WEBVTT

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Glad you all are here.

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Thanks for coming.

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My name is Tyler.

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I work here as the director
at the Poetry Center.

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Really happy to have a great
giant crowd here tonight.

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Really happy to have Charles
Simic in town to be with us,

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and to visit, and to read
again at the Poetry Center

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after some years away.

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I want to introduce
Charles, but before I

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do that, I want to just
do some quick housekeeping

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about some upcoming events that
are happening at the Poetry

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Center, and also remind you
that after the reading is over,

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we'll have a short Q and A
that Patri will help us with.

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And then we have books
for sale over here.

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Am I right, at a discount?

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And so I think that
the bookstore gives us

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a 20% discount.

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So tonight's your
night if you're

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interested in some books.

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And we'll have Charles signing
them after the readings.

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It's a pleasure to
introduce Charles Simic.

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As well as any poet that I know,
Charles Simic's poems skirt

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the razor-thin line between
the knowledge of the complete

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wretchedness of the world
that it's always capable

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of and destined somehow--to
somehow perpetuate in cascading

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public and private ways, but
also impossibly the marvelous

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wonder that we exist at all
in the beautiful, and wild,

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and hilarious, and
pleasurable things.

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These are also likewise
available to us

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in every waking
moment as it ever was.

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What does it mean to write
poetry between this tension?

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What do we imagine we
might learn or enjoy

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from poems that flutter past
us with that backdrop that's

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always behind?

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I'm reminded of the idea
that poetry teaches us

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that we can live twice.

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In the lived experience
and in the recollected

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that reminds us
that we have lived,

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or that helps us to
remember that we're

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living in the first place.

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Simic has made a life out
of all of this extra living.

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Much of his poetry is in wonder
of the things of the world.

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What might seem like smaller
domesticity sometimes,

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a temptation might be to imagine
only the smallness, and what

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a poverty that would be.

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Far be it from me to suggest
that everything always

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means something else.

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But Simic's work
reminds us constantly

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that poems are made of language,
and language doesn't mean

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in fixed and reliable ways.

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In his essay, "Notes on Poetry
and Philosophy," he says this,

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this is a quote, "The literal
leads to the figurative.

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And inside every
figure of value there's

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a theater where a
play is in progress.

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The play is about the gods
and demons and the world

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and its baffling
presence and variety."

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End quote.

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That play is always an
ever underneath everything

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with language.

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A tiny biography, Simic grew
up in the former Yugoslavia

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during the height of Nazism
and the fallout and poverty

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in the years after the war.

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You can read about
this in Simic's prose.

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His family immigrated to the
United States when he was 15.

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He's had a distinguished
career teaching writing

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and American literature at the
University of New Hampshire

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and also at NYU.

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In an incredibly deep body of
work that spans five decades

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and more than 40 books
of his poetry, his prose,

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his translations
from the French,

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Serbian, Croatian,
Macedonian, and the Slovenian,

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Simic has been recognized with
the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin

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International Prize, the
MacArthur Fellowship, the Frost

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Medal, the Wallace Stevens
Award, a PEN Translation Prize,

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the Vilcek Prize In Literature,
and the Zbigniew Herbert

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International Literary Award.

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In 2007, he was
named the 15th Poet

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Laureate of the United States.

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Not bad.

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[LAUGHTER] Pretty good run.

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It's a good run.

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I'm jealous, I'm
not going to lie.

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It's beautiful.

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When I wrote Charles about
coming to visit this year,

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he wrote me back and he said,
I have fond memories of my time

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in Tucson, staying in
the cottage 48 years ago.

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I've been back once or twice
but not in this century,

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so I would like to come.

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So this century is
already getting better.

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And tonight it's going
to improve even more.

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I'm so excited about this.

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Please help me welcome
Charles Simic back to Tucson.

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[APPLAUSE]