Some years ago, when I was first a baby poet,
I was talking to an editor of a magazine, Paul Hoover, who,
for some 30 years or more, has edited a magazine
called New American Writing with his wife Maxine Chernoff.
And he said in terms of what they were looking
for, he said we don't know what we're
looking for until we find it.
And for some reason I've never forgotten
that because I think it really sums up
both the problem and the opportunity
that editors, and you as readers, and I as a reader,
have.
It's very hard to know in advance
what we're going to be drawn to in poetry.
And we can try to come up with some words,
like a sense of imagination, or an interesting way
to use language.
But "interesting" is a word that differs to different people.
And imagination, what is that?
I think that what people really want is to be surprised.
And I think that's why what Paul Hoover said was exactly right.
We don't know what we're looking for until we find it because we
want to be surprised.
So if we knew in advance, it wouldn't be a surprise.
And there have been actually some scientific studies
about babies as young as three months old
and that they seem to like excess, like we all do.
That's why we have Las Vegas.
[LAUGHING]
So if you give them two grids and, say,
one has eight red balls on it and another one has 32,
they'll look longer at the 32.
So we assume they prefer it.
We don't really know but we assume.
Unless they've been looking at the 32 for a long time and then
you give them the six.
Then they'll look at the six longer.
And it's because we like difference
and we like surprise.
So I don't know how many manuscripts
were submitted for the Book Prize, the Levis Prize
at Four Way Books in 2009.
But as the judge, I received 100 of those.
And out of those 100, there were three
that deserved to sit on my dining room table.
And what that means is that every time I go by that table,
I sit down and I read some of the poems.
And over time, the manuscript that I look forward to reading
was Ephemeral Blinking Valentine by Joni Wallace.
So I think that it's because the language was surprising.
But it kept surprising.
It never stopped surprising.
And even those things about it, those rare things
that should have annoyed me, like a poem about a snow
globe in the shape of the snow globe, which should have
been obvious, was my favorite.
That made no sense, except it was so good.
It did what it should have done and it did it like no one else
could do it.
And that's a surprise.
So what I'm explaining, what I'm describing
is a little bit like falling in love
where those things that annoy you about anybody else,
suddenly you either don't see them
or you think they're charming.
[LAUGHING]
Which is crazy.
And that's why I love is actually
a psychological mental illness.
[LAUGHING]
So that's what happened with this manuscript
I fell in love with it.
It was beautiful every time I looked at it.
And it made me happy, and it surprised me,
and it never annoyed me.
Joni Wallace in an interview once said, "To find language
adequate to experience."
To show us things we need to know in a way
that if we listen with the little brain in the ear,
transcend the white noise of existence
and lead us into the world of terrible marvels,
of joy and sorrow, and worse, the lack of.
This is the work of poetry.
The best poems give us a flashlight, or at least
a glow in the dark bracelet.
We may use to blink back a message
or partially make out the dirigible or helicopter we're
pretty sure is radioactive and floating over us
like a birthday balloon.
This work did that.
In the end, the other two manuscripts ceased to exist.
I read this one over and over and I still do.
Every time I begin to read it, I can't stop.
And I'm sure the same will be true for you.
Joni Wallace grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico,
and earned her MFA from the University of Montana.
She's the author of a chap book entitled Red Shift published
by Kore Press in 2001.
Her manuscript Blinking Ephemeral Valentine,
which was selected as the 2009 Levis Prize winner,
was published this year by Four Way books.
She lives in Tucson and is currently
working on a series of the poems that are haunted by deer.
I give you Joni Wallace.
[APPLAUSE]