So I think of an introduction to a poetry reading as a--
can you hear me?
As a way of preparing an audience for what
brand of miracle is about to unfold in front of them.
It's to somehow explain or describe the poet.
It's like the card next to a painting in a museum.
It lists materials or important years or historical events,
modes of critical appreciation, or maybe even
some questions to consider while viewing.
Look at it this way, think of it this way,
here is a guiding metaphor for what is in front of you.
I don't think Ilya Kaminsky needs this from me,
though, I'll note many wildly respectable poets have done
just this, offering their metaphors and praise for Ilya's
work.
You'll find them here and here and here.
So Adam Zagajewski, for instance,
says that in Ilya Kaminsky's first book, Dancing in Odessa,
"He proceeds like a perfect gardener.
He grafts the gifts of the Russian newer literary
tradition on the American tree of poetry and forgetting."
He goes on to say, "This book is as fresh as a young leaf
in the spring."
Robert Pinsky adds that Kaminsky's poems are,
"passionate, daring to laugh and weep," are,
"direct yet unexpected," and that his poetry has
a, "glorious tilt and scope."
Carolyn Forche is quote, "In awe of his gifts."
And I think you should raise your hand
if you'd like Carolyn Forche say this about your poems.
[LAUGHTER]
What's more, I think that a lot of the work that Ilya
himself does in his poems is the work of, look at it this way,
think of it this way, here is a guiding metaphor
for what is in front of you.
This is a man who's devoted to his field, to his craft,
to poetry, to opening and explaining and arguing
to others.
He has read everything, it seems,
and is eager to talk and write in conversation with it all.
In his own words, he listens to books talking to each other.
If we're going on word count, most of what he's published
has been prose about poetry, all of it worth reading, all of it
worth grappling with.
He writes about the Russian literary tradition,
why we benefit from its translation into English.
He writes about what translation is and can be,
about what the act of it does.
He writes with devotion about Osip Mandelstam,
Marina Tsvetaeva.
He introduces them to us.
He writes in tradition, he brings it forward.
He is sincere and he is effervescent.
He is grateful.
The section in Dancing in Odessa titled "Natalia" ends this way.
"Lord, give us what you have already given.
There's tenderness, fear, and anticipation
all informed by some of the world's darkest darknesses,
history's cruelties.
There is love, there is lyric, there
is a way of moving through the world and dancing in it."
Another reason of giving an introduction to a poetry
reading is to give some biographical information,
so I'll do that too.
He was born in 1977 in Odessa, Ukraine,
in the former Soviet Union.
He came to the United States in 1993
with his family when they were granted political asylum.
Long before he came to the United States,
he lost much of his hearing to a case of the mumps,
and he has gone on to write a stunningly lyric
poetry in a language that he has never fully heard, English.
Though, as he points out, what is it to fully hear?
Does anyone fully hear?
To explain why he writes in English,
he said, "I chose English because no one in my family
or friends knew it.
No one I spoke to could read what I wrote.
I myself did not know the language.
It was a parallel reality, an insanely beautiful freedom.
It still is."
Ilya Kaminsky has won too many awards to mention.
I'm sorry.
I won't keep you here all night.
I brought up my copy of this book
because it has two golden shining stickers on it,
whereas the one over there must have gone to print earlier.
But two shiny golden stickers, one from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters awarding him the 2005 Addison M. Metcalf
Award in Literature, and one Book of the Year
sticker from Foreword Reviews.
He has received a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, a Lannan
Foundation Literary Fellowship, and was the youngest writer
to spend a year as Phillip Exeter Academy's George Bennett
Fellow.
Poems
from his forthcoming manuscript Deaf Republic
were awarded the Levinson Prize from Poetry Magazine.
In 2010, Kaminsky co-edited that Echo Anthology
of International Poetry that you can receive a copy of perhaps
if you fill out a survey for the Poetry Center.
And that anthology was called immediately
indispensable by John Ashbery and inexhaustible
by Edward Hirsch.
Again, raise your hand if--
He is the co-founder of Poets for Peace, an organization that
sponsors poetry readings in the US
and abroad to support relief organizations such as Doctors
Without Borders and Survivors International.
He is also poetry editor of Poetry International
and of Words Without Borders, an online magazine featuring
international literature and translation.
Right now he teaches at San Diego State University
in their MFA program in creative writing.
But, like I said, I don't think an Ilya Kaminsky reading needs
much of an introduction at all.
He will come up in front of us, he will read his poems,
he will read his poems so well that we will
believe he is singing them.
We will sit in awe.
At the end, we won't be able to believe that it's over,
and we'll shuffle out amazed that we
have to be anywhere but here.
Another thing that Ilya Kaminsky has said
is that we need to look at language like it's
our lover's body.
Before he's done reading, you will
know exactly what he means.
And before he's done reading, you
will have shaken off your long Thursday
to remember that poetry and that language is a thing living.
I'm ready for him to start, so I'll end it there.
Please help me welcome up Ilya Kaminsky.
[APPLAUSE]