WEBVTT

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So I started doing this work,
to be more matter of fact,

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in about 1979 in a class at
the University of Wisconsin

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after having spent a
week in the company when

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I was working towards a PhD,
and I went to a conference.

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I spent a week in the company
of the poets Robert Duncan

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and Robert Creeley and Ed Dorn.

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And I think coming
to some realization

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that there were things I could
do in this world around poetry

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that weren't going to lead me
to be a professor of English

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and it turned out I was in
an ideal place in Madison,

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Wisconsin at the time to
learn to make handmade books.

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And I've done that ever since,
although also publishing

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trade paperbacks in
the last 15 years

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so that aren't all handmade.

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And I think one of
the challenge I'm--

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two challenges I'm trying
to face now or one, how

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to bring aspects of the
kind of really creative work

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I want to do with books
in ways that maybe

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aren't all handmade
that can be made

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and dispersed more widely
than the limited editions

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you have here.

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And make the work I make on
really limited edition books.

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I've got myself to
a point that I only

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want to make those if it's a
real artistic challenge to me.

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And so those books are
sometimes smaller editions.

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Actually, I did my
first one of a kind book

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last year, a book for--

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it says about a year
and a half ago--

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for an exhibit at the University
of Arizona art museum on--

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called Love and
Terror in which I

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traced the appearance of those
words and ideas about them

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throughout American poetry
history from Anne Bradstreet

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to Myung Mi Kim.

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And it had just individual
lines on big pages

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about this size in an
accordion fold book

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but the whole thing was
I think like 21 feet

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long when spread out.

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And then each page
was hand-painted

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and hands splattered with
paint looking like blood.

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And probably ended up being
too elegant to really suggest

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blood, but in some ways it did.

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And that's something
that interests me now.

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What can I do in the
studio and actually

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get done in two or three
days even as opposed

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to sometimes the half a year
or a year or more than a year

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that some of these books
have taken to come together?

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Any questions?

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I'm happy to answer anything.

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Actually, why don't we ask
you those further questions?

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OK, what questions?

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Are you going to
be able to stay?

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Yeah?

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I hope so.

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OK.

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OK.

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Now I'm sure.

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I'll try.

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OK.

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All right.

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So thank you, Charles.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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