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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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Hey, everybody.

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I want to really start
by thanking the Poetry

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Center, its staff, and donors
for making the summer residency

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program possible.

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I know that the gift
of uninterrupted time

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doubles back to us
in the form of art

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and all the possibility
that art opens.

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It's my great honor
to welcome to Tucson,

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my friend, Angel Dominguez.

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Angel is a Latinx
poet and artist

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of Yucatec Maya descent,
born in Hollywood

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and raised by their immigrant
family in Van Nuys, California.

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They're the author
of Desgraciado:

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(The Collected
Letters) that came out

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from Nightboat Books
in 2022, as well

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as the author of the poetry
collections RoseSunWater

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and Black Lavender Milk.

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You can find
Angel's words online

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and in print in
various publications,

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including BOMB Magazine, the
Berkeley Poetry Review, FENCE,

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Prolit magazine, SFMOMA's
Open Space, and elsewhere.

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But to really try to do
my job here and make way

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for Angel, what I
want to remind us of

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is that there are friends
we meet if we're lucky,

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whose resonance tilts
the whole universe.

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I met Angel in 2014 when
my partner Susan Briante

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and I got to co-teach a workshop
at Naropa University's Summer

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Writing Program.

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I clearly remember at least
two moments that summer

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when I looked into Angel's
eyes and experienced

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a sudden expansion of my
awareness, where I could almost

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feel other points in
the space time matrix

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hover around my head points
where Angel and I had

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been 1-- or 1 day will be.

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The effect is like
thinking you're educated

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and knowing that the earth
revolves around the sun,

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but then seeing the
animated graphic that

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shows the sun itself
orbits the milky way,

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that the planet's
elliptical orbits are

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in fact dynamic spirals, and
that the whole menagerie is

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cast out in a trajectory that
always eventually doubles back.

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The discipline of
literature can make

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art feel as static as that
old model of the solar system.

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But Angel sets us in motion
through lyric, epistolary,

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and narrative forms.

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Across those modes,
Angel's work travels

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tonal registers with associative
lyrics that can articulate

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irreconcilable mystery.

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While in other
moments, their work

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can speak almost against lyric
with a clarity and brevity

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that can deliver what Bruce
Lee called the One-Inch Punch.

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And Angel's work spirals
through space time off the page

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as well, expanding into
performance art, ritual,

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and song writing.

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Taken together, the ways
Angel's work orients me

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to the spiraling
universe makes me

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think we won't just
write our way out

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of this era of global boiling
as the UN has called it.

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Angel's work makes me think
that the book might matter

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a little less than the
social relations and rituals

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around the book.

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In other words, it's 2023.

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Aliens are real, gender is not.

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Fascism is real, money is not.

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And yet somehow,
we're still taking

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turns standing behind a podium?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Instead, Angel helps us dream
of gathering around a border

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patrol or police
station, for instance,

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reading poems that
might help state agents

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realize property and
borders are far less

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real than the resonance of
word and body, time, and space.

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Please welcome Angel Dominguez.

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[APPLAUSE]