WEBVTT

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We're very happy and privileged
to have Jack Gilbert with us

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this evening.

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Jack's Views of Jeopardy
won the Yale Younger Poet

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Series in 1962, both that
book and Monolithos was

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published by Knopf in 1982 were
nominated for Pulitzer Prizes.

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In 1984, he published Kochan
with Tamarack Editions.

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And his most recent
collection, The Great Fires:

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Poems 1982- 1992 was
published by Knopf in 1994.

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He has been awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship,

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a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts,

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and a Lannan Foundation Award.

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Having said all
that, it is amazing

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how little I have said
about Jack Gilbert,

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a man so modest that he says his
photographs always flatter him.

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For more than four
decades, he has

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been living at the
heart of poetry

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while remaining apart
from the poetry scene.

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He writes about loving women,
not making love to women.

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He writes about things
that are themselves,

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about bleak but
magnificent landscapes

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both internal and external.

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And in recent years,
he writes about aging

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and about learning to
flower by tightening.

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This poet is-- and
these are his words--

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alone with the heart, howling.

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His work is a constant series of
beautiful inevitable surprises,

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just at the edge of silence.

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He always challenges the
reader and listener not

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to understand what he is saying.

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He's always clear,
but to open the door

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into an inner world,
another world,

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that promises to be disturbing.

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That door will open tonight.

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I'm honored to
present Jack Gilbert.

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[APPLAUSE]

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