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The public funding
for the Arts has

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been under fairly
vicious assault

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for the past several years.

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President Clinton
has recommended

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a substantial
increase and has taken

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what we would say a
stand of integrity

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in support of the
arts this year.

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And those decisions
are coming right up

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in the legislature as to whether
the NEA will survive or have

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level funding or
perhaps may begin

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to approach the level of
funding it's had in the past.

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So March 11th has been set as a
national day for arts advocacy.

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And if you don't generally
do the telegram, postcard,

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telephone call type of
action but you want to now

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for this cause, we
have put together

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a few sheets of information
that will give you

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the necessary details,
and those are out

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on the table in the
corridor when you leave.

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The arts advocacy
day is next Tuesday,

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March 11th and I
would urge you to do

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at the very least a
communication to the president

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encouraging him to continue to
stick his neck out on behalf

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of public support for the Arts.

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I'm really delighted to be able
to introduce Marie Howe to you.

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It's a poet that I have admired
for many, many years, someone

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whose emotional courage has
been an inspiration to me

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and many other writers.

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Marie Howe received her MFA
from Columbia University

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and has had fellowships at
the Fine Arts Work Center

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in Provincetown, the Bunting
Institute at Radcliffe College

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and from the NEA among
other distinctions.

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Her first book,
The Good Thief, was

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selected by Margaret Atwood for
the 1987 National Poetry Series.

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A new book of poems,
What the Living Do,

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will be out in the
fall from Norton.

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She edited with Michael Klein
In the Company of my Solitude:

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American Writing from
the AIDS Epidemic.

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An eloquent body of witness to
that grim trial in our time.

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Stanley Kunitz, the
poet, teacher, and mentor

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to many poets,
including Marie Howe,

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has said that poetry
must transform

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and transcend, that necessity
presents a difficult challenge

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to the poet who
would bear witness

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to the emotional hardships
of family and intimate life.

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To those experiences,
which we have been taught

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are unspeakable but
which compel us to speak.

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Maurice-- Marie Howe poems use
the apparently simple elements

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of image, narrative, and
allusion, often Biblical,

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to make poems that
find in the joys

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and terrors of bodily existence
that most ungodly aspect:

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spirit.

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Her poems enact the
essential artistic law

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that the passion for
form can momentarily

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set the disordered
world into order.

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Please, welcome Marie Howe.

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[APPLAUSE]

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