WEBVTT

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When I first sat down with
CAConrad's The Book of Frank

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two years ago, I felt like I
was trapped in a haunted dream

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that I couldn't wake
up from, a dream

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too enjoyable to be
called a nightmare,

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but with all the nightmares'
grotesque delights.

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The lucid funhouse of the
id and all its desires,

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both dark and savory.

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Maybe I was more
addicted than trapped.

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This was the first and
only time I've ever

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loved a book enough to read it
cover to cover in one sitting.

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I was up all night, letting
the winking specter of Frank

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haunt me, reading and
rereading my favorite passages.

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Unfortunately, it
was finals week

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at the University of
Pittsburgh at this time.

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And after spending
the night with Frank,

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I subsequently bombed
my behavioral genetics

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final early the
next morning, but it

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felt so appropriate
to fail a psychology

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class for the sake of
letting Frank crawl around

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in the newly discovered
recesses of my subconsciousness,

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especially behavioral genetics.

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I took my test
answering questions

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about correlations
and likelihoods

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that various mental
disorders will

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be shared among family members.

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And all I could think
about was Frank,

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with his feathered sister and
his brother, the dollar bill,

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Frank's mother
with her removable

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and reusable eyeballs, petting
her collection of Frank's

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jarred and unborn siblings.

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Maggie Nelson recently
wrote, "CAConrad

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has one of the keenest,
strangest, most questioning,

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most alive ears in
contemporary poetry.

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I've heard it said
that his Book of Frank

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is this generation's
Dream Songs,

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but I think The Book of Frank
surges ahead in experiment

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and lasting power."

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And I completely
agree with Maggie.

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With The Book of
Frank, CAConrad

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crafts a sort of
archetypal figure halfway

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between the lovable loser
and the magical trickster,

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which CA allows us
to enter our minds

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via the collective
unconsciousness

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and wreak havoc on
our imaginations.

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I believe that Conrad
one-ups founding surrealists

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such as Breton and Eluard,
because in the misadventures

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of Frank, the dream
logic of surrealism

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is played in juxtaposition
with the mundane and the day

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to day, the indignities of
family life, love, dating,

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boredom, and poverty.

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Unless the surreal is allowed
to truly access our desires,

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it becomes an escape method--

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sorry, an escape
mechanism, a method

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of transporting us away
from earthly suffering

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and into the spiritual or
maybe into the psychosexual.

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Sometimes I'm not
really sure which or if

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there is even a difference.

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If The Book of Frank is a book
written from a place of surreal

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wisdom, CAConrad's
most recent book,

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A Beautiful Marsupial
Afternoon: New Somatics,

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is a guide to accessing that
place of surrealism-- sorry,

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of surreal wisdom--

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for use in our writing, and
our thinking, and our living.

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It is a type of book that
only CAConrad could write.

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There isn't a
single other writer

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who I would listen
to if they told

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me to rub dirt from the grave
of my favorite dead poet

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all over my chest and
spend the day basking

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in the fragrance of loam.

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If they told me to spend the day
riding up and down elevators,

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staring down other mall goers
and imagining each passerby's

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response to philosophical
questions in my head,

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I just would not do that.

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But after having read
the work of CAConrad

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and wanting desperately
to have access

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to that same sort
of surreal wisdom

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that spawned a literary
creature such as Frank,

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I was perfectly willing to
affix the string of a balloon

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to my belly button via
a chewed stick of gum

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and spend hours staring
up at the red balloon

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floating out of
me, contemplating

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the wonders of the
umbilical cord,

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the almost alien nature
of life in the womb.

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What better way to begin
the construction of a poem

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than to become completely
alienated from normalcy

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and to see the world
completely anew?

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Let us welcome the one
and only CAConrad.

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[APPLAUSE]