First, I'd just like to say thank you
to the staff and docents of the Poetry Center.
It's my honor tonight to introduce to you
the incomparable Cynthia Hogue.
She has published 14 books, including nine collections
of poetry, most recently Revenance, listed
as one of the standout books by the Academy of American Poets.
And In June The Labyrinth, the one that Hannah just
mentioned to you, which is not yet out, but it's here.
She co-authored When The Water Came,
which is an incredible book that deals
with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
And Cynthia interviewed many of the people who'd
been displaced by that storm and did interview poems
and paired them with photographs by Rebecca Ross.
She has had poems in just about every journal
that you'd want to have your poem, including,
Field, and Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry.
She's been translating a whole lot since about 2006.
Along with her husband, Sylvain Gallais,
she's been translating experimental French poets.
And I think we'll hear some of the translations tonight.
Their book, Fortino Sámano, The Overflowing of the Poem,
is from the French of Virginie Lalucq and Jean-Luc Nancy,
and won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from
the Academy.
Their co-translation of Joan Darc is forthcoming.
Cynthia is also an amazing scholar.
Her critical work focuses on experimental and innovative
women poets.
Among her honors, an NEA fellowship
in poetry, the HD Fellowship from Beinecke Library
at Yale, a MacDowell Colony residency, and a Witter Bynner
Translation Fellowship.
She's served as the distinguishing visiting
writer at Cornell, and she was a 2015 NEA Fellow in Translation.
She holds the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair
in Modern and Contemporary Poetry
at that other university up in Tempe.
[LAUGHTER]
And two details you may not know.
She loves king crab legs.
She will do anything.
And she and her husband will be soon moving
to a much better place, Tucson.
[APPLAUSE]