
Nicholas Gulig: “Book of Shore”
Clip | 4mVideo has Closed Captions
Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig narrates his poem "Book of Shore."
Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig narrates his Lake Superior-themed poem, "Book Of Shore" over footage of the lake. "Book of Shore" appears in Gulig's award-winning poetry collection "The Other Altar."
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Welcome Poets is a local public television program presented by PBS Wisconsin
Major funding for "Welcome Poets" is provided by the Fort Atkinson Community Foundation, Peter and Connie Roop, the Focus Fund for the Arts and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Nicholas Gulig: “Book of Shore”
Clip | 4mVideo has Closed Captions
Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig narrates his Lake Superior-themed poem, "Book Of Shore" over footage of the lake. "Book of Shore" appears in Gulig's award-winning poetry collection "The Other Altar."
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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[gentle music] - Nicholas Gulig: Superior, by which I mean the lake was not as much as we imagined it.
A synonym or else the surface cold because the light was catastrophic in the distance.
No.
The water made of its appearances.
The presence of a promise forming shore, the waves repeating and repeatable.
I had thought that I was making up, was therefore under it, the sky was strange within the world at once upon but not itself belonging.
We looked away were other than and then the day was not of what between us edged growing into sand the dark dissolve to something less than brilliance the wind within itself a distance yet again, a distance.
I had thought to ask it everything.
Our voices almost mattered making sense, the lake is every kind of blue today, you said, it is and it is cold, I know, but what will come of it tomorrow.
I can't pretend what's left that we without ourselves are shaking, made of this material.
Or maybe it, what was it only mattered into, formed itself from nothing new, a sound I said, or else I only listened to or thought to try but couldn't say existence is an exit we have traced our lives to find it thus, the line the trees have made behind themselves, green and gray where people aged alone in separate languages, the shade in which increasingly their names became mechanical, becoming difference, always difference, as if no other shore of light to hollow out or follow, no path behind us, leading each into each other here, where it, whatever is is never certain, love, unless alone that we are possible in this, the unkempt vacancies of how between the beautiful and full of loss, that I might reach for you and find not only clarity, but solitude, a terror turned to wonder, tuned to our despair [gentle music]
Preview | 1m | Nicholas Gulig explores place and belonging through the legacy of Wisconsin poet Lorine Niedecker. (1m)
Video has Closed Captions
Clip | 9m 9s | Former Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig reads his poem "Ommatidia." (9m 9s)
Nicholas Gulig: “Book of Shore”
Video has Closed Captions
Clip | 4m | Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig narrates his poem "Book of Shore." (4m)
Lorine Niedecker: Poetry Selections
Video has Closed Captions
Clip | 2m 9s | Three brief excerpts of poetry from the late Wisconsin poet Lorine Niedecker. (2m 9s)
Lorine Niedecker: “Foreclosure”
Video has Closed Captions
Clip | 1m | The late Wisconsin poet Lorine Niedecker reads her poem "Foreclosure" in a 1970 recording. (1m)
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Welcome Poets is a local public television program presented by PBS Wisconsin
Major funding for "Welcome Poets" is provided by the Fort Atkinson Community Foundation, Peter and Connie Roop, the Focus Fund for the Arts and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.