Thanks, Zach good ending.
[LAUGHTER]
Poetry grants access, but to whom?
Jesus saves, but does he earn interest?
As poets, we confront our readers
with our borrowed languages and beckon, oh, dear reader,
walk across this bridge between your mind and mine.
As a debutante in the society of poets,
I will work to please, to span the space between my tongue
and one you understand.
Please, I want you to love my bridge, love my words, love me.
Joyelle McSweeney's work does not ask me this,
nor will it ask you this.
Hers is a poetry interested in torquing the nuts and bolts
of a language of the author's coinage, one
where the edges of diction pools blur into fertile estuary.
Hers is a poetry which revels in the gearbox grind,
the slippages between the cogs of multiple systems,
video gaming, biology, acronyms, between genre, poetry
and fiction, the written word and the printed page,
between absurdity and drama, between comprehension
and bafflement.
Dear audience, I am baffled.
Dear audience, I am unsure.
Dear audience, I am uncertain.
And this is where I begin to feel like I'm doing it right.
Joyelle McSweeney, author of six books, most recently,
Percussion Grenade.
In addition to other volumes of poetry,
she has published a sci-fi novel, and a baroque noir,
Nylund, the Sarcographer, as well as
a collection of essays, poems, and collages,
The Necropastoral.
Her work does not transcend boundaries between genres.
It gerrymanders them into tiny fiefdoms.
[LAUGHTER]
Her redistricting makes incumbency impossible,
forces her reader not to cast a ballot,
but to clear the floor for Hannie Oakley, for the Devil,
King Prion, Louis Braille, Narcissus, et al., et al.
And these are only the persona of this book.
These characters she has created do not breathe but shimmer.
They are chicken wire for papier-mache,
these grids created to support the foil of the vernacular,
shipping containers filled with servers.
Can I take it back to the bridge?
[LAUGHTER]
The bridge is half built, though not for lack of work.
It is a half-built bridge that this poet asks
us to row out to, to peer inside of, and to marvel at thinking,
it's a wonder anything gets said at all.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Joyelle McSweeney.
Oh, man, all right.
[APPLAUSE]