WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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I cannot thank you all enough
for coming to this magnificent

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center for poetry, one of the
best places in the country

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and the world for poetry.

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And for that magnificent
introduction,

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thank you, Tyler,
Paola, Diana, OG Alison.

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This evening and this
house of literature

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have been made by so many hands
and I'm so happy to be back.

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And now I have to fulfill what
I thought I was going to do.

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I can't run out of
time because you have

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been promised all these things.

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So I'm going to begin
with one earlier poem.

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I wanted to honor that it
is National Poetry Month.

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And one of the things--

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I often start readings
with this poem

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because what I
want to acknowledge

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is how often there must be
poets working in languages

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we'll never see, in
places where perhaps there

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might be no chance
of publication

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at all, places that wouldn't
be translated into English.

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Everywhere in the world,
anywhere in the world,

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there is someone writing a poem
that changes all of our lives,

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whether we see it or not.

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And this poem is
to remember that.

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"The Poet."

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"She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one, the one

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where I write or you read.

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Her table is covered with paper.

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The light of the lamp
would be tempered

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by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might

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dissolve, but it is not,
she has taken it off.

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Her poems?

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I will never know them, though
they are the ones I most need.

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Even the alphabet she writes
in, I cannot decipher.

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Her chair-- let us imagine
whether it is leather

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or canvas, vinyl or wicker.

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Let her have a chair, her
shadeless lamp, the table.

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Let one or two she loves
be in the next room.

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Let the door be closed,
the sleeping ones healthy.

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Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes

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and go on."

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Thank you.

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