So I can't tell you how crazy excited
I am to introduce Laura Mullen.
I've actually been having these strange fantasies all day
that I'm going to be, like, overcome
by the Holy Spirit or something.
[LAUGHTER]
I was raised Pentecostal, and I can
say that, and stand up during her reading and throw my bra.
[LAUGHTER]
So if I do that, I actually want you
to keep your focus on Laura.
But I really might do that, because her work actually
just makes me want to give her things.
I feel like she's giving so much,
from her poems to her hybrid forms, to her videos.
And if you haven't seen her videos,
you need to get online right now.
All of you who have phones, go ahead.
Just last night, a friend said to me,
I love it when a person says the word absolutely,
and so I've been trying to use it more.
She said she loves the word absolutely because it actually
means 100 times yes.
I want to point that out for all of you who
use the word absolutely when you mean sometimes or maybe or OK.
And I also think we can learn from Laura's work
in this, because every poem is an absolutely.
She has six books, and in her most recent book,
Dark Archive, she says, "As arias, the areas of air we are,
arise.
And like no part of the body they
belong to, belonging to a body to itself unrecognizable,
open the doors."
What I'm saying is, this work is 1,000 times yes.
Her work has me thinking a lot about generosity lately,
and how important that is in the wake of loss.
We spoke earlier, some folks, about Stacy Doris,
and I'm also thinking about Tucson poet Morgan Schulte,
and how access to their work, to the part of them that we
can continue to breathe into, takes on this pressing
significance.
In studying Laura's work, I keep thinking,
we're so lucky to have this time with her brain
and with her hilarious and devastating videos,
where she's in a wedding gown in the bathtub on a Friday night,
to have her look into the camera and say to us,
I'm just going to film up close what
my face looks like after I've spent some time with my mom.
Wow.
[LAUGHTER]
And that we get to stare into a face that smiles when it talks.
To me, this is the magic of being alive.
Another friend of mine recently said to me
about an article he was sort of subtly apologizing
for for being too academic, he said,
I was afraid you would find it indulgent.
And I said, I do.
I love it.
I do.
And what I mean by that is that I love language
that requires my attention.
While I'm reading Laura's poems, the things on my to do list
seem to check themselves off, not
because anyone's actually doing them,
but because they matter so much less.
Because the only way I know how to experience love
is through language that somehow multiplies time,
and that's what her work does, and I'm so honored
to be here to witness that.
Please welcome Laura Mullen.
[APPLAUSE]