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The poems in Camille
Dungy's book What to Eat,

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What to Drink, What
to Leave for Poison

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address daunting
philosophical questions

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about language and self.

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Her sensitive
portrayals of people

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who seem to live and
breathe on the page

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make it possible for
Dungy to redefine

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abstract terms
like love and life

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into the very substance
of a world of language

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and of an exciting poetics.

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In "How Quickly He Went,"
"love was one slim woman

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with a nursing job in Illinois.

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Life was a small business, a
Gary tailor shop he could not

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sell until the war ended."

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Dungy's poems are fascinated
by the relationships

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people have with each other, and
with language, and with the way

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one's memories are
dictated by language.

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They are engaged in both the
same and in the not same,

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and her characters are created,
and in turn read, warmly

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and affectionately.

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The always present
intelligence behind the poems

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delve briefly into what it
means for these characters

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to be and to say in a
world constructed of steel

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words, iron words, stone words.

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The world Dungy
constructs in her poems

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is always careful, and at times
subtle, but always stubbornly

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solid.

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The repeated phrase
we have language

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to describe a
woman like that, we

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have plenty of words to
describe a woman with that,

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implicates us-- anyone
who uses language.

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And her speakers are
often spoken through

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by the collective culture,
using idioms of complacency

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in order to rouse the
reader from complacency.

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The connection between
memory, emotion, and language

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is made tangible
and Dungy's poems

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through the adeptness
with which she brings

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to the page a complex view of
the way language builds worlds,

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builds people.

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In addition to being the
author of a new book,

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Camille Dungy is assistant
editor of Gathering Ground:

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A Reader Celebrating Cave
Canem's First Decade,

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published in 2006 by the
University of Michigan Press.

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She has received fellowships
from the National Endowment

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for the Arts, the Virginia
Commission for the Arts,

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Cave Canem, and the American
Antiquarian Society,

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and she has been a John Atherton
Scholar at the Bread Loaf

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Writers' Conference, and
the Tennessee Williams

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Scholar at the Sewanee
Writers' Conference.

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Once the writer in residence at
Rocky Mountain National Park,

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Dungy has also been awarded
fellowships and residencies

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by the Norton Island
Eastern Frontier Society,

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the Corporation of
Yaddo, the Virginia

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Center for the Creative Arts,
and the Ragdale Foundation.

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A graduate of
Stanford University,

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and the University of North
Carolina, Greensboro MFA

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program, Dungy is currently
associate professor

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of Literature and
Creative Writing

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at Randolph-Macon Women's
College in Lynchburg, Virginia.

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Dungy will be making an
exciting move to San Francisco

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this fall, where she
will be a mere half

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hour from her favorite burrito
restaurant in the whole world.

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[CROWD CHUCKLES]

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She'll also of
course, be writing,

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and teaching creative writing at
San Francisco State University.

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Please help me
welcome Camille Dungy.

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[APPLAUSE]