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Seiferle is the author of
three collections of poetry--

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The Ripped-Out Seam,
The Music We Dance To,

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which was nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize, and Bitters,

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which was also nominated
for a Pulitzer Prize,

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and which received the Western
States Book Award in poetry.

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She is the recipient of
a Cecil Hemley Award,

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and the George Bogin
Award, and her poems

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have been featured on public
buses as part of the Poetry

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in Motion Project, sponsored by
the Poetry Society of America.

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Seiferle's translation of César
Vallejo's Trilce was the only

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finalist for the PEN
West translation award,

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and her translation of
Vallejo's The Black Heralds is

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forthcoming next fall
from Copper Canyon Press.

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As if that were not
enough, Rebecca Seiferle

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is also the founding editor,
publisher, and web designer

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of The Drunken Boat, an
extraordinary online literary

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quarterly.

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Joy Harjo, who was among the
judges for the 2002 Western

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States Book Award,
said of Seiferle's work

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that she maintains a quality of
inquiry, philosophic intrigue,

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and poetic discovery.

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She leaps and always lands
on her feet, gracefully.

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To this praise, I would like
to add that Rebecca Seiferle,

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and permit me to
coin a term here,

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is an alinguist, the literary
equivalent of an alchemist.

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She takes what is ugly
in our world-- injustice,

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mortality, grief, loss, and, all
the while conceding our pain,

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she transforms it into something
beautiful, something lovely.

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In her work Seiferle reviews
and renews our understanding

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of religion, science, and myth.

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More than to the work
of any other poet,

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her inquiries take me to
the work of Bedřich Smetana,

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who composed the symphony
Má Vlast, or My Fatherland,

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after he had totally
lost his hearing.

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Likewise Seiferle, whose speaker
seems to have lost all faith,

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time and again conjures spirit.

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Her poems embody what
Carl Jung has defined

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as the secret of great art.

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She evokes all those
beneficent forces

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that enable humanity to find
a refuge from every peril,

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and to outlive
the longest night.

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Please help me welcome
Rebecca Seiferle.

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[APPLAUSE]

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