Hello, everyone.
My name is Cybele Knowles. I'm the coordinator of the Poetry
Center's Reading & Lecture Series.
And tonight the Poetry Center and the Department
of East Asian studies present poet, editor, and translator,
Jeffrey Yang, giving a talk entitled
"Lost Illusions" on poetry translation
and literary publishing.
I'm very excited about tonight's event.
And I have a few more things than usual to say about it.
So I'm going to just get a few announcements out of the way
first.
To let you know that we have Jeffrey's books for sale, 20%
off the cover price over there.
We've got books that he's edited as well as
books that he's authored.
And Poetry Center docents, Elaine and Jessie,
will be very happy to sell you books.
And Jeffrey will be happy to sign books
after the talk is over.
And we also have surveys--
again surveys.
Your feedback helps us very much in planning our reading series
and helps us win the grants that allow us to present events free
of charge.
So after the reading, if you would
like to fill out a survey.
You can get one from Poetry Center volunteer
Andrea over there.
And we have a survey incentive tonight.
If you turn in a completed survey to Andrea.
She will give you a Reese's Peanut Butter cup, a big one.
OK.
In my last announcements but important ones.
I want to tell you about some upcoming events.
So tomorrow night, of course, here in this room at 7:00.
We have our annual next word in poetry
reading featuring Jeffrey reading from his work and also
Tucson's own Katherine Larson.
So that's tomorrow.
That will be a wonderful reading.
I encourage you all to come back for that.
And also, if you haven't purchased tickets yet
for Love Notes.
I also encourage you to do that.
Love Notes is a Valentine's Day inspired performance
of music, dance, and poetry.
And will be presented at the Stevie Eller Theater
on Main campus.
It's happening during the week of Valentine's Day.
I know that there are still lots of tickets
available for Friday night.
And I'm calling it the thinking and feeling
person's Valentine's Day date.
It will include Richard Siken reading
a litany, in which certain things are crossed out
to piano music composed just for the occasion.
And I'm really excited about that.
And if you have any questions about Love Notes, ask me.
OK.
So now I want to tell you a little bit about how
tonight's event came to be.
When Jeffrey's first book of poems, An Aquarium,
was published in 2008 by GrayWolf press.
We immediately took notice.
And basically we've been wanting to bring him to the Poetry
Center to read since then.
The release of his second book of poems, Vanishing Line,
Was a perfect occasion for that invitation.
Then we learned that Jeffrey had worked for many years
as a poetry editor, still does, at New Directions.
And we thought, wow, how cool would it
be to work at the publishing house that first published
Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Pound, and William Carlos
Williams, and Gary Snyder's Turtle Island, and more.
And also a publishing house that has always
been a leader in publishing works in translation
from Neruda to Bolano.
And then we got to learn more about Jeffrey's projects
at New Directions.
For example, a beautiful anthology entitled Birds,
Beasts, and Seas, anthology of nature poems
gathered from New directions titles.
We also learned that Jeffrey acquired
and edited Tomas Transtromer's collection of complete poems.
Keeping in mind that Transtromer just won a Nobel Prize
in literature.
And so that all provided the answer to our question,
how cool is it to work at New Directions?
The answer is, in Jeffrey's case, extremely cool.
And then the straw that really broke the camel's back was
learning that Jeffrey is a translator of poetry
and that in addition to co-edited
a lovely book of international poetry -in- translation.
And we have a few copies over there tonight.
He is a translator of a forthcoming book
of poems by Liu Xiaobo, who is a foremost symbol of the struggle
for human rights in China, leading activists
during the Tiananmen Square protests of June 4, 1989,
currently incarcerated as a political prisoner in China.
The collection that Jeffrey's translated of Liu Xiaobo's work
is entitled June Fourth Elegies, will
be published by Graywolf this April
and presents the poems written across 20 years
and in this bilingual volume Liu Xiaobo's poetry
for the first time published in both English
and the Chinese original.
So Jeffrey is a poet, and an editor, and a translator.
He does a lot of important, wonderful work.
And he does it exceptionally well.
And we thought that we'd like to hear more about how
he does it all and some of the things he's
learned along the way.
So I think Jeffrey very much for taking time out
of his busy schedule to visit us.
And I thank Phil Gabriel and the Department
of East Asian studies for co-sponsoring this talk.
And please help me welcome Jeffrey to Tucson.
[APPLAUSE]