The Full Text of “Cozy Apologia”
The Full Text of “Cozy Apologia”
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“Cozy Apologia” Introduction
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“Cozy Apologia” is a poem by Rita Dove, the former Poet Laureate of the United States. First published in 2004, the poem meditates on the difference between romance and reality. Although the speaker’s relationship doesn’t live up to the ideals of teenage crushes and romance novels, the speaker defends her relationship. Indeed, as it's title makes clear, the purpose of the poem is to defend the ordinary, the everyday, the "cozy"—it is an “apologia” or poem of defense. The rewards of such mundane pleasures, the speaker argues, are deeper and richer than anything romantic fantasy can offer.
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“Cozy Apologia” Summary
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I could think about anything in the world and it would lead me back to you: even the lamp on my desk, the quiet rain, the blue ink that comes out of my pen drying on the page. I could think of any hero, fighting for any cause, at any point in history, and you’ll be there as sure as an arrow shot through the heart from horseback, your legs braced in the stirrups. Your brow will be furrowed, concentrated, your armor glittering; you’ll be there to set me free, smiling at me with one eye, your other eye staring down the enemy.
This modern world is all business, no romance: CDs and faxes, a risk-free get-it-over-with attitude. Today a hurricane is moving slowly up the coast. It has a weirdly male name: Floyd, Big Bad Floyd. The hurricane brings a flood of memories and day dreams: teenage crushes on silly boys who were only good at kissing. They all had girly names like Marcel, Percy, and Dewey. They were as skinny as a stick of licorice and just as chewy. They were sweet but they had a hollow center.
Floyd’s cursing as he comes up the coast. You’re hunkered down in your office and I’m in mine: both of us with desks, computers, hardwood floors. We’re happy enough, but our romance isn’t heavenly. Still I’m embarrassed by how happy we are. I mean, who’s satisfied with just what’s healthy? When has it ever been worth writing a love poem about an ordinary relationship? Yet, nothing else will keep away my sadness (you could call it the blues): so I fill these stolen moments with thoughts of you.
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“Cozy Apologia” Themes
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The Reality of Love and Romance
“Cozy Apologia” meditates on the pleasures and rewards of a mature, stable relationship. Though the speaker enjoys such a relationship, she finds “this happiness” to be a little bit “embarrassing” because it doesn’t live up to the ideals and clichés of romantic passion. But the poem is an "Apologia"—a poem dedicated to defending an idea, a “Cozy Apologia." It is committed to the value of the mundane pleasures of everyday life. Though such life may not be the stuff of romance novels—passionate, violent, and sexy—the speaker insists that her relationship is better than anything those novels can offer: compared to the sweet but empty pleasures of teenage fantasy, it offers real relief from life’s sorrows and pains.
Over the course of the poem, the speaker meditates on the discrepancy between her passion for her lover and the mundane, bland world in which their love exists. At first, no matter what she thinks about, her mind turns to her lover—even the ink coming out of her pen reminds her of him. This is a testament to the power of their love, which has captivated her entirely. In the poem’s first stanza, she expresses this passion in relatively clichéd terms: she imagines her husband as a “hero” in armor, riding a “dappled mare” coming to save her from “the enemy.”
But soon enough the speaker realizes that these dreamy, romantic images are a bit ridiculous in this “post-postmodern age.” They don’t fit with the mundane, everyday realities of life in America in the late 1990s, with its “compact disks / And faxes.” Indeed, such romantic fantasies seem a little juvenile or naive to the speaker: they remind her of “teenage crushes on worthless boys”—as violent and powerful as hurricanes, but also with “hollow center[s],” just like hurricanes. Such overly dramatic love is not real, not lasting: it is “sweet” but ultimately empty and hollow.
Thus even though the speaker’s love may seem less powerful and less passionate, it ultimately meaningful and strong. As the poem closes the speaker and her lover are in their separate offices: they’re working, not kissing each other “senseless.” They are “content,” even if their love isn’t heavenly and they “fall short of the Divine.” Thinking over her teenage crushes and the clichés of romance novels, the speaker has to wonder whether the mundane reality of her love is enough—if it is satisfying on its own terms, or if she needs the romantic passion it lacks.
