Deliberately with an airplane, a sister in the woods,
a father with his whiskey.
But Karen's not explaining.
She seems as easily to forget or to wander off somewhere sharp
and equally interesting.
I love this freedom of her text.
As Gertrude Stein wrote in What are Master-Pieces
and Why Are There So Few of Them, quote,
"It's very curious.
You begin to write something and suddenly you
remember something.
And if you continue to remember, your writing
gets very confused.
If you do not remember while you are writing,
it may seem confused to others.
But actually, it is clear.
And eventually that clarity will be clear.
That is what a masterpiece is."
What has changed from early 20th to early 21st century writing,
in my view, is that the writer no longer
is grappling with memory and longing,
but with memory and creation.
I mean, the creation of a work of art.
But also in Karen Brennan's case, capital C creation.
She writes very human poems that could
be lines from a memoir, a confessional, an autobiography,
or even a repurposing of someone else's work.
But because she's not concerned with certainty or exclusivity,
they don't rely on an identity.
What emerges is something closer to a spirituality.
Ladies and gentlemen, Karen Brennan.
[APPLAUSE]