WEBVTT

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OK.

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It is a daunting task
introducing Billy Collins

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because he's introduced day in,
day out, all over the country,

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all of the time.

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What can be said that
hasn't been already

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said 100 times over?

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His distinguished prizes and
award-winning publications

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are at the tips of
your fingers in a bio

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on the back of your books.

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I know you've bought
many already for signing.

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So to help me introduce Billy,
and hope all those poets

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with whom he seems in his
poems to be in conversation.

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In 1797, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge projecting 200 years

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into the future writes, "My
friend struck with deep joy

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may stand, as I have stood,
silent with swimming sense.

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Yea, gazing round on
the wide landscape,

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gaze till all doth
seem less gross

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than bodily, and of such hues
as veil the Almighty spirit."

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Emily Dickinson, in 1862,
predicts Billy Collins

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as she writes--

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[LAUGHTER]

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"He fumbles at your soul
as players at the keys

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before they drop full music
on, he stuns you by degrees."

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[APPLAUSE]

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In 2005, Jerry Brown
emphatically queries

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and implores, "Something
keeps you up at night,

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something must, what isn't?

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What is it keeps
you up at night?

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Let no one persuade
you you do not exist."

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And in 2008, the year of
"Ballistics," Collins himself,

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I suspect, would introduce us
not to Billy, but to Snowflake,

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an albino gorilla, the
inhabitant of a park

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where the Citadel of
Bourbons once stood.

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It is the Snowflake who
keeps the [? poet ?] up

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at night, pallid flame kept
alive in a cage of a poem.

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Billy Collins may or
may not be Snowflake,

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but one thing is for
sure, he is the sort

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of being of which no
two are exactly alike.

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Today, in 2009, join me
to welcome Billy Collins.

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[APPLAUSE]

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