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For each reading in this series
called Poetry Now and Next

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as you probably
know by now, we've

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asked an established
writer to choose--

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to choose an emerging writer
to join them in a reading.

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For this evening's reading,
Louise Glück chose Dana Levin.

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Dana is a rising star
in American Letters.

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Just today we were
privileged to witness this.

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The phone call came
from the Academy--

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American Academy
of Arts and Letters

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awarding Dana a-- awarding Dana
the prize for her first book

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of poems, the book called
In the Surgical Theatre,

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a truly an amazing achievement.

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And one that will set her on a
path for three years to come I

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think.

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Dana is a product
of the Southwest,

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she comes from
Lancaster, California

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a town in the middle
of the Mojave Desert.

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And from whence she proceeded
probably not surprisingly

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to New York City, where she
went to New York University

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and graduated in 1992 with a
degree in creative writing.

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Two years ago, she received
a Pushcart Prize for poetry

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and last year, won a fellowship
from the National Endowment

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for the Arts.

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Dana has done residencies
at the Vermont Art Studio

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and at New Cross
foundation, which

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is a residency program out
in enormous space in Wyoming.

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She now teaches poetry
writing and occasionally

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modern American literature,
Dos Pasos not Fitzgerald

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we learned today at the
college in Santa Fe.

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Levin's first book, as
I said in the title,

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In the Surgical Theatre,
also won the American Poetry

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Review/Honickman Prize.

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And the judge for
that competition

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was Louise Glück, who
is also here tonight.

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Glück wrote on encountering
that manuscript,

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"current American literary
life being what it is:

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a well-documented and
scrutinized arena,

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the audience made
up almost entirely

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of practitioners, a
little trail from the MFA

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programs through the
multiple journals,

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it is rare to encounter
so substantially

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and for the first time
so mature a gift."

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Glück noted the rich ambiguity
and the animating fury of In

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the Surgical Theatre and
said, "what an amazing debut:

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sensuous, compassionate,
violent, extravagant."

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We're pleased to present
a potent new voice

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in American poetry and a Western
one at that, please welcome,

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Dana Levin.

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[APPLAUSE]