WEBVTT

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Hi, everybody.

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"I have a friend who everyone
warns me is dangerous.

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He hides bloody images of
Jesus around my house for me

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to find when I come home--

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Jesus behind the cupboard door,
Jesus tucked into the mirror.

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He wants to save me, but
we disagree from what.

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My version of hell is someone
ripping open his shirt

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and saying, look
what I did for you."

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That's from Nick Flynn's
poem "Emptying Town," which

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was my first
sighting of the poet

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in the issue of
"Ploughshares" around 1990

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that Marie Howe edited.

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This was the bio-sketch
in that issue.

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Nicholas Flynn was born in
Scituate, Massachusetts,

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in 1960.

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He earned his undergraduate
degree, finally,

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from the University of
Massachusetts in 1990.

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In the interim, he
worked in Boston

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for six years with homeless
adults as a caseworker.

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He's also been a
photographer, an electrician,

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a founding member of
a cooperative gallery,

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and a ship's captain.

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In 1991, 1992, he was a writing
fellow at the Fine Arts Work

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Center.

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He now lives in Brooklyn
and is working towards an MA

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at New York University.

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He has been writing for as
long as he can remember.

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Since then, of course,
he's become a renowned poet

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and person publishing
two books of poetry,

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another book about how to teach
poetry, and the much-praised

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and rightly so bestselling
memoir, Another Bullshit

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Night in Suck City.

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He teaches at the University
of Houston in the MFA program

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and almost every summer, in
the Fine Arts Work Center

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at Provincetown and sometimes
in the NYU creative writing

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program.

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He also lives in
Athens, New York.

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Mr. Flynn's first
book, Some Ether,

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was a book about
tragedy and family

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and of overcoming tragedy
by the hard work of memory.

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It was a book about
God forgetting us,

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about black parrots and
blue Sherlock Holmes

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and also about mice.

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Startlingly different
was Blind Huber.

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It tells the life
story of a beekeeper

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and the corporate life of
bees, both from the inside.

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And it's curiously about history
and the necessity of history

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for all of our lives.

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A Note Slipped Under the Door--

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Teaching from Poems We Love
is a book I've never seen

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and is therefore very
mysterious to me.

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But I think it's about teaching
people to teach kids to write.

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Nick is a good teacher.

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Lastly, the memoir, Another
Bullshit Night in Suck City

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is, of course, about
fathers and sons--

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lost fathers and lost sons.

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And about recovery
from being lost.

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Here are two
illustrative fragments

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from the Ulysses chapter.

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"Many fathers are gone,
some leave, some are left.

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Some return, unknown and hungry.

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Only the dog remembers.

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Even if around, most
disappear all day, to jobs

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their children only
slightly understand."

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And, "Some part of me
knew he would show up,

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that if I stood in
one place long enough,

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he would find me, like you're
taught to do when you're lost.

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But they never taught us what
to do if both of you are lost

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and you both end up in
the same place, waiting."

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Please welcome the
poet Nick Flynn.

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[APPLAUSE]