WEBVTT

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And I'm really excited.

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I get to introduce John
Murillo, which is a great gift.

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He's a poet I admire
very, very much.

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And so I'm thrilled
to do that work now.

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And I want to tell you that
there are a range of reasons

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to love our spring poet in
residence here at the Poetry

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Center, John Murillo.

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Some of you might
remember Murillo as one

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of the Poetry Center's Art
for Justice ambassadors

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from the Art for
Justice Project.

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And that was a project-- it was
an inquiry into the intersection

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of the imaginative
life of language

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and the American addiction
to incarceration.

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By extension, it's also about
the human dimensions everywhere

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apparent in those crossroads.

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We're thrilled to partner with
John through that project.

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But here are some
other remarkable things

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to know about John.

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He's here this week and next,
working on an introduction

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to a forthcoming
collection of translations

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from the Spanish poet
Rafael Alberti, which

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is forthcoming from
Four Way Books.

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He's also here
working on new poems.

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They're finding
their way as well.

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But this introduction
needs to get

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done so that book can come out.

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With the poet Nicole
Sealey, Murillo

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has put out a call
for work earlier

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on celebrating the great
poet, Yusef Komunyakaa.

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And those pieces have been
pulled together, edited.

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And they'll form a
new anthology that's

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coming out this fall
that's entitled Dear Yusef,

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featuring a chorus
of poets celebrating

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their connections
back to Komunyakaa

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and the great influence of
Komunyakaa on American poetry.

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And that's an amazing
book to look forward

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to and a book to celebrate while
Komunyakaa can also celebrate it

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with us.

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And we're really excited
about that book's presence

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in the world and
its soon arrival.

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But also in partnership with
Wesleyan University Press,

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Murillo has helped launch the
Cardinal Prize for poets over 40

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who are publishing a first book.

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Quote: "A unique
opportunity for serious

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poets who have taken
their time and decided

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not to rush publication--
for the studious, rigorous,

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midnight-oil-burning, patient
ones who are finally satisfied

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that they have something
worthy of readers."

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That's a pretty awesome prize.

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And it deserves
round of applause

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for putting it together.

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[APPLAUSE]

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So if you've got a book and
you meet those qualifications,

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this is your moment.

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And if you've got a book and you
don't meet those qualifications,

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just wait a little bit.

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Eventually, you'll get there.

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So these are all reasons
to be excited and celebrate

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Murillo's work, and his
interest in the field of poetry,

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and in nurturing other
poets, and his interest

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in lineage, and forebears,
but also in the future.

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But of course, there are
also his remarkable poems,

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which are at once both
a kind of lyrical mirror

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and to which a reader
might peer and see

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the complexity of the
human predicament with all

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the influencing aspects that
define it staring back out.

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Or this country, both the
shine and the muck of it,

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or a kind of
wayfinding masculinity

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that can, at turns, reveal
brutality and tenderness,

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resolve and brokenness,
like a nickel oscillating

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through the wishing well of
how we come to know who we are

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and what we might be.

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Love, and desire, and grief, and
loss are everywhere apparent--

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the persistence despite
what conspires against them.

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And all of this, what I think
of as the heaviest, imaginable

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freight a poem can carry is
handled with astonishing care

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and honesty and
rigor in the poems

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so that one recognizes the
poet's dedication to craft.

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One recognizes the
poet's dedication

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to craft, yes, but even
more so a dedication

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to the history of the art
form in which he participates,

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and also to us as readers.

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It looks like I'm going to cry.

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And I do love the
poems that much.

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But really, it's a
little bit in my throat.

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But the tears are
genuine, that too.

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I think even in the
poems, that's true.

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Thoreau famously said
that God culminates

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in the present moment, a kind of
inclusive theology that suggests

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both manyness and
singularity, that

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suggests the power of
expression and attention,

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but especially prioritizes
those who are around,

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who are present in the
moment to do the attending.

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It is the sentiment
of the divine

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that celebrates the living.

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Murillo's first collection,
Up Jump the Boogie,

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was heralded as the arrival
of a significant new voice.

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Reading Murillo's Kingsley
Tufts Prize-winning collection,

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Kontemporary Amerikan
Poetry, it is hard

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not to feel the many traditions
that animate the field of poetry

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culminating between its covers.

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Its manyness is but also its
singularity, the way the book

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references Elizabeth
Bishop, or Gil Scott-Heron,

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or Dylan Thomas, or Larry
Levis, or Keats, or Marvin Gaye,

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or the Notorious BIG.

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They're all there, all filtered
through the singular intellect

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of a visionary craftsman.

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I'm so thrilled that
you are all here

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to help pay attention
with me tonight

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in this present moment to
one of my favorite poets.

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Please help me welcome
our spring poet

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in residence, John Murillo.

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[APPLAUSE]

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