WEBVTT

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We are really so grateful to
welcome Randall Horton, thank

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you for being here.

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Horton is the author of
three collections of poetry,

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including his most recent, which
is Pitch Dark Anarchy, as well

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as a memoir titled Hook.

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He's an associate
professor of English

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at the University of New Haven.

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And among other
honors, his work has

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been recognized with
a Bea Gonzalez Poetry

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Award and a grant
from the National

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Endowment for the Arts.

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He is also a member of the
experimental performance

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group, Heroes Are Gang Leaders.

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In a poem from
Horton's collection,

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The Lingua Franca of
9th Street, the speaker

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says the following to a group
of teenage girls he's teaching.

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''Pick up your pens.

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Use them as a voice
to say something,

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to cut to the truth of things,
to discover your own demons''.

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What results from this
directive in the poem

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is described as a miracle.

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This is what he says.

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''A language shapes
itself, their language.

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Voices float above silence''.

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Throughout Horton's poetry we
see this same miracle enacted.

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A singular voice
floats above silence,

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speaking the reality of both
itself and the community

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around it.

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This pairing of attention
to both the whole

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and the individual occurs
throughout Horton's work.

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His poetry often feels
like a collective portrait,

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but one that's full of
rich particular details.

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Horton's poetry introduces us
to families across generations,

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to big city neighborhoods,
and to prisons

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and the inmates inside them.

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But after reading, it's
intimate images that linger.

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A touch of red dirt and
the fragrance of muscadine,

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or one speaker's assertion
that ''I'm a thrush, a plover,

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a black winged gull''.

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It's through these details
that Horton's poetry

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conveys the miracle of
every individual life.

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And importantly, it also conveys
the way the biosystems work

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against that miracle.

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His poems describe
a generation that

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has fallen through a black
hole, filling prisons

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with boys who understand
grim fractions.

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By cutting to the
truth of things,

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demons included, Horton's
poetry communicates

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the need for change.

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The need for new eyes
to see the particular

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and to imagine a new
reality around it.

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We're so grateful to have
you here tonight, Randall.

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Please join me in
welcoming Randall Horton.

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[APPLAUSE]