WEBVTT

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Hello, everyone.

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Welcome to tonight's reading.

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We're glad you're here,
braving the rains or non-rains,

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depending on where you are.

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I'm excited you're here
at the Poetry Center.

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It is a well-designed building.

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And I'm happy to report
that, in the event

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of massive flooding, that
we think it would float,

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which is exciting.

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We think.

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But we're glad we don't
have to deal with that.

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And I'm thinking
about all the people

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farther south from us in Cochise
County and over into lower

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New Mexico who are dealing
with all that water.

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So we're grateful
that Tucson is safe.

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Glad that our readers
were able to be here.

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It was a touch-and-go moment,
but I'm glad they're here.

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And excited that the reading
is happening tonight.

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This reading is the second in
an annual reading series named

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for the poet, Morgan
Lucas Schuldt, who

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was a friend to many people that
are here in attendance tonight

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and who passed away in 2012.

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The series recognizes emerging
writers, innovative writers,

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writers who we think deserve
a brighter spotlight.

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Morgan was all of those
things in his work.

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He was fierce in
his love of language

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and its limits, its
possibilities and pleasures,

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the double meanings and lyrical
sensibilities that words

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can take on, the narrative
torque a poem takes down

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the page, and the enjambments
that, in stacked sequences,

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it uses to get there.

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In an interview with
Arizona Public Media,

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Morgan talked
about his interests

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in, quote, "dead language"
or what Gertrude Stein called

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late language, words
that were used up--

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used up so hard that they
have lost their ability

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to mean in ways that
they possibly could, ways

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that they used to be able to
draw attention to themselves.

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And he says that he was
excited to reactivate language

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in his poems, to,
quote, "make them new,

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make the language new
by breaking it apart,

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by pulverizing it, by doing
a little violence to it,

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sticking words together
with hyphenation,

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playing with punning,
et cetera, et cetera."

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That playfulness and
pleasure in how things work--

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that pleasure in how
things work, I think,

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is a core part of what
Morgan's aesthetic is.

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And I come to his poems not
having a chance to know him

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but having a chance
to know his work.

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And that spirit abides,
I think, over the series

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and also over Morgan
and his poems.

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We're really thrilled to
have two great readers here

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tonight in this series
that is so aptly named.

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The last thing that I get to
do is just introduce my friend

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who will introduce our readers.

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I'm very excited that Wendy
Burk, who many of you know

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and who helps make all magical
things happen in our library,

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is here to introduce the two
readers who are here tonight

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to visit with us.

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So without further
ado, Wendy Burk.

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[APPLAUSE]