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Tedi López Mills is in the midst
of an ongoing conversation.

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To read her poetry is to
enter the river of philosophy

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in one of its clearer channels.

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López Mills' poetry engages
the ideas and furthers

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the inquiries of her sharpest
contemporaries and brightest

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forebears.

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It seems right then, that I
first encountered her work

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in conversation with one of
her peers, Pura López Colomé,

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who read for the Poetry
Center a couple of years ago,

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who narrowed her eyes and
dropped her voice to a sacred

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tone as she described the
churn of López Mills' poems.

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And so I found Tedi's
work, a few poems

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that had been translated
and published,

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in the then
just-released anthology,

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Reversible Monuments.

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And so I found Tedi's work
focused, hallowed, and fluid.

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In the preface to another
recent and significant anthology

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of Mexican poetry, Sin puertas
visibles, Jen Hofer notes,

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"Translation simultaneously
casts out toward an exterior

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and in toward an interior."

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To this I would add
that translation

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must reflect and reflex.

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A poem in translation
demands response.

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It must honor the author's
intention and homage

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for invention that is her craft.

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What is lost in translation--

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and there is necessarily much
richness lost in the recasting

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of López Mill's poems--

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can be found in innovative ways
in a language like English.

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Wendy Burk discovers
and artfully employees

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such opportunity.

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These poems hold in
trembling balance

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the tension between
space and time, time

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and being, being and been.

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They invoke and asymptotically
extend the eternal questions,

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who am I, who am I in
relation to this world, what

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is this world in relation
to god or the idea of god?

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"While Light Has Built" houses
some of the most important

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poems being written today.

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We are here invited into the
contemplation and conversation

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of Tedi López Mills.

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It is for us to
enter and respond.

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Please welcome Tedi and Wendy.

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[APPLAUSE]

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