The speaker concludes that not only is this sort of love enough, it alone can be enough—“nothing else will do.” Her reason is simple: her love fills her life with joy, and without it she would know only “melancholy.” The implication is clear: because passionate boys and teenage fantasies have “hollow center[s],” they are powerless to help her. They cannot cure her “melancholy,” nor can they fill her with lasting joy. The love she has—mundane, everyday—is thus more powerful, more lasting, and more important than anything on offer in a romance novel. Forced to choose between romance and reality, “Cozy Apologia” lands solidly on the side of reality—with its complexity, its disappointments, and its abiding satisfactions.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Before Line 1
- Lines 1-30
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Cozy Apologia”
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Before Line 1, Lines 1-3
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... upon the page.The first 3 lines of “Cozy Apologia” and its dedication establish the poem’s form and hint at its broader questions. The poem begins with a dedication to “Fred.” This suggests that the poem is autobiographical—since Rita Dove’s husband is named Fred. Most readers thus treat the poem as a meditation on—and a defense of—the pleasures of Dove’s marriage. Indeed, an “apologia” is a poem that defends an idea or concept. This "apologia" will defend the cozy and comfortable: the satisfactions of long-term commitment, even if that commitment lacks the grand passion of a romance novel.
In line 1, the speaker opens the poem talking directly to Fred (an instance of the poetic device apostrophe), testifying to the depth of her passion and love for him. No matter what she thinks about, she thinks of him. In lines 2-3, she then lists a series of mundane things—the lamp on her desk, the quiet rain outside the window, the ink of her pen, drying on the page. All of them, no matter how mundane, remind her of her lover. The tone of these lines is thus cozy, self-assured, comfortable. The speaker has no doubts about the pleasure and power of her relationship. Even the sound of these lines is soft and soothing. Note, for instance, the assonant /u/ sound in “blue” and “exudes”—a sound as smooth as the ink from the speaker’s pen and as comforting as love itself. Indeed, the /u/ sound first appears at the end of line 1, in the word “you.” The assonance thus suggests that the calm and comfort that the speaker experiences comes directly from her lover.
“Cozy Apologia” is a formally uneven poem. Though it is ultimately written in free verse, it starts out in something close to heroic couplets—rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. Lines 1-2 rhyme AA, for instance; the first line of the poem is roughly, but passably, metrical. In the opening lines, with their discussion of the mundane details of everyday life in the modern world—lamps and pens—this formalism feels slightly archaic, old-fashioned, out-of-place. That sense of old-fashionedness—of a disjuncture between the poem’s form and the speaker’s world—amplifies through the rest of the poem’s first stanza.
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Lines 4-8
I could choose ...
... with furrowed brow -
Lines 9-10
And chain mail ...
... upon the enemy. -
Lines 11-13
This post-postmodern age ...
... Event. -
Lines 13-17
Today a hurricane ...
... kiss you senseless. -
Lines 18-20
They all had ...
... and hollow center. -
Lines 20-24
Floyd's ...
... of the Divine. -
Lines 25-30
Still, it's embarrassing, ...
... time with you.
