WEBVTT

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We welcome you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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And I want to say happy 60th
anniversary to the University

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of Arizona Poetry Center.

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I appreciate this
opportunity to participate

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in this convening by the
Institute for Inquiry

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and Poetics on the theme
of "Beyond the Obvious."

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And I hope that the dialogue
that we engage in today

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finds a way to continue.

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I'm going to share the three
poems that I referenced

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in my essay "Searching
for Language,"

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which is to be published on the
University of Arizona Poetry

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Center blog.

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Most of my poems that have
a public presence overtly

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political, and although
I believe that everything

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is political, not all my poems
are overtly or specifically

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political in nature.

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One of the points of my essay
"Searching for Language"

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is to illustrate that
language, at least the language

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of my poems, ultimately
flow from the form,

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from the purpose of the poem.

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And "Not Even the San
Joaquin" is a love poem

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that I wrote to my wife,
Patricia Zamora, in which I

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try to capture the
emotion of loss

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and the sense of
being lost caused

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by six months of separation
before reuniting with her as we

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return to live in California
from Chicago after years

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in Chicago.

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And it is published in
my second book of poetry

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from Tia Chucha Press,
The Armageddon of Funk.

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I'm going to share
that with you now.

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Not Even the San Joaquin,
to Patricia Zamora.

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"At nature's intervals of light
and darkness you are missing,

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I may seem unaware as other
voices words, obsessions,

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and untamed terms for
the next completion

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clutter what I breathe.

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These are simply
everyday secessions.

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You are ever flowing,
where you normally fly,

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circle, land, and
create inside me

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seems empty until at
least I hear your song.

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Missed is too mundane a word.

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In truth, you are never gone.

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You are spun into what I am
made of, and so you are with me.

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Missed but not missing, your
absence measured in change,

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a part of Chicago stolen.

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My emotion reduced to one
room, my wanderings alone,

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my days adrift, my balance bent.

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You bring the invincible
joy that escapes me.

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Love is too mundane a word.

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Still, I speak it to you.

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Within the stuttering unromantic
uttering is my devotion.

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The reach of your
radiance is endless.

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It spans continents.

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So we are near in this
dictatorship of distance.

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Still, I want to be not
merely near you, but with you

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with no values
between our worlds."