WEBVTT

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It's a long walk.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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Stephanie, thank you so much
for that beautiful introduction.

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I hope I can live up to it.

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And thank you all
for being here.

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I want to thank Michael Spurgeon
and the Borchard Foundation,

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and Diana Delgado, and everyone,
everyone at the Poetry Center.

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It is a home away
from home for me.

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I've been here,
reading several times.

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It always feels like
a haven, a place--

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one of those true
kind of way stops,

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or ends for the weary traveler.

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Because here I know
that people are--

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you're reading poetry, you're
living it, you're breathing it,

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and communing spirit to spirit.

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That's what it's
all about, right?

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So I was thinking about this--

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the theme for the
festival, and that it

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is community, which, to
me, I feel like poems are,

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in a sense--

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it's the best kind of
community there can be.

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And it's an honor,
therefore, for me to be

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able to read to you tonight.

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I'm going to be reading from
Playlist for the Apocalypse.

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I never know exactly what
I'm going to be reading.

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The poem that Stephanie
had just quoted,

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"Demeter's Prayer to
Hades," it's special for me

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because at the moment, some of
those words are on their way

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to Jupiter.

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They're in a space capsule.

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So I think it's kind of amazing.

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I don't know what those aliens
are going to make of it,

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but hey, what the heck.

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I'm going to make sure
that I can do this right.