WEBVTT

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Welcome, everybody.

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How's the sound?

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It ain't on, it
doesn't sound very on.

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It is on?

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Is it OK in the back?

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Is it OK, can you folks
here all around the room?

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All right, we're
going to let Rich play

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up there in the control tower.

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We have a control tower
in this auditorium

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for the audio system, so
it's a little high tech

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for us humble residents of the
Modern Languages Auditorium.

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I'd like to welcome everybody,
and I'd particularly

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like to thank the Center
for Creative Photography

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for sharing this
beautiful space with us.

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It's really great
to be able to have

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our reading in such a
hospitable environment,

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so thank you very much.

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And I know it meant extra
work on the part of some

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of the staff here,
so we appreciate it.

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I'd like to make a
few announcements,

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there are quite a lot
of literary activities

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happening this week in town.

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And just to remind
you of some of them,

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Wednesday here at 5
o'clock, John Nichols

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will be giving a reading
and signing books.

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Thursday at Pima Community
College, a poet, a really

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wonderful poet and
fiction writer Ben Sines

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will be in town, giving a
reading in their series.

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And next week, on Wednesday,
Brazilian poet Adelia Prado

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will be reading with her
US translator Ellen Watson.

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That will be a bilingual reading
in Portuguese and English,

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that will be in the usual
place, 8 o'clock in the Modern

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Languages Auditorium.

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And there'll be
a open discussion

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in the afternoon preceding
the reading at 1:30

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on the art of
literary translation.

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So I'd encourage you all to
come to those events, which I

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think will be pretty exciting.

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Tonight I'm very happy
to welcome and introduce

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my countrymen from
the Northeast, where

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I hail from as well.

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Hayden Carruth was born in
Waterbury, Connecticut in 1921.

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And as Adrienne Rich has
said, he's loved the art,

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and lived the life of
poetry for many years.

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He's published 22
books of poetry,

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now gathered with new work in
a really extraordinary volume,

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Collected Shorter
Poems 1946 to 1991,

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which is published by
Copper Canyon Press.

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He also edited the important
20th century anthology,

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The Voice That is
Great Within Us,

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still in print amazingly enough.

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He's the author of several
books of essays and a novel.

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He has won many awards,
including a Guggenheim, an NEA,

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and particularly, in 1988, the
senior fellowship from the NEA.

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And as many of us
know, he's served

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as an editor for both Poetry
magazine and Harper's Magazine.

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When I call him a
contemporary master

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for the range of his work,
for his improvised forms,

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such as the paragraph
and essay poems,

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as well as his work in received
forms, for the tonal range

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of his work, rural
narratives with the twang

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of everyday talk, the staggering
poems of witness from what

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he terms "the crazy house,"
the sexual poems, metaphysical

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poems, political, neighborly
poems, he's written them all.

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But to call him a master would
be to call poetry his slave.

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Instead I think he has
been one of poetry's most

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devoted guardians, and for
that we owe him great thanks.

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Please welcome Hayden Carruth.

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[APPLAUSE]

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