WEBVTT

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Our first reader
is Cole Swensen.

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Cole Swensen.

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Books.google.com
/bookscivildisob

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ediencespoeticsa
ndpoliticsinaction.

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Identitytheory.c
om/fiction/sewnson/poetry.

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Chicagopostmoder
npoetry.com/caroldubois.

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12or20questions.blogspot.com.

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Chicagopostmodern.com.

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C. Swenson.

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"One.

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Focus your life on the precise
point at which perception

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turns to thought.

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Two.

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The base structure of
both the city and the poem

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is the labyrinth.

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As in any maze, you can
only see to the next corner,

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never around it.

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Three.

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Of the things that
I'd like to manage

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to do when I write is to
have the text generate

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a sort of phenomenon
of persistence,

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like certain short
pieces of music

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seem to continue to be heard
after silence has returned.

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Four.

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Unification is another
misleading term.

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It's a euphemism for conformity,
even among ourselves.

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We must continue to
differ, even to disagree.

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Five.

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The poem becomes a search
for the new structures

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that time makes when memory
becomes the living present.

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Six.

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I'm always a little puzzled
by the fetish for originality,

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yet participate in it fully.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Seven.

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Never paint a moving part."

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Please welcome Cole Swensen.

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[APPLAUSE]

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