WEBVTT

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Oh, he's gone.

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Hopefully you're still here.

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Is he still here?

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OK, good.

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Hi, Michael.

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Thank you so much
for that reading.

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And that last poem
is truly a blessing.

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And many, many, many
thanks to all the people

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that have brought me here.

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To Bojan Louis, and Tyler
at the Poetry Center,

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and the University of Arizona
English Department, and Ander,

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you helped out so much,
and all the people

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that I'm not naming
that helped out a lot.

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Thank you.

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It is so beautiful to be here.

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I forgot how beautiful
the desert is.

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And I'm just-- so as
Michael was reading,

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so I'm staying in that little
cottage right next door.

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And last night, there
was an event in here.

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And I was sitting on the other
side of the wall, listening.

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And it felt like I was secretly
inside this other event.

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And then later that night, I
was imagining all the voices

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of the poems in that
library, that we all

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have access to because
of the Poetry Center.

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And listening to
Michael read, I was just

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imagining continuing to hear his
voice in that last poem, which

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would be very helpful to
me, to hear that last poem

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every difficult day.

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And I thought, what
would it be like

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if we heard all
at the same time--

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what was it?

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I wrote this down today.

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The number of poems--

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maybe it's in my other notebook.

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I heard Tyler say this--

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600,000-- 60,000?

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6 million poems in that library.

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What would it be like to hear
all of them, all at once?

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And then to bring in
the young people that

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are going to read
their poems next week,

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and to hear their
voices all at once.

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And what would we hear if all
those voices were layered?

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Which makes me
think about poetry

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as an act of deep listening.

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I think that is what poetry is.

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And I just love that thought of
listening to every single poem

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layered, and what would we hear
if we put them all together?

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Hopefully, whatever
we need to hear.

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