WEBVTT

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So I think of an introduction
to a poetry reading as a--

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can you hear me?

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As a way of preparing
an audience for what

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brand of miracle is about
to unfold in front of them.

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It's to somehow explain
or describe the poet.

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It's like the card next
to a painting in a museum.

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It lists materials or important
years or historical events,

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modes of critical
appreciation, or maybe even

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some questions to
consider while viewing.

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Look at it this way,
think of it this way,

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here is a guiding metaphor
for what is in front of you.

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I don't think Ilya Kaminsky
needs this from me,

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though, I'll note many wildly
respectable poets have done

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just this, offering their
metaphors and praise for Ilya's

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work.

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You'll find them here
and here and here.

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So Adam Zagajewski,
for instance,

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says that in Ilya Kaminsky's
first book, Dancing in Odessa,

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"He proceeds like
a perfect gardener.

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He grafts the gifts of
the Russian newer literary

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tradition on the American tree
of poetry and forgetting."

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He goes on to say, "This book
is as fresh as a young leaf

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in the spring."

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Robert Pinsky adds that
Kaminsky's poems are,

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"passionate, daring to
laugh and weep," are,

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"direct yet unexpected,"
and that his poetry has

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a, "glorious tilt and scope."

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Carolyn Forche is quote,
"In awe of his gifts."

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And I think you
should raise your hand

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if you'd like Carolyn Forche
say this about your poems.

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[LAUGHTER]

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What's more, I think that
a lot of the work that Ilya

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himself does in his poems is the
work of, look at it this way,

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think of it this way,
here is a guiding metaphor

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for what is in front of you.

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This is a man who's devoted
to his field, to his craft,

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to poetry, to opening and
explaining and arguing

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to others.

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He has read
everything, it seems,

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and is eager to talk and write
in conversation with it all.

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In his own words, he listens
to books talking to each other.

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If we're going on word count,
most of what he's published

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has been prose about poetry, all
of it worth reading, all of it

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worth grappling with.

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He writes about the
Russian literary tradition,

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why we benefit from its
translation into English.

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He writes about what
translation is and can be,

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about what the act of it does.

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He writes with devotion
about Osip Mandelstam,

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Marina Tsvetaeva.

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He introduces them to us.

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He writes in tradition,
he brings it forward.

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He is sincere and
he is effervescent.

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He is grateful.

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The section in Dancing in Odessa
titled "Natalia" ends this way.

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"Lord, give us what
you have already given.

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There's tenderness,
fear, and anticipation

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all informed by some of the
world's darkest darknesses,

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history's cruelties.

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There is love, there
is lyric, there

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is a way of moving through
the world and dancing in it."

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Another reason of giving
an introduction to a poetry

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reading is to give some
biographical information,

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so I'll do that too.

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He was born in 1977
in Odessa, Ukraine,

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in the former Soviet Union.

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He came to the
United States in 1993

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with his family when they
were granted political asylum.

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Long before he came
to the United States,

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he lost much of his hearing
to a case of the mumps,

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and he has gone on to
write a stunningly lyric

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poetry in a language that he
has never fully heard, English.

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Though, as he points out,
what is it to fully hear?

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Does anyone fully hear?

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To explain why he
writes in English,

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he said, "I chose English
because no one in my family

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or friends knew it.

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No one I spoke to could
read what I wrote.

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I myself did not
know the language.

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It was a parallel reality, an
insanely beautiful freedom.

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It still is."

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Ilya Kaminsky has won too
many awards to mention.

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I'm sorry.

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I won't keep you here all night.

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I brought up my
copy of this book

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because it has two golden
shining stickers on it,

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whereas the one over there must
have gone to print earlier.

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But two shiny golden stickers,
one from the American Academy

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of Arts and Letters awarding
him the 2005 Addison M. Metcalf

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Award in Literature,
and one Book of the Year

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sticker from Foreword Reviews.

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He has received a Ruth Lilly
Poetry Fellowship, a Lannan

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Foundation Literary Fellowship,
and was the youngest writer

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to spend a year as Phillip
Exeter Academy's George Bennett

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Fellow.

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Poems

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from his forthcoming
manuscript Deaf Republic

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were awarded the Levinson
Prize from Poetry Magazine.

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In 2010, Kaminsky co-edited
that Echo Anthology

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of International Poetry that you
can receive a copy of perhaps

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if you fill out a survey
for the Poetry Center.

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And that anthology
was called immediately

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indispensable by John
Ashbery and inexhaustible

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by Edward Hirsch.

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Again, raise your hand if--

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He is the co-founder of Poets
for Peace, an organization that

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sponsors poetry
readings in the US

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and abroad to support relief
organizations such as Doctors

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Without Borders and
Survivors International.

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He is also poetry editor
of Poetry International

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and of Words Without Borders,
an online magazine featuring

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international literature
and translation.

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Right now he teaches at
San Diego State University

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in their MFA program
in creative writing.

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But, like I said, I don't think
an Ilya Kaminsky reading needs

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much of an introduction at all.

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He will come up in front of
us, he will read his poems,

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he will read his poems
so well that we will

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believe he is singing them.

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We will sit in awe.

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At the end, we won't be able
to believe that it's over,

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and we'll shuffle
out amazed that we

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have to be anywhere but here.

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Another thing that
Ilya Kaminsky has said

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is that we need to look
at language like it's

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our lover's body.

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Before he's done
reading, you will

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know exactly what he means.

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And before he's
done reading, you

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will have shaken off
your long Thursday

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to remember that poetry and
that language is a thing living.

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I'm ready for him to start,
so I'll end it there.

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Please help me welcome
up Ilya Kaminsky.

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[APPLAUSE]

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