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“Cozy Apologia” Symbols
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Arrows
“Arrows” are a symbol of love and romantic passion. In a tradition derived from Greek mythology, Love is often depicted as a child—Cupid—who carries a bow and arrow. He shoots unsuspecting people in the heart with his arrows, making them fall in love instantly and passionately. The myth thus contains some assumptions about what love is, how it works. Love is overwhelming and overpowering; falling in love involves a loss of self-control, a loss of judgment. The symbol thus fits with the speaker’s romantic fantasies, her longing for a passionate love affair drawn from the pages of romance novels. And it stands in implicit contrast with the poem's setting—in the mundane, bland, even disappointing world of America in the late 1990s.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 5: “arrows”
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Compact Disks and Faxes
“Compact disks / And faxes” are symbols of the modern world—the technologies people use to conduct business and communicate with each other. Although these technologies sound out of date now, at the time the poem was written they were cutting edge. But this novelty doesn't make them sexy or exciting. For the speaker, they represent everything that is mundane, bland, even disappointing about modern life: it lacks passion, romance, and grandeur. As the speaker says, these technologies embody a "do-it-now-and-take-no-risks" approach entirely out-of-keeping with the speaker's fantasies in the first stanza—with knights in shining armor ready to take on "the enemy" on her behalf. As symbols, then, “Compact disks / And faxes” suggest the disappointments of modern life—and the discrepancy between the speaker’s fantasies and her reality.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 11-12: “compact disks / And faxes”
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“Cozy Apologia” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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End-Stopped Line
“Cozy Apologia” uses both enjambment and end-stop throughout. But the poem doesn’t follow a pattern or scheme about when it uses these devices. Instead, the poem’s use of end-stop tends to reflect the speaker’s mood, shifting to reflect the changes in her thinking as the poem unfolds. For instance, after a long run of enjambed lines that stretches from line 4 to line 8, the speaker uses two end-stops in a row at the end of the poem’s first stanza:
…And chain mail glinting, to set me free:
One eye smiling, the other firm upon the enemy.The end-stops are themselves firm and confident. They reflect the bravery and determination of the knight in shining armor that the speaker fantasizes about. In this way, they also reflect the certainty and confidence that he imparts to the speaker.
Elsewhere, the poem uses end-stop to reflect the comfort the speaker feels in her relationship with her lover. Note, for instance, the run of end-stopped lines at the heart of the poem’s third stanza:
We’re content, but fall short of the Divine.
Still, it’s embarrassing, this happiness—
Who’s satisfied simply with what’s good for us,
When has the ordinary ever been news?The speaker is “embarrass[ed]” by her happiness because it’s so out of keeping with the grand fantasies of romance novels or the passionate dreams of adolescence: it's calm, predictable, rewarding in quiet but significant ways. These lines, with their strong end-stops thus feel like the speaker’s relationship: solid but limited. The poem’s end-stops thus mean different things in different parts of the poem. But they consistently reflect the speaker’s mood, her changing thoughts about love, romance, and her own relationship.
Where end-stopped line appears in the poem:- Line 1: “you—”
- Line 3: “page.”
- Line 9: “free:”
- Line 10: “enemy.”
- Line 13: “coast,”
- Line 17: “senseless.”
- Line 18: “Dewey;”
- Line 19: “chewy,”
- Line 23: “floors):”
- Line 24: “Divine.”
- Line 25: “happiness—”
- Line 26: “us,”
- Line 27: “news?”
- Line 30: “you.”
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Enjambment
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Caesura
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Personification
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Asyndeton
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Cliché
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Apostrophe
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"Cozy Apologia" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Wind-Still
- Glossy
- Matte
- Astride
- Dappled
- Post-postmodern
- Big Bad Floyd
- Sissy
- Cussing
- Bunkered
- Aerie
- Divine
- Melancholy
- Blues
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(Location in poem: Line 2: “wind-still”)
Quiet, relaxing. The rain is falling silently; the wind isn’t blowing.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Cozy Apologia”
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Form
“Cozy Apologia” is a 30-line poem, divided into three 10 line stanzas. The poem doesn’t have a regular rhyme scheme or meter—though it often flirts with both. For example, the first stanza and most of the second are written in rhyming couplets—which makes them almost heroic couplets, a prestigious form centuries before the poem was written but very out of fashion for the time when the poem was written, which makes them well suited to the romantic fantasies in which the speaker indulges. After line 14, however, the poem's rhymes become complicated and irregular. Although it’s primarily written in free verse, the poem thus sometimes feels like a formal poem, with meter and rhyme—only to fall into disorder.
The poem’s form thus echoes the tension with which the speaker wrestles. Just as the speaker struggles with the discrepancy between romantic fantasy and the mundane reality of an actual modern relationship, so too the poem moves between order and disorder, control and freedom, old-fashioned ways of writing poetry and “post-postmodern” poetic flexibility. The sections of the poem written in rhyme often feel like expressions of the speaker's romantic fantasies, while the rhymeless sections usually feel much more down-to-earth, dealing with everyday life in the modern world.
