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[APPLAUSE]

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Welcome, everyone.

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Again, it's really great
to see so many people here.

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And I think what we're about to
see is going to be memorable--

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just a little bit of
information about the poets that

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were going to be hearing from.

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Eduardo Corral is a
CantoMundo Fellow.

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His poems have appeared in
Best American Poetry 2012,

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Ploughshares, Poetry,
and Quarterly West.

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Slow Lightning, his
first book of poems,

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won the 2011 Yale Younger Series
of Younger Poets Competition.

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He currently lives
in New York City.

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Natalie Diaz grew up in the
Fort Mojave Indian Village

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in Needles, California.

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She is Mojave and an enrolled
member of the Gila River Indian

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Community.

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She is the author
of a book of poems,

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When My Brother Was an Aztec,
from Copper Canyon Press.

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Her writing has been
published in the Iowa

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Review, North American Review,
Ploughshares, and others.

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She currently lives in
Mojave Valley, Arizona

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and directs a language
revitalization program

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at Fort Mojave.

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There she works and teaches
with the last elder speakers

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of the Mojave language--

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and now, a little bit of the
dialogue that I hope we're

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going to be hearing from
both of these poets tonight.

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Though I generally
trust critics,

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I will let the poets speak of
their own work as a way for us

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to begin thinking about
the exchange of ideas

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that will occur tonight.

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In a conversation
with Jeffrey Brown,

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Diaz asserted and I quote,
"writing doesn't ever

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fully satisfy me, and
that's why I do it.

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For me, writing is
a kind of way for me

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to explore why I want things,
and why I'm afraid of things,

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and why I worry about things."

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Similarly, when
Michael Laurenty asked

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Corral to describe
his goals as a poet,

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his answer was concise--

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"to write poems that give
me pleasure as a reader."

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If I may conflate these
two remarks for a moment,

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I recognize that we are lucky to
be in the presence of two poets

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for whom the gift of
poetry lies in its ability

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to embrace complexity, to draw
a closure as a horizon line

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to approach but
never fully reach.

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This last point becomes crucial
when we consider the subject

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matter of these poems.

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In one of my favorite poems
from Corral's Slow Lightning,

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"Want," the speaker
draws a haunting parallel

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between the desperation of a man
traversing the Sonoran desert

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and the desperation
of a man participating

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in his homosexuality
for the first time.

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A similar thematic
connection occurs

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in an arresting poem from Diaz's
When My Brother Was an Aztec.

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In Why I Hate
Raisins, the speaker

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reviles the shame
and frustration

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of having to rely on
government sent boxes of food

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to sustain herself,
only to later realize

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her mother's bitter
sadness in watching

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her family go undernourished.

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In both collections,
readers gain the sense

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that an injustice for one
individual, for one family,

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for one culture remains a
disgrace for all of humanity.

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And if these poets focus
on rendering our realities

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as ever more complex
multicultural ecologies,

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they do so in order to recognize
that simplified conceptions

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of culture of language, of
sexuality, inevitably lead to

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and sustain human suffering.

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For forging perspectives
that take on complexities

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as a political and
ethical imperative,

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please help me welcome Eduardo
Corral and Natalie Diaz.

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[APPLAUSE]