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[APPLAUSE]

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Good evening.

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While the rest of her
generation wrote frantically

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and magisterially about
consciousness and language,

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Marie Howe wrote
sparingly about life.

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She continues to
explore, rather than

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to explain, the eminent, the
material of which we're made.

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She has said, in effect,
that a poem is the room where

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something important is happening
that can't be explained

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but must be shared.

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What is shared is
very emotional.

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In essence, Marie Howe's poems
illustrate that great poetry

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is love poetry.

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She has dared to speak lucidly
about the most elegant part

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of ourselves, the
present-ness of our being.

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This has everything to do with
the attention Marie Howe brings

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to bear on existence.

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Her poems are reminiscent
of the great Russian, Anna

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Akhmatova, as brought
into English by Marie's

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mentor, Stanley Kunitz.

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Their poems are born on
the back of suffering,

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but miraculously, are neither
sentimental nor parochial.

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In essence, Marie Howe's poems
illustrate that great poetry

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is spiritual poetry.

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We come to understand
through Marie's practice

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that real life is ritual drama.

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In it, we are seen, and
we are seen through.

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Ladies and gentlemen,
please join me

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in warmly welcoming Marie Howe.

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[APPLAUSE]

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