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Meter
“Cozy Apologia” is mostly written in free verse, which means it doesn’t have a set or stable meter. However, the poem often flirts with meter—and many of its lines are in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter follows a duh DUH rhythm of unstressed and stressed syllables, with five feet per line. For example, the first line of the poem has this meter:
I could | pick an- | ything | and think | of you—
Particularly in its final three feet, the line settles into a strong iambic rhythm. (The first two feet are a bit more rhythmically ambiguous—though they could be scanned in several ways, they are probably trochees).
Because the poem starts with this mostly iambic meter, it sets up the reader’s expectations. The reader expects a metrical poem, a poem that maintains a steady rhythm throughout. That expectation makes the poem’s descent into free verse feel disruptive, even disappointing. For instance, while line 21 is written, more or less, in iambic pentameter, line 22 is just six syllables long:
Aerie, I’m perched in mine
It feels like the speaker has come up short, disappointed, frustrated with the reality of her life after contemplating the seductive power of “Big Bad Floyd.” The shifts in the poem’s rhythms and meter—from iambic pentameter into free verse—thus echo and reinforce the speaker’s broader struggles between romantic fantasy and the mundane reality of an ordinary relationship. While iambic pentameter calls the speaker back to archaic poetic practices and romantic fantasies, the free verse remains rooted in the present—which seems, at least on its surface, bland by comparison.
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Rhyme Scheme
For its first fifteen or so lines, “Cozy Apologia” is written in rhyming couplets. Its rhyme scheme is AABBCC… etc. Because many of these lines are written in iambic pentameter, lines 1-14 are often heroic couplets—or almost heroic couplets. Heroic couplets have a distinguished history—the form used by poets like Alexander Pope and Phillis Wheatley to discuss subjects of the highest philosophical and political importance. But, by the time Rita Dove wrote the poem, such heroic couplets were out of fashion—and had been for a long, long time. A modern poem written in heroic couplets thus feels a bit archaic, a bit old-fashioned. There’s a tension, in these early lines, between the poem’s outdated form and its setting in the “post-postmodern" present—a tension one hears in rhymes like “compact disks” and “take-no-risks” in lines 11 and 12. It feels faintly silly to hear something like a “compact disk” get this highly refined poetic treatment.
However, the poem’s rhymes suit the speaker’s mood, her frustration with the mundane circumstances of the modern world. The speaker wants to indulge in romantic fantasy. In doing so, she retreats to out-of-date clichés drawn from the pages of cheesy romance novels. For example, in lines 8-10, she compares her lover to a knight in shining armor:
There you’ll be, with furrowed brow
And chain mail glinting, to set me free:
One eye smiling, the other firm upon the enemy.The fantasy is out of keeping with the poem’s modern setting—just as its rhymes are also out of fashion in modern poetry. The rhymes thus reinforce and underline the speaker’s desire to escape the present, to retreat into fantasy.
However, as the poem proceeds, the speaker rejects these fantasies as hollow, empty. Instead, she focuses on the deeper, richer, pleasures of a real relationship. As she does so, the rhymes shift. Sometimes, the poem rhymes ABAB—as in lines 21-24 and lines 27-30; sometimes it doesn’t rhyme at all, as in lines 26-27; elsewhere it slips back into rhyming couplets in lines 18-19. These shifting, unpredictable rhymes suggest that the speaker has given up on the romantic fantasies of the first half of the poem, and is instead diving into the complicated, but ultimately more rewarding pleasures of real life.
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“Cozy Apologia” Speaker
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“Cozy Apologia” is an autobiographical poem. In most printings, it is dedicated to “Fred,” Rita Dove’s husband. Although the poem never explicitly says so, most readers assume that the speaker is Dove herself—and that she is explicitly addressing her husband, thinking through the pleasures and problems of their relationship.
The speaker finds their love deeply satisfying—so much so that she’s a little embarrassed. After all, as she asks in line 27, “When has the ordinary ever been news?” In other words, there’s nothing particularly exceptional about their marriage. It doesn’t have the grandiose passion of a teenage crush or a romance novel. But, the speaker eventually comes to see such fantasies as having a “hollow center”—they are empty at their cores. By contrast, she strongly defends the pleasures and rewards of her marriage to “Fred,” arguing that it is deep and sustaining, even if it lacks the flash that might set a teenager’s heart a-flutter.
