WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.840 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.840 --> 00:00:02.560 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Laura. 00:00:02.560 --> 00:00:04.450 align:middle line:84% As Laura mentioned, my name is Tyler Meier. 00:00:04.450 --> 00:00:06.840 align:middle line:84% I work as the director at the Poetry Center. 00:00:06.840 --> 00:00:09.210 align:middle line:84% We're so excited to be a part of this event 00:00:09.210 --> 00:00:13.720 align:middle line:84% in this new partnership with the Arts College this evening, 00:00:13.720 --> 00:00:17.115 align:middle line:84% especially to welcome Claudia Rankine back to Tucson, back 00:00:17.115 --> 00:00:21.000 align:middle line:84% to the University, a place that she's visited many times 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:22.750 align:middle line:90% in the past. 00:00:22.750 --> 00:00:25.740 align:middle line:84% Claudia's book Citizen is a book that 00:00:25.740 --> 00:00:28.200 align:middle line:90% sold more than 200,000 copies. 00:00:28.200 --> 00:00:31.155 align:middle line:84% It's been camped out on the New York Times bestseller lists 00:00:31.155 --> 00:00:33.630 align:middle line:90% for both poetry and nonfiction. 00:00:33.630 --> 00:00:35.280 align:middle line:90% It's a singular book. 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:36.930 align:middle line:84% Poetry books won't typically do this. 00:00:36.930 --> 00:00:38.980 align:middle line:90% They're not on the list. 00:00:38.980 --> 00:00:43.240 align:middle line:84% It speaks to the magnitude of what this book is about, 00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:47.250 align:middle line:84% and teaching this book in an honors college freshman seminar 00:00:47.250 --> 00:00:51.270 align:middle line:84% through--as Laura mentioned, first year read books. 00:00:51.270 --> 00:00:53.755 align:middle line:84% And we've been thinking about it through the frame 00:00:53.755 --> 00:00:55.380 align:middle line:84% of another book that Claudia has worked 00:00:55.380 --> 00:00:58.005 align:middle line:84% on called The Racial Imaginary, and there's 00:00:58.005 --> 00:01:01.200 align:middle line:84% an introduction to that book The Racial Imaginary. 00:01:01.200 --> 00:01:03.390 align:middle line:84% Copies of that book are outside for sale 00:01:03.390 --> 00:01:04.890 align:middle line:84% afterwards if you're interested that 00:01:04.890 --> 00:01:10.140 align:middle line:84% says, "Race is one of the prime ways history thrives in us." 00:01:10.140 --> 00:01:12.600 align:middle line:84% And I'm trying to use that as a way to think about what's 00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:14.340 align:middle line:90% happening in Citizen. 00:01:14.340 --> 00:01:17.730 align:middle line:84% And thinking about citizenship and its relationship history, 00:01:17.730 --> 00:01:19.500 align:middle line:84% and citizenship and its relationship 00:01:19.500 --> 00:01:22.020 align:middle line:84% to the kind of future that we might 00:01:22.020 --> 00:01:25.980 align:middle line:84% be most excited about [INAUDIBLE] case this book. 00:01:25.980 --> 00:01:28.470 align:middle line:84% It's not often that a book of poetry 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:30.360 align:middle line:84% makes you think about the future, 00:01:30.360 --> 00:01:35.230 align:middle line:84% and I'm grateful to this book in particular for doing that work, 00:01:35.230 --> 00:01:39.780 align:middle line:84% especially in the classroom and outside of it. 00:01:39.780 --> 00:01:41.860 align:middle line:84% Many other poetry books that Claudia has written, 00:01:41.860 --> 00:01:44.220 align:middle line:84% and I want to reference among them, 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:47.610 align:middle line:84% Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Plot, The End of the Alphabet, 00:01:47.610 --> 00:01:50.010 align:middle line:84% these are books that are for sale outside: other poetry 00:01:50.010 --> 00:01:53.650 align:middle line:84% books as well as that anthology The Racial Imaginary, 00:01:53.650 --> 00:01:55.860 align:middle line:84% among other anthologists that she's worked with. 00:01:55.860 --> 00:01:56.818 align:middle line:90% She's worked with film. 00:01:56.818 --> 00:01:59.715 align:middle line:84% She's worked with plays, many, many different forms, 00:01:59.715 --> 00:02:02.838 align:middle line:84% she's interested in visual imagery, et cetera. 00:02:02.838 --> 00:02:04.380 align:middle line:84% I thought the best way to welcome her 00:02:04.380 --> 00:02:07.040 align:middle line:84% to the stage she's already on would 00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:10.530 align:middle line:84% be to read a piece of writing that's some 00:02:10.530 --> 00:02:12.590 align:middle line:84% of the best that I've found on Citizen. 00:02:12.590 --> 00:02:14.940 align:middle line:84% And it's from [? some ? ] B.K. Fischer, 00:02:14.940 --> 00:02:16.740 align:middle line:90% and it's from the Boston Review. 00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:21.180 align:middle line:84% And this is just a quick short quote to help welcome Claudia. 00:02:21.180 --> 00:02:24.840 align:middle line:84% "The success of Citizen lives in its searing moral vision 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:27.630 align:middle line:84% and reader- implicating provocations. 00:02:27.630 --> 00:02:30.630 align:middle line:84% And it does this work through its singular command 00:02:30.630 --> 00:02:32.910 align:middle line:90% of poetic resources." 00:02:32.910 --> 00:02:34.950 align:middle line:84% The book reminds poetry readers that you 00:02:34.950 --> 00:02:39.180 align:middle line:84% don't have to choose between technique and content, concept, 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:42.420 align:middle line:90% and pathos, form, and politics. 00:02:42.420 --> 00:02:46.440 align:middle line:84% To read this book is to yield a hunger for feeling, 00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:50.560 align:middle line:84% to bear witness to the testimony that demands social change, 00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:54.240 align:middle line:84% and to encounter rigorous formal exigencies 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:56.760 align:middle line:90% and structural principles. 00:02:56.760 --> 00:02:59.880 align:middle line:84% Of the subtitle of the book, which is An American Lyric, 00:02:59.880 --> 00:03:03.930 align:middle line:84% Fischer says, "lyric is a notoriously slippery term 00:03:03.930 --> 00:03:06.046 align:middle line:84% prone to ahistorically and promiscuously being 00:03:06.046 --> 00:03:08.100 align:middle line:90% over applied. 00:03:08.100 --> 00:03:11.850 align:middle line:84% Here, that means something not far from what TS Eliot meant, 00:03:11.850 --> 00:03:16.890 align:middle line:84% the mind speaking to itself, and the reader invited to overhear, 00:03:16.890 --> 00:03:20.220 align:middle line:84% but only if we take that notion by the throat 00:03:20.220 --> 00:03:23.000 align:middle line:84% and threaten to hold it underwater." 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:26.940 align:middle line:84% Rankine's lyric is meditative interiority plunged 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:29.370 align:middle line:90% into ice cold history. 00:03:29.370 --> 00:03:33.200 align:middle line:84% Please, help me welcome Claudia Rankine back to Tucson.