WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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I would like to thank the Tucson
Festival of Books organizers

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and also the University
of Arizona Poetry Center

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for inviting me here for
this first year, which I know

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is going to be just the first
of many successful poetry

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festivals here.

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Tony mentioned that I'm at
Austin Peay State University

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right now, and the rallying
cry at all the athletic events

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is, let's go Peay,
which I think is one

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of the best I've ever heard.

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So I'm going to read some
poems from my first book

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that I wrote near the end
of writing of that book

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that really looked
and led me forward

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to poems I wrote afterward.

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And these are really
Buddhist-inspired.

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I've been a student
of Kyozan Joshu

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Roshi, a 101-year-old Japanese
Zen master out of California,

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for about 20 years.

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So I'm not saying these
are really Buddhist

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poetics, but Buddhist-inspired.

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And then I'll read some poems
from translations that I did

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of Jóhann Hjálmarsson's work.

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"What Jarrell and
I have in common--

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I lost all my scabs
in public pools,

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believing wholeheartedly in
the properties of chlorine,

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a soft, white membrane
that overnight becomes

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an opaque drum, which
will curl from the edges

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as it heals around the
exact center of the wound.

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A basalt stone, compromised by
rain, sudden cold, and thaws,

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can slowly crease
around its core,

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leaving successive
rings, even a heart.

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A stone you pick up by
chance splits apart,

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and within it, a face.

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The resemblance is long
on you, so that this event

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is like a mystery or miracle
you don't want to overthink,

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because we all know a
discarded persona when

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we stumble over one.

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And what's more,
you have the proof--

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patches of yellowing
amaranths creeping down

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the flinty basin, a version
of heaven that borrows

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your body, bursting skin."

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