WEBVTT

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Thank you for coming tonight.

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Can you hear me?

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Good.

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I'll be reading from my first
collection, "Chinoiserie,"

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which is a style of European
decorative art from about

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the 17th to the 18th century.

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And it draws from
Chinese influences,

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with a lot of elaborate
imagery and asymmetry.

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But the book itself just
plays on that very loosely

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in an abstract way.

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I'll start with
"Red Transferware."

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The pagoda's roof curls
beyond a lake view

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glazed in reproduction
pink, on serveware

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matched to the butter dish,
the gravy boat, the once a year

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feast.

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No Villeroy and Boch
but good enough herr

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doktor to fake that
recherche look.

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Pastorals stand for the
village, and candles

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like black trees in the
Brothers Grimm script

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happiness we could drown in.

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Ladies inked on ironstone
sleep the sleep of the dead.

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We hear their hearts
clink with elegant thrift.

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We hear their forks
tuned to another orbit.

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The fox hole with
its grass selvage,

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limns a hunger, thin as
bleeding edge prints.

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White rose, red
ranunculus, red rose,

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ganglion of wires, white
asparagus, red coulis,

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cool arrangements,
dinners like driftwood

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in the ark of hospitable,
surface of terror and pleasure.

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Before the first snow,
before the last course,

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maleficium settles in our lungs.

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We swallow bitter
like good guests.

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The red line hems our plates.

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Of bindweed or flourishes,
nothing to say about the hand's

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elaboration.

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Of creamware, where only
stacked and brittle confusion.

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We bargain daylight
out of black bread.

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1756, copper etched with scenes
from Britannia or East Asia.

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Manners and pheasants,
peppercorn prints.

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2010, where nothing had lived,
we built an altar of porticos.

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Set the cows in good stead
against the beat board hutch.

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Paperwhites, ginger
jar, cake plate.

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Josiah Spode, what crockery,
what England, what codex

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drawn in scalloped borders.

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Red tide, nothing like Hokusai.

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The house weathers an
eye that won't rest.

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Scoured with salt and lemon,
the tea stain dissipates.

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We set the table
with transferware,

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pretended women could speak.

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When the willow swept past us.

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No summons, no cyclone but this.

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