WEBVTT

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It's my pleasure to welcome
Jane Miller, a stranger to very

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few of us here, and one
of my heroes in Tucson,

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and a maker of this place.

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And she's going to introduce
her friend, Rita Dove.

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Please help me
welcome Jane Miller.

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Our wildly acclaimed
guest tonight

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has been a student of
poetry all her life.

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For poets in the audience,
for audiences in general,

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the question about poetry
it seems to me is always,

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is it true?

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Which I think is asking not
whether a story or a feeling

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is simply actual,
although that matters

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very much in the case
of our guests tonight.

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More than the actual,
what poetry registers

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finally is a clarity
that is spiritual.

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How does Rita Dove apply
the beauty of the sensorium

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for spiritual purposes?

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From experience as a musician,
dancer, singer, historian,

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researcher, leader in
the community, and mentor

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to young artists comes a
relationship with language

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that is sensual and intimate.

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For those of you
awake late at night,

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perhaps you are experiencing
what the nocturnal Ms.

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Dove receives as a
poet seeing clearly

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into the dark
matter of the soul.

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Perhaps it's her own
tenderness and compassion

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that becomes the basis for
the many dignified acts

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and voices in her
poems, or it may simply

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be that a shy, shy girl from
Ohio, which has given us

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poets as various as James
Wright, Hart Crane, Thylias

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Moss, Paul Laurence
Dunbar, and Juliana Spahr.

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It may be that this
shy girl from Ohio

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paid the kind of attention
early on that later gave her

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the courage to lead
readers to their full

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and to their proper history.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is
my privilege, also my delight,

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to introduce one of the most
distinguished and honored poets

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of our time, but also
one of the most humble.

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Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome Rita Dove.

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