WEBVTT

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It's a particular delight
to hear and to read

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with Alicia Ostriker.

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We have been friends
forever, even if it's only

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her digital presence.

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Alicia and I were born
the same year, 1937,

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into the rise of
fascism in Europe.

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What's happening here is a
heartbreaking deja vu for us.

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The last generation
dying off now

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with a living memory of
World War II and the horrors

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unleashed by a dictator with a
mad doctrine of a master race.

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I think we are all trying to
keep our heads just now and keep

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our sympathies alive.

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I was thinking Cynthia
mentioned Tony Hoagland.

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I always like to mention Tony.

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In a poem of his
that he published--

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I'm going off my script.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Actually, his wife
published it posthumously.

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It's a poem called
"The Gorgons."

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The world history is the gorgon.

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And Tony ends the
poem by saying,

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"your job is to keep
looking, take notes,

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and not turn to stone"

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And I think poetry
helps us with that.

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And also, in a time when the
connection between language

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and meaning has been
torn, and torn purposely,

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poetry has a way of calling
things by the right name.

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So in memory of the
recent victims of ICE,

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the poet Renee Good and
the ICU nurse Alex Pretti,

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killed out of concern
for their neighbors,

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in memory of those survivors
clinging to the boat off

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the coast of Venezuela, in
memory of those whose names we

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don't know, I'd like to begin
with a poem by Robert Frost,

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because it seems written for us,
for this moment, "Fire and Ice."

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Some say the world
will end in fire.

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Some say in ice.

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From what I've tasted of desire

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I hold with those
who favor fire.

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But if it had to perish twice,

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I think I know enough of hate

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To say that for destruction ice

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Is also great

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And would suffice.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Robert.

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You'll find a bust
of him out there

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in the front of
the Poetry Center.

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You get to be turned to
stone, right, Robert?