WEBVTT

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Thank you, Allison,
and also to all of you

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for coming out this
evening and celebrating

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this book, and poetry, and
language, and words, and songs.

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And I also want to
express my gratitude, too,

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to the Arizona Press--

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Arizona University Press.

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And you know when
they do a book,

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you know it's going to be
good, because they always

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try to get the best work.

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My poems are fairly short.

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So I was working on
this small little book

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that I used to have.

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It was a blue book, actually.

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It was colored navy blue and I
started writing poems in there.

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So I started calling it
Blue Book, these poems that

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came out of that.

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This is called "Blue
Book Number 5."

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"Half of your moon hangs
on your side of the world.

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Mine hangs outside
my bedroom window,

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where the cicadas sing the
last of their summer songs

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in the desert night.

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Soon they will sing us into
another season than leave us,

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and I will be left to make
my way, and you yours.

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Where are the
Billie Holiday songs

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that will lift the heavy
boot of our longing?

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And where is the poetry to
soothe our hurting hearts?

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Yours grew wings and flew across
the ocean like a butterfly."