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Deliberately with an airplane,
a sister in the woods,

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a father with his whiskey.

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But Karen's not explaining.

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She seems as easily to forget
or to wander off somewhere sharp

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and equally interesting.

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I love this freedom of her text.

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As Gertrude Stein wrote
in What are Master-Pieces

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and Why Are There So
Few of Them, quote,

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"It's very curious.

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You begin to write
something and suddenly you

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remember something.

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And if you continue to
remember, your writing

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gets very confused.

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If you do not remember
while you are writing,

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it may seem confused to others.

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But actually, it is clear.

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And eventually that
clarity will be clear.

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That is what a masterpiece is."

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What has changed from early 20th
to early 21st century writing,

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in my view, is that
the writer no longer

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is grappling with
memory and longing,

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but with memory and creation.

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I mean, the creation
of a work of art.

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But also in Karen Brennan's
case, capital C creation.

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She writes very human
poems that could

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be lines from a memoir, a
confessional, an autobiography,

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or even a repurposing
of someone else's work.

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But because she's not concerned
with certainty or exclusivity,

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they don't rely on an identity.

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What emerges is something
closer to a spirituality.

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Ladies and gentlemen,
Karen Brennan.

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[APPLAUSE]