WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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I do not remember writing that.

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I'm like, wow.

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Thank you, Richard.

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Thank you, Richard,
for reminding me

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and thank you for being here.

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And thank you, everybody,
for being here.

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I really appreciate it.

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Tyler, thank you for
being an amazing host.

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Paola, thank you for making sure
I had chocolate and everybody

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at the Poetry Center.

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It's been a very
fruitful eight days,

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and I have made
headway on some things.

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So I'm very glad.

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I just want to tell
you this because it'll

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give you a context for what
I'm going to do this evening.

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So I wrote this essay about
studying with the poet Charles

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Simic when I was
in my early 20s.

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And Tyler wrote me and said,
I just want you to know,

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I thought this essay was
great, and I loved it.

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And I wrote back, said, thank
you so much for telling me that.

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It's actually part of a
book that I'm working on.

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He goes, I was so hoping
you would say that.

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Do you want to come
and be the summer

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resident because the
Poetry Center would

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love to support this book.

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The book is about
becoming a poet.

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And so I was here
primarily working on prose,

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but it was prose about poetry.

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So what I'm going to do tonight
is I'm going to read four poems,

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and then I'm going to read an
essay that takes 21 minutes.

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And you can tell me afterwards
if this was a terrible mistake,

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but it's an essay about poetry.

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It's an essay about images,
and it's not thinky.

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It's memoir.

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This is basically a memoir
that I'm working on.

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So these are
personal stories that

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sometimes get a little thinky
because I can't help it.

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Thank you to the students
who took my class Tuesday.

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I think we had fun.

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Yes, we talked about surprise.

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