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I thought, perhaps it
would be interesting to you

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if I gave you just
a little background

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before he begins to read.

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One of the things that is
remarkable about Mr. Nims

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is the many sidedness
of his interests.

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He is a critic.

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Please, note them in
the climactic order.

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I put that first.

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He has been an editor
of Poetry Magazine.

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He is a translator, they
tell me, in six languages.

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But I think we shall be
concerned tonight, perhaps,

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largely with three.

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And he is primarily,
of course, a poet.

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His experience has
been considerable.

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From the university
point of view,

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he taught first as a professor
at his alma mater, Notre Dame.

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He has taught also at the
University of Toronto,

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the University of Illinois,
and is now a visiting professor

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at Harvard.

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He has also taken considerable
part in such writers

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conferences as the one at
Indiana, the one at Kansas,

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and the one that perhaps you
know more than the others--

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The Bread Loaf
Vermont Conference.

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He has also-- in the 10-year
period when he was writing

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the poems for Knowledge
of the Evening,

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which will be the chief
volume from which he will read

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tonight--

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spent about half of
that time abroad.

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Two years as a professor at
the University of Madrid.

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And I think his
interest in Spanish,

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which is to be brought
out in several ways,

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will be especially interesting
perhaps to many of us tonight.

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And two years as a
Fulbright lecturer

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at Milan and at Florence.

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You probably would like
to know a little something

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about his poetry as
it has been published

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from time to time, if you
don't already know the facts.

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Mr. Nims began by publishing
in anthologies, one of which

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is decidedly interesting--

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I suppose they all are.

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This one, perhaps, most
to us in the Southwest--

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It's called the "Poem Itself".

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And it is an anthology
in which the poem

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in the foreign language
is presented first then

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the poet who is
concerned with the poem,

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the translator, the explicator--

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Mr. Nims, in this case--

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gives a literal line
by line translation.

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And then there is
an interpretation,

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which concludes what he
has to say about the poem.

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Mr. Nims has four
books of poetry, which

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have been published since 1947.

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The 1947 volume,
The Iron Pastoral.

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Three years later, the
Fountain in Kentucky.

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In 1959, a volume from
which he will read tonight,

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his translations
from the Spanish

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of the mystic of the 16th
century St. John of the Cross.

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I think, by the way, you
may be very much interested

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in the transposed translations.

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And the last volume, Knowledge
of the Evening, which

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is his original work
and which, I suppose,

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will give us most of
the poems this evening,

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he has been writing
on, he tells us,

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for 10 years between
1950 and 1960

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when the poems were published.

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It was during this period that
he spent his four years abroad

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in Madrid, Spain generally,
in Italy, and other places

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on the continent.

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His poems have also appeared
in a number of magazines

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that you probably
have already noted--

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Harper's, The New York Times
Book Review, Poetry Magazine,

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The Saturday Review
of Literature.

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And tonight you
will notice that he

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is going to read to us
from a collection of three

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poems in the current
Atlantic Monthly.

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These are translations of
poems from the Spanish written

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by Octavio Paz.

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And I think that you have,
probably in your hands,

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that one poem "Nina", in which
the Spanish original and Mr.

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Nims' translation,
up here side by side.

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It seems almost presumptuous
to mention this poet's prizes.

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He has won them.

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I will simply
mention two or three

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that I think speak
for themselves.

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The Harriet Monroe
Memorial Prize

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given by Poetry Magazine,
The Guarantor's Prize

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and the Fiske Prize awarded
by the University of Chicago

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for poetry.

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All these things, of course,
are concerned really,

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as far as we are concerned,
with only one thing--

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the poetry itself.

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Those of us who in
the last two days

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have had the privilege
of listening to Mr. Nims

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discuss poetry, read
it, realize, I think,

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that tonight we have in unusual
pleasure in store for us

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because this is poetry
of a high order.

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Mr. Nims.

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[APPLAUSE]

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