WEBVTT

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Hello, everyone.

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And our first reader
tonight is Olena Kalytiak.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well, my name, my
last name is Zuzga.

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So it's okay.

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Olena Kalytiak Davis.

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Olena comes to us from
Alaska, and she currently

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lives in Anchorage.

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Her writing is not about Alaska.

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In fact, one of her
poems dismisses it,

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stating simply that the
Aurora Borealis is boring.

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But the leaping sounds and
associations of her work

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compel me to note the fact that
Alaska and Arizona both share

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A's at their
beginnings and ends.

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I don't know if Olena
has been to Alabama,

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but Alabama has four
As like Olena's name.

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And, of course, ends it begins
with an A. Anyway, Olena,

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welcome to Arizona.

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Ole.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Olena is a Virgo and was born
in the year of the rabbit.

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It's true.

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[LAUGHTER]

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She is a first generation
Ukrainian American.

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She has been to law school
and has passed two bar exams.

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Her work has been
included in three volumes

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of the Best American Poetry,
1995, 2000, and 2001.

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Her first book, "And Her
Soul Out of Nothing,"

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was selected by Rita Dove
for the Brittingham Prize

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for poetry in 1997 and published
by the University of Wisconsin

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Press.

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Six years and two
children later,

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"Shattered Sonnets,
Love Cards, & Other Off

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& Backhanded
Importunities" has just

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been published by
Bloomsbury Tin House Books.

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Olena's first book is a
meditative, syntactically

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complex book that
posits and peruses

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the surfaces of an
elusive gong soul.

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Her second book opens
into a pirate ship

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of words, careening iridescent
night feathered talking birds

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surround you.

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You'll see this happen.

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A ferocious and dynamic
selfhood demands its place

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and claims the English
language for and to itself,

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or rather a kaleidoscopic
electric language

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allows an explosion of
being to form itself

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into an individual voice.

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In Olena's poems, everything
tugs and somersaults

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into itself.

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Rhyme leads the poems across
borders through hidden doors,

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words and phrases chant and
shift shape turning inside out.

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Think of two Sesame
Street monsters

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who come across a broken
word, sounding it out,

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putting it together.

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There is much counting
in her book also.

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On the Earth Day,
one is not only

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say 37, but also five, six,
seven, eight, nine, 10, 20, 30,

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35, 37 years old.

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And teeth are everywhere
in these poems.

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Teeth and a voice,
two things that

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emerge in a child's mouth
around the same time.

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In the acknowledgments
to her new book,

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Olena notes the
many journals where

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her work has appeared, thanks
various editors and readers.

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And then there is a
shout out to her kids,

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just their first names
with exclamation points,

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Avgustyn! Olyana! Olena's work
fuses an adult's range

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of relationship and reading with
a child's spatial exploration

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of the new possibilities
of language.

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These are words for the mouth,
for the tongue finding itself

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anew against the teeth.

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Olena Kalytiak Davis.

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[APPLAUSE]