WEBVTT

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Thank you for that, Tyler.

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That was a-- thank you.

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That's all I can say, thank you.

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Thank you to Tyler,
thank you to Paola.

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Thank you to Diana Delgado
as well, who isn't here

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and thank you all for all
of you for being here.

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It's a real pleasure.

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I was born in Tucson
roughly 43 years ago.

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So it's a real pleasure
not to be too specific.

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But it's a real, real
pleasure to be back here

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at this place has
always been such

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a large part of my identity
and a huge part of my poetics

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as well when think
about the idea

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of the expansive
landscapes and saguaros

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and everything like that.

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So it's a real
delight to be here.

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And I'm delighted.

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As a poet, I'm already
running out of my words.

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So I'm going to read the
first poem in the collection.

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This is called
"The Bell System."

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And it refers to
Mary, Jane and Pat,

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who are the first
names of the women who

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lent their voices to the Bell
system's automated telephone

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system.

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So if you, like me, remember a
time before digital telephone

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technology back when
you would dial a number,

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and a person wasn't there,
you'd get that little dial tone

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and go doo doo doo.

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And then you'd have this lovely
soothing female voice telling

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you that the person you're
looking for is no longer there,

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but you should hang
up and try again.

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And what's more
American than that?

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The people you're
looking for are now gone.

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But you should keep looking
for them nonetheless.

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And they function
somewhat as a Greek chorus

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or like a spirit guide
throughout the book.

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"The Bell System."

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Good night, Mary, Jane, Pat.

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Sleep tight, you sweet
operators of America.

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Your voices strung like
laundry across this nation,

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drowsy with a full
century's worth of light.

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There's nothing
you can't tell me

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that I haven't already
heard gift wrapped

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in your general American grace.

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But still, I wonder in what
chamber of a horse's ant eaten

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skull I'll recover my youth.

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Our human garden grows rich
in these green suburbs.

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And what I feel is not so
much loss as a lessening,

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as if the self was nothing
more than a late model

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sedan crossing the city limit
in search of a better resale

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value.

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It's funny this
franchise of molecules

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that fizzes up in each
of us like motels,

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viral along the
interstate, some full,

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while others flicker and die.

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When will the stars rain
down like cheap plaster?

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When will language be little
more than a dandruff shaken

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from my head?

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Ladies, you tell me the
number I've been calling

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has been disconnected.

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But where did the person
it belonged to go?

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Alone on the line, I
find only a prairie

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alive with funneled
wind, a nation

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heavy with wheat and
light, its chorus

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of dim voices locked in a
kind of pharmaceutical sleep.

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I find a system unchanged,
charged with electrical pulses

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that send the receiver scurrying
in their cradle, the long hand

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breath of ghosts rising
through switchboards to ask

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who's there?

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Will tell me who is there?

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Who goes?

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Ladies, please wake up.

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I want to try again.

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