WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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Although it kind of creeps me
out to think of my daughter

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as a publication.

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I don't think I can put her
on my CV at the very least.

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Anyway thank you so much
to Jenny for coming down

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and to everyone
here again tonight.

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So it's awesome to see this
many people at a reading.

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And thank you also to
the English department,

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which is co-sponsoring this
event through the Convergences

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Series this year.

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And the theme this
year is the body.

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And Jenny's first book
is in fact The Body.

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And I think we'll probably hear
a little bit about the body

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in her work tonight.

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So as I've been doing before
I'm pitching these introductions

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as lessons in hybridity,
so this is number three.

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Jenny Boully.

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A hybrid is a seamed thing
that lives above and subsists

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on the fire of
seam, itself, where

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the Earth's crust is
thinnest and what's below

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can serve as fuel.

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Hybrid feeds on
seam or the steam

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that emanates from cracks
when something underneath gets

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superheated and
must at last emerge.

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Those people are
excited about hybridity.

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As they should be.

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Jenny Boully's work is
self-evidently seamed.

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If all text is a body,
and I believe that it is,

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then Jenny Boully's drawn to
where that body splits and does

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not mend and becomes multiple.

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Its open wounds,
its amputations,

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a little voice floating
in a field of voice,

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its sutures, its erasures.

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See for instance her
first book, The Body,

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footnotes in an absent text.

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See for instance her
Not Merely Because

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of the Unknown That Was
Stalking Toward Them,

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a double narrative
of Peter Pan, one

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floating atop the
other like concentric

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descending tectonic plates.

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See also The Book of
Beginnings and Endings, which

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includes just those
with the middles

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of the books eviscerated.

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Or consider her newest
book and her first that

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includes actual lineated
poems which we have up here:

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Of the Mismatched Teacups,
of the Single Serving Spoons:

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a Book of Failures.

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What else but a hybrid would
present a book of failures,

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offering them up
collected to be dissected,

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seams and weaknesses and all.

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Even her bio suggests the split.

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Born in Thailand, she
grew up in Texas.

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She's not fully either
nor both, exactly.

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Not Thai nor Texan, but
somewhere in the split between.

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Not located so much as
dislocated, as in her essay

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A Short Essay on Being in which
she writes about her Thainess

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in Texas.

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"You don't show
others their errors.

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You let them eventually come to
learn the errors of their ways

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and have them come to you
for forgiveness later."

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That is, you layer.

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You lay in wait, you
take what's given.

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For a long time, you might burn
or eventually turn to stone.

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So here's the lesson.

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Find a seam and occupy it.

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Take strength from
it like a salamander.

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I mean the fire
lizard from myth,

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not the cute, wet thing
that sings of slime.

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And seam I mean a crack in
language or in genre or in form

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where there is some pressure.

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Or find a pair of
seams like the ones

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that run in lines down the sides
of jeans, keeping our donut

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lit up thighs from bursting
out like overeating eels.

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Once you have your
seam, then straddle it.

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But when first you
find your seam,

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it might feel like
there's nothing there.

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Still ask yourself,
what is it that you do

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that is least like the others?

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How are you best an irritant?

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And to whom?

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Art's not easy.

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It should produce some friction.

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If it doesn't threaten
someone somewhere,

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then you're doing
something wrong.

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Emphasize that little heat
you feel and try to kindle it.

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See what that means
and why others resist.

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Open up your seam, slip a finger
inside, and then next a hand.

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It should feel warm and
dark, long unused to light.

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With your hand inside of
it, can you feel its pulse?

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That means there's something
moving, living here.

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This is your seam.

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There are others like it,
but this one's yours alone.

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What is it abut?

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What does it hold closed?

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Slip yourself inside
completely and see

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what's there, what
moves against your feet

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when you're underneath.

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That is, your work is now to
understand these pressures

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and give your voice to them,
to write from it, to make

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this slip a home, to
describe its movements well,

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to invite others there,
to let it close above you

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at your own risk only.

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In that case, you might have
to find a different exit.

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Pliny the Elder tells us that
the salamander, "an animal

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like a lizard in
shape and with a body

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starred all over never comes
out except during heavy showers

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and disappears the
moment it becomes fine.

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It spits forth a milky
matter from its mouth

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and whatever part of the human
body is touched with this

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all the hair falls off
and the part assumes

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the appearance of leprosy."

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My favorite monster manual
assigns this hybrid beast

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a copper colored head and torso
with yellow, glowing eyes.

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Its lair is typically at least
500 degrees and such treasure

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as there is found there will be
the sort to survive such heat.

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Well, what treasure we
find in Jenny Boully's work

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has survived such heat and,
in fact, subsists on it.

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To that end, before I am
set aflame for boring you,

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I give you Jenny Boully.

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