WEBVTT

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Some years ago, when I
was first a baby poet,

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I was talking to an editor of
a magazine, Paul Hoover, who,

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for some 30 years or more,
has edited a magazine

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called New American Writing
with his wife Maxine Chernoff.

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And he said in terms of
what they were looking

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for, he said we
don't know what we're

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looking for until we find it.

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And for some reason
I've never forgotten

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that because I think
it really sums up

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both the problem
and the opportunity

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that editors, and you as
readers, and I as a reader,

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have.

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It's very hard to
know in advance

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what we're going to
be drawn to in poetry.

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And we can try to come
up with some words,

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like a sense of imagination,
or an interesting way

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to use language.

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But "interesting" is a word that
differs to different people.

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And imagination, what is that?

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I think that what people
really want is to be surprised.

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And I think that's why what Paul
Hoover said was exactly right.

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We don't know what we're looking
for until we find it because we

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want to be surprised.

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So if we knew in advance,
it wouldn't be a surprise.

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And there have been actually
some scientific studies

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about babies as young
as three months old

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and that they seem to like
excess, like we all do.

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That's why we have Las Vegas.

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[LAUGHING]

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So if you give them
two grids and, say,

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one has eight red balls on
it and another one has 32,

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they'll look longer at the 32.

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So we assume they prefer it.

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We don't really
know but we assume.

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Unless they've been looking at
the 32 for a long time and then

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you give them the six.

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Then they'll look
at the six longer.

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And it's because
we like difference

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and we like surprise.

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So I don't know how
many manuscripts

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were submitted for the
Book Prize, the Levis Prize

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at Four Way Books in 2009.

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But as the judge, I
received 100 of those.

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And out of those
100, there were three

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that deserved to sit on
my dining room table.

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And what that means is that
every time I go by that table,

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I sit down and I read
some of the poems.

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And over time, the manuscript
that I look forward to reading

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was Ephemeral Blinking
Valentine by Joni Wallace.

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So I think that it's because
the language was surprising.

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But it kept surprising.

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It never stopped surprising.

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And even those things
about it, those rare things

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that should have annoyed
me, like a poem about a snow

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globe in the shape of the
snow globe, which should have

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been obvious, was my favorite.

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That made no sense,
except it was so good.

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It did what it should have done
and it did it like no one else

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could do it.

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And that's a surprise.

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So what I'm explaining,
what I'm describing

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is a little bit
like falling in love

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where those things that
annoy you about anybody else,

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suddenly you either
don't see them

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or you think they're charming.

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[LAUGHING]

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Which is crazy.

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And that's why I
love is actually

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a psychological mental illness.

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[LAUGHING]

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So that's what happened
with this manuscript

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I fell in love with it.

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It was beautiful every
time I looked at it.

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And it made me happy,
and it surprised me,

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and it never annoyed me.

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Joni Wallace in an interview
once said, "To find language

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adequate to experience."

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To show us things we
need to know in a way

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that if we listen with the
little brain in the ear,

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transcend the white
noise of existence

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and lead us into the
world of terrible marvels,

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of joy and sorrow, and
worse, the lack of.

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This is the work of poetry.

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The best poems give us a
flashlight, or at least

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a glow in the dark bracelet.

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We may use to blink
back a message

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or partially make out the
dirigible or helicopter we're

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pretty sure is radioactive
and floating over us

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like a birthday balloon.

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This work did that.

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In the end, the other two
manuscripts ceased to exist.

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I read this one over
and over and I still do.

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Every time I begin to
read it, I can't stop.

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And I'm sure the same
will be true for you.

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Joni Wallace grew up in
Los Alamos, New Mexico,

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and earned her MFA from
the University of Montana.

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She's the author of a chap book
entitled Red Shift published

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by Kore Press in 2001.

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Her manuscript Blinking
Ephemeral Valentine,

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which was selected as the
2009 Levis Prize winner,

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was published this
year by Four Way books.

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She lives in Tucson
and is currently

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working on a series of the
poems that are haunted by deer.

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I give you Joni Wallace.

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[APPLAUSE]

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