WEBVTT

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It's a great
pleasure to be here.

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I'm running for office.

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Oh, that was a lie.

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I'm running for
sheriff of this county.

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[LAUGHTER]

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What is the name of this county?

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Pima

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What?

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Pima.

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Pima, what a silly name.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I'm gonna change the name of the
County when I become sheriff.

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[LAUGHTER]

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First thing.

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Well I'm going to do the
standard 45-minute reading.

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We're a little late in starting,
but that's always the case.

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We can pretend we're in
New York where, I was just

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telling Jane Miller, we
were reminding each other,

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the people don't
come early, they

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start showing up at an 8 o'clock
reading around 9 o'clock.

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And I'm going to read from
three sources, basically.

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One is from this book.

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And I'm not going to
read the whole book.

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I'm going to read four or
five poems from each one.

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It's called This Time.

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And from this book called Last
Blue, which is after this book,

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this book called
American Sonnets.

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I design all my jackets
so I'm very proud of that.

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It's always for me
a great pleasure

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to come here to Tucson.

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It's for me, one of my
cities, in a strange way.

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I have relatives here.

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Friends.

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And I love this place in
spite of its shortcomings.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I love the poetry audience,
for me in particular.

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If I was a chiropractor, I'd
love the chiropractic audience.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I think it's, in its way,
the most important poetry

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center in the United States.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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And I will be a good
sheriff, I promise.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I think it's replaced Iowa
as the real center of poetry

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in the country, at the
the University level,

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and you're lucky to be here
and to have the marvelous

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teachers and the
institution behind you

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that you do in the
remarkable Poetry Center.

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One of a kind.

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And so encouraging of poetry.

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40,000 volumes.

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Take you at least a
week to read all this.

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I'm going to read,
then, from these sources

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and I want to say
that I'll read mostly

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from my most recent books.

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Poets, as you know, you
fellow poets who are here,

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are always most excited
about their recent poems.

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Their great poems that
they wrote earlier,

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they forget and
ignore and say, oh

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that, that was just
preparation for this.

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And I always get
nervous and disappointed

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and kind of irritated
when people say, would you

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mind reading "This
chestnut, that chestnut,"

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and I say, well,
I'll see how it goes.

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I want to dedicate this reading
to a dear friend who died,

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betimes.

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His wife is here.

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His name is Bruce McGrew
and he was born in 1937

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and died in 1999.

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Great painter.

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Really very important
American painter.

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He taught at this university for
many, many years, a great soul.

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And suddenly he was gone.

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And those of us
who knew him well,

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think about him all the
time and grieve his absence.

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And if you hear baby noises
from time, excuse me,

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I wouldn't say that.

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If you heard young girl's
noises from time to time,

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it's merely my
granddaughter, Rebecca.

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Hi honey.

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So when I read this
poem for Bruce,

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which is one of the sonnets
in the 59, one of the American

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sonnets, and it's
called "Bruce",

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and it's for Bruce McGrew.

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He and his wife and
family and friends

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lived in Oracle, north of here
in a great, ancient, beautiful

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commune.

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I was just reading
today in a book,

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I meant to ask Fox about this
later, and the biography of--

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who was I reading today?

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Warhol.

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Andy Warhol.

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I was reading that he was a
movie maker in the second half

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of his career.

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Made some awful, boring--

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he loved that they were boring.

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Monotonous.

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Because I knew him well.

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My former wife went
to college with him,

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and I drove him to
the train station

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when he went to New York
to make his fortune.

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And I'm writing an
essay about him.

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And I discovered
today reading, that he

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went to Oracle to make a film
that was called Cowboys or--

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Lonesome Cowboys.

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What?

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Lonesome Cowboys.

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Lonesome Cowboys.

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I was astonished and
excited about it.

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And he made the cowboy--

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the movie in that
place you have Old--

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Old Tucson.

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And then he went to
Oracle, and of course they

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were just doing everything
to aggravate them.

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The sheriff in this
movie, for example,

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is a cross-dresser
and all that stuff,

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and the local people
were horrified.

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The FBI came by.

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You know how stupid they are.

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[LAUGHTER]

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They took notes.

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I read their notes.

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It's hysterical.

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But the movie wasn't.

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I haven't seen that movie.

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I've seen some of the others.

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It's as bad as the others.

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It's as bad as the others.

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OK.

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"Bruce.

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Though if it were a
bluebird and not a bunting,

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I would have been
surprised, too.

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Nor did he actually flush the
bird out of the pine the way

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we did those peacocks
in the ditches

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and fields of Pennsylvania.

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But only there were four of
us, talking, and coming near so

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certes we disturbed him,
maybe brooding, which

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given our grand beliefs,
we would have been

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a little ashamed of, certes,

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shocked by the sudden
burst of wings,

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and maybe being humans,
surprised that there were no

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cries, for we would have cried.

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And Bruce did make
a little sound.

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If you know him.

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If you knew him, you'd know
just what that sound was like.

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And almost pleading, he
asked us not to tell Fox.

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For she would have
missed her only chance.

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I almost couldn't hear him.

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His eyes did most
of the pleading.

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I know they were gray.

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We walked carefully
over the stones.

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There had to be one or
two sticks among us.

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The bird would have
flown to a safer tree.

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I kept it from Fox until
we talked on the phone

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last night, 20 years later."

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