great sex life,

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you don't know.

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How can you tell?

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And so I started thinking
that in poetic terms.

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You read something in
a poem and you're like,

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oh, I know that person.

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Well, you don't, really.

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You know the poem.

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So this is about manufacturing
the truth in a poem.

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It's called "Confessional Poem."

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The girl next door had something
to teach me about what to air.

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On the line, somebody's business
gets told, then recounted.

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It's best to thread a
tale for the neighbors,

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an orchestration of sorts.

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But I am far from modest
in my telling of lies.

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There are three
references I put forward,

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each a past lover who liked
a different kind of underling

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to his genius.

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You wouldn't know it from the
delicates I roll into the yard.

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It's all the same peekaboo
lace and stunted imagination.

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Of course, all of
this is scanty truth.

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Who hangs anything
out to dry, when

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invention has halved the work?

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