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“Cozy Apologia” Setting
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“Cozy Apologia” is set in the United States in 1999. The poem references a major hurricane from the fall of 1999, Hurricane Floyd—which the speaker calls “Big Bad Floyd.” Hurricane Floyd did significant damage to the Bahamas and the Eastern seaboard of the United States. The poem also references some of the office technologies that were in wide use during the period—“compact disks / And faxes.”
These references to historically specific storms and technologies serves a broader purpose for the poem. It helps the speaker situate the poem firmly in the present—a mundane and unsexy moment in human history. In other words, there’s a tension between the poem’s work-a-day world and the grand romantic fantasies the speaker indulges in. There are no knights in shining armor in America in the 1990s. Indeed, the speaker's romance takes place in unremarkable domestic settings—for instance, the speaker spends some time describing the home offices she and her lover share, with "twin desks, computers, hardwood floors." But, after some reflection, the speaker realizes that such fantasies are “hollow.” Though it’s part of a mundane, bland world, the speaker’s love is much richer and more satisfying.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Cozy Apologia”
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Literary Context
Rita Dove wrote “Cozy Apologia” in the late 1990s, at a time when she was already a major figure in American poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993-1995. Dove’s poetry certainly reflects some of the key poetic trends of the 1990s. At the time, many poets were writing autobiographical poems: poems that reflected on key moments in their personal experience. They used loose free verse to do so. In other words, this group of poets—sometimes called “lyric narrative” poets—had left behind the wild experiments of the early part of the twentieth century. While their poems rarely follow strict forms such as sonnets, the poems also aren’t radically experimental. The easy-going tone and autobiographical musings of “Cozy Apologia” fit nicely in these poetic trends.
However, Rita Dove is also a virtuosic user of poetic forms, a poet with a hunger to experiment and play with many different kinds of poetic techniques. And, with its frequent iambic pentameter lines and its rhyming couplets (approximating heroic couplets), “Cozy Apologia” revives out-of-date and out-of-style poetic modes. The poem thus feels strangely archaic at points, out of keeping with its setting in the 1990s—and with the poetic styles of the period. Dove carefully manipulates the poem, introducing these formal elements in the first half of the poem where her speaker is indulging in romantic fantasies drawn from the pages of romance novels—fantasies about knights in shining armor, heroic lovers. The poem thus uses these archaic formal elements to suggest that these fantasies are disconnected from the circumstances of her real life. Elsewhere in the poem, she uses more complicated and less stable rhymes; her poem drops out of meter into free verse. These parts of the poem reflect the complicated and unsexy reality of life in the 1990s.
Historical Context
“Cozy Apologia” was written in the late 1990s. This was a time of peace and relative prosperity in the United States. Many of the major conflicts of the twentieth century—for instance, the Cold War—had wrapped up in America’s favor. The politics of the period were less focused on grand battles with communism and more on mundane domestic business: taxes, welfare reform, dotcom stocks.
For the speaker, this mundane world feels profoundly unsexy: it takes no grand risks and it has no grand passions. As a result, there’s a strong disconnect between the world as it actually is, with its “compact disks / And faxes” and the romantic fantasies she cherishes—fantasies derived from romance novels and teenage crushes. At the heart of the poem, then, there’s a tension between the world in which the speaker actually lives—pleasant, but mundane—and the world of her fantasies, with their sweeping, overwhelming loves and desires. The speaker’s marriage belongs solidly to the real world. And so, the speaker has to decide what matters more: a satisfying, if ordinary, everyday life or the world of fantasy.
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More “Cozy Apologia” Resources
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External Resources
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"Cozy Apologia" Read Aloud — Theo O'Shaughnessy recites "Cozy Apologia."
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Rita Dove — A detailed biography of Rita Dove from the Poetry Foundation.
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An Interview with Rita Dove — Rita Dove discusses her work on PBS.
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Rita Dove at the White House — Rita Dove reads two poems and is introduced by former US President Barack Obama at the White House.
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An Interview with Rita Dove — An in-depth interview with Rita Dove at the Virginia Quarterly Review.
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