Thank you.
It's so nice to be here again tonight
in the second of our four awesome hybrid readings.
So I'm here to introduce Maggie Nelson to you.
And as before, I'm pitching these introductions
as a short lesson in hybridity.
So this is number two, Maggie Nelson.
So in the genre of the introduction,
the convention is to list awards, which I refuse to do.
That's what genre is, often, to the hybrid heart.
A guide of what not to feel obliged to do.
In fact, the hybrid may crave constraint
knowing that in being bound, we free another part of self.
So in this series, we will see that sometimes the writing
is the hybrid.
I'm thinking strongly here of Jenny Boully, our visitor two
weeks from now.
Pitched between the seams of the genre.
Perplexing those of us who try to describe or contain
the thing we're seeing with a label,
but then sometimes, like tonight,
the writer is herself the hybrid.
For instance, Maggie Nelson is obviously a hydra.
Multiple draconian heads snaking up from the one body.
Extremely fearsome, entirely smart, and very rare.
Still the best source for hybrid consultation,
my second edition, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,
Monster Manual, says that she may
be found in marshes, swamps, and similar places,
as well as in subterranean lairs.
I imagine her like this--
astride her cache of gold and art and gems.
One head giving voice to lineated poems, doing so well
and often including several books.
Another munching on memoir, most recently The Red Parts,
about media spectacle, murder mind, sexual violence,
and her murdered Aunt Jane.
And another odder head, approaches Jane again
as a subject.
This time fusing verse and prose and found text in Jane:
A Murder.
It often happens with hydras that two heads
fasten on the same subject and open it up in surprising ways,
and it is so tonight.
So just when you think you've counted them all,
another Maggie Nelson head rises wielding criticism.
Most recently, The Art Of Cruelty, which we have up here
and which is a great book.
It is certainly most fierce; I wouldn't want to mess with it.
So I wisely sheathe my vorpal blade.
Then there's whatever head made Bluets,
her book that's most itself a hybrid occupying
the space between essay and poem, documentary, philosophy,
autobiography.
Highly-researched, deeply, unreservedly passionate.
So if you venture deep enough inside the Poetry
Center's subterranean lair, which I would encourage you
to do-- not tonight because they're closed--
but during their open hours.
You may discover a hoard of rare Maggie Nelson treasure,
which she has been known to guard.
Including her first book, Pacific,
which is published and in fact self-published 18 years ago.
I don't know if it's OK that I talk about Pacific,
but I'm letting you--
I'm not going to quote it.
People should have to go and fight
the monster to read the book.
But you can't find this book anywhere else.
You can't find it on Alibris, you can't find it on Abe Books.
I googled it.
The only reference as far as I can tell on the internet
is from the Portland State's MFA program.
They did a class devoted to Maggie Nelson
and they contacted the Poetry Center
to get a copy of one of the poems from this book.
So it's the only place.
I mean, this is a rare treasure indeed.
And Maggie Nelson will guard it, or maybe Tyler
will, or one of the other Poetry Center staff.
So the spine of the book is broken,
which is how I found it.
I found it in the shelves before it became cool.
The pages fall from the binding when you raise it
up to the rising sun in the map room like the staff of Ra.
To read is to remix it like a beloved record.
To read it is to damage it like a sacred text.
Well, to read a book at all is to grace it
with your human trace.
That's why we love books.
They're yours and even when they are no longer,
the pages still hold a little bit of you.
So follow the gleaming, swaying hydra
heads down to the body underneath,
the thing all the mouths finally feed.
It's just a body.
Turns out it's just a writer, it's just a human there.
Maggie Nelson, I hereby free thee from this wack simile,
so too to you students of hybridity.
Be like Maggie Nelson.
Be the hydra.
Allow your heads to flex and multiply
to go where they are drawn.
The key is being fierce enough, and she is fierce enough
for all, and we will fear you too.
Please welcome Maggie Nelson.