WEBVTT

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Welcome, everybody.

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I'm very happy that
you're here tonight,

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and we're delighted to
welcome Lynn Emanuel.

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She's been on the tour of
Arizona for a few days.

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She's read up at ASU in
Tempe, and at Yavapai college

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up in Prescott.

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So she may be a bit
road weary, but we're

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delighted that we managed
to get her here nonetheless.

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Lynn Emanuel is the author
of three books of poetry,

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Oblique Light, published by
Slow Loris Press, Hotel Fiesta,

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published by the
University of Georgia,

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and most recently,
The Dig, published

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by the University of Illinois.

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That book was chosen
by Gerald Stern

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as one of five books published
in the 1992 National Poetry

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Series competition.

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Lynn currently is an
associate professor

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at the University of Pittsburgh.

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Molly Peacock says
that Emanuel writes

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in the tradition of the
poet Empress Li Qingzhao,

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exploring feminine
wiles, only the wiles

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here are born of poverty
in the American West.

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I'm not sure about the empress
business, or the feminine wiles.

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If forced to make
a big claim, I'd

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say that Emanuel has
brought dirt poor Ely,

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Nevada into American
poetics in the way

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that Frank O'Hara brought New
York City into American poetics.

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She writes both frontal and
charged narrative poems,

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like "The Planet
Krypton" and some

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which are pleasingly oblique,
such as the poem, "We,

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the Poems of America," in which
the poems call themselves runs

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of bad luck trying to make
the connection between you

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and the small potatoes.

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We're delighted
that Lynn is here.

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Please welcome Lynn Emanuel.

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[APPLAUSE]

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