WEBVTT

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Hey, everybody.

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I'm going to keep this a
little shorter than last night,

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because I see a lot
of familiar faces,

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and most people at
this point probably

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know what the Bagley
Wright lecture series is.

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But for those of
you who don't, it's

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an endeavor that Charlie
Wright, who's right over there,

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and I started--

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well, started with his support
to basically support midcareer

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poets whose work we admire--

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revere, even-- to investigate
poetic concerns that

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are meaningful to them.

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And so we did that by
sending them around to give

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lectures all over the
country, including here.

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And then we're coming to the
end of the first set of lectures

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that we had with six of them.

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And we had the first three
lecturers talk last night,

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and tonight, we're having
the other three lecturers.

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And I'm really
excited about tonight.

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Last night was marvelous.

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The panels today were
great, which is--

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I don't often find myself
saying panels were good.

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That seems like kind of
a contradiction in terms.

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But actually, they were--
like, conversations

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were really amazing and
electric and generative.

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And I just really enjoyed them.

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And maybe even more excited
to hear the three lecturers

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tonight.

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We're going to start
with Srikanth Reddy,

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and then we're going to hear
from Rachel Zucker, and then

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Timothy Donnelly.

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And many things--
there are many things

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I love about these three poets.

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But one thing they
all have in common

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is that they have manuscripts
that are in process

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that Wave Books will be
publishing in the coming times,

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let's say, period, in
various stages of completion.

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And so they're-- and I don't
know if tonight some of them

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might mention what the
relationship has been between

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this exercise of being asked--
and they're not required to do

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this, but some of them might
mention what it's been like

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to write a lot of prose and
think about their ideas through

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the prism of prose and then also
how that might have affected

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the poems that they're working
on and what they think will

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happen in the future.

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And so before I turn it
over to Chicu, Srikanth,

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I'm just going to--

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I want to again thank
the Poetry Center.

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Tyler was very generous
in saying that I

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organized the whole thing.

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That's actually not true.

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Tyler did so much, and Becka
and so many other people here.

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The staff is amazing here.

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This is a magical place.

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I know you all know that.

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But we feel so at
home here already.

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It's going to be hard to leave.

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I can already tell.

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And yeah, it's just
been the perfect thing.

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And of course, I want to
thank Charlie and Barb

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for supporting all
this and for just

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being the best
people in the world,

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and Wave Books, Heidi Broadhead,
who's here, and very much the--

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again, the coordinator of
the series, the Bagley Wright

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lecture series, Ellen Welcker.

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Where's Ellen?

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I'd like to give her a
special round of applause

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for organizing everything.

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[APPLAUSE]

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She really is the person
who organized everything.

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And again, as I said last night,
thank you all for being here.

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It's amazing to have
such great listeners.

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And I'm already starting to
recognize some of your faces

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which is really cool.

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So--