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Steve Orlen was born in
Holyoke, Massachusetts.

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He's the author of
seven collections

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of poems including Permission
to Speak, A Place at the Table,

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The Bridge of Sighs,
Kisses, and most recently,

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This Particular Eternity.

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He has won awards from
the National Endowment

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for the Arts and the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation,

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as well as other awards.

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He teaches here at the
University of Arizona,

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and in the MFA program
at Warren Wilson College.

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Steve is a poet who is
curious to find out where

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the good stories are hiding.

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And no doubt, he finds
them in unlikely places.

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The houseware section
of a department

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store, during the graveyard
shift at a factory,

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or even in a childhood
memory of picking

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on a kid in grade
school, of which he

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seemed to have been an expert.

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And within each story,
within each poem,

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he arrives at a unique
beauty so casually gleaming,

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that it is almost
physically graspable.

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It's the kind of beauty
one hopes to find often

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in an examined life.

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And much of the time, it
is memory he is examining.

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And while Steve defends
the fickleness of memory--

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in his words what
rises on its own--

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he understands its mystery.

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Sometimes, the
stories rise subtly

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through a tender memory
of one's hometown,

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and sometimes, they strike
like lightning years

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later, while watching
a television show.

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His poems show us that it is
in the remembering of the story

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and the remembering of
the details of the story

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where our life is shaped.

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But please welcome generous
poet and teacher, Steve Orlen.

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[APPLAUSE]

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