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In his poem "Alone,"
from They Feed They Lion,

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Philip Levine ends on a
fairly ambivalent note aroused

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by the natural world
of someone alone,

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following a broken
trail of stones

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toward the deep and starless
river, almost as though he

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dared to conjure a chronicler
of what rivers have done,

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what rivers can do, what rivers
witness in a pastoral of grief.

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A chronicler impelled by
duende, that heightened

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state of passionate inspiration,
who has come and pushed

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through the aloneness
with aplomb,

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to see what solitude
can do, for us

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to allow for an otherworldly
encounter with the quote,

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"the blazing suddenness of
a wound overcome by wonder,"

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end quote.

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The main reason I come to Levine
is because of tonight's poet,

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the incandescent Ada Limón, who
often fulfills a role for many

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of us here who may
be new to poetry,

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who may be new to its music, its
rhythm, its porous genealogies,

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and its ability to bring
celestial bodies closer than we

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might have originally imagined.

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Limón, as a conduit for
the overflow of curiosity,

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an ability to recite Levine
and scores of other poets

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to the uninitiated like me, and
be the dowsing rod for readers

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who come and witness her
make myth of the material.

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Some younger readers of
poetry arrived to her

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because of the obligation of
general education requirements,

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like my intro to poetry
students who have mostly

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endured the long modern epic
"Paterson," or have given

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the perfunctory courtesy to
Dickinson's envelope poems,

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but who keep coming back to my
class out of compulsory duty.

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Until this week, when
I shared a series

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of YouTube videos
of Ada's readings

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from the 2015
National Book Award

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event, where Ada's
breathtaking collection

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Bright Dead Things
was a finalist.

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In these introductory courses
that we teach, as MFA students,

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each class discussion
is imbued with terms

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culled from a poetic lexicon.

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A word to describe the
turn of thought or passion

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in a poem, the
argument we surrender

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to with heart before mind, we
use its Italian designation

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volta.

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In Ada's poem "Service," just
as she speaks of a yellow urine

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stream gushing from a
well-cared for pitbull queen,

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signaling to Ada's
speaker, "Girl,

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no one's going to tell
me when to take a leak,

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when to bow down,
when not to bite."

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A volta sprung from Ada's
page into lightning,

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bolting from the fluorescent
lights in the classroom,

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lighting up the
eyes of my students.

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The majority, of course, being
young women who on that day

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turned and swaggered
out of that classroom

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with their own feminist bombast.

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Before they left,
though, my students

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left me with some feedback on
Ada's work and presentation

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that I might use for
this introduction.

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Of Ada they said, she makes me
want to pee in random places

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and mark my territory.

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She is lyrical and
comical, and I'm

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feeling the female empowerment.

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She's a hard bitch
with humorous honesty.

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She's a really good singer
with a powerful delicacy.

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She's enchanting.

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Let us be enchanted tonight
by the poet Ada Limón.

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