WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you, Alice.

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The second poet who's going
to be reading this afternoon

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is Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge.

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It's a great honor to
introduce her and describe

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her work to you for a few
moments and tell you about her.

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She was born in 1947
in Beijing, China,

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and grew up in Massachusetts.

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Her books include Summit's
Move with the Tide;

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Random Possession;
and The Heat Bird,

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both of which receive
American Book Awards; Empathy,

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winner of the Pen West
Award; Hiddenness,

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a collaboration with the
artist Richard Tuttle published

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by the Whitney Museum Library;
Sphericity; Endocrinology,

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a collaboration with the artist
Kiki Smith; Four-Year-Old Girl;

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Nest; and I Love Artists--

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New and Selected Poems published
by New California Poetry

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in 2006.

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She has been a
contributing editor

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of Conjunctions Magazine since
1978 and lives in New Mexico

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with her husband, the
artist Richard Tuttle

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and their daughter Martha.

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I first encountered
Mei-Mei's poetry

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when I was a graduate student.

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And like most of the
students who were with me,

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it changed my poetry.

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And I don't know
how else to say it.

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Reading the work of Mei-Mei is
like entering another world.

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Some white blank space where--

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I don't know.

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Somewhere between a museum and
an actual natural landscape

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where colors, words, light,
relationships between objects,

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the realizations of
perceptions, acute spatial maps,

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and a warm human living force
like that which brings life

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into this world coexist and
are applied to the walls,

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extracted whole and
entire from nature

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like a blossom with all its
facets looked from all sides.

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I've always been struck by
the kinship of her poetry

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to the writings and
thoughts of phenomenology.

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And both share a great presence
for the exploration yet

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simultaneity of existence
within the field of perception,

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although Berssenbrugge's
work pushes us, as readers,

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into this world into
the living moments,

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photographs, instances
of light in her books

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and creates a parallel of
experiencing those perceptions

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as if we were
living them ourself.

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Please help me welcome Mei-Mei.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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