WEBVTT

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Gerald Stern is the author
of 10 books of poetry,

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including This
Time and Last Blue.

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His many other awards include
the Lamont Prize, a fellowship

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from the Guggenheim Foundation,
three National Endowment

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for the Arts Awards,
and a Fellowship

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for the Academy of
Arts and Letters,

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and a Ruth Lilly prize.

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He's taught at
numerous universities,

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including Columbia University,
New York University, Sarah

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Lawrence College,
University of Pittsburgh,

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and the Writer's
Workshop in Iowa City.

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I'm going to fess up
to something right now.

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A very dear friend of mine
came from the Bay Area

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to make this introduction for
me and I lost her in traffic.

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And I know when
we're done, we're

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going to have some
words about it.

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But she has just arrived
and I am so thrilled.

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[APPLAUSE]

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As is Alison Deming, so
thrilled that she's here.

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So I just want to say, my friend
and colleague Melanie Maier

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will be introducing
Gerald Stern tonight.

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Mel and I met at a poetry
workshop some years ago.

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She's a San Francisco native,
a graduate of UC Berkeley

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and Hastings Law
School, the author

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of a chapbook, The Art of
the Everyday and her poems

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have been published in
Convolvulus and the Written

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Council Literary Review,
among many other journals.

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A frequent visitor
to Tucson, Melanie

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made a special trip
here tonight to hear

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Gerald Stern, with
whom she studied

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and whose work she admires.

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Thank you, Melanie.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Now, shall I start
from the beginning?

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Excuse me, but it was quite
a journey getting here.

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It's kind of fun,
actually, I haven't

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been lost in a long time.

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Gerald Stern lives
both-- well, actually,

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he used to live both
in Lambertsville,

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New Jersey and New York City.

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But I understand
that he's given up

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his apartment in New York City.

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So it's just New Jersey for now.

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He has two children,
Rachel, who's here tonight.

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As is his
granddaughter, Rebecca.

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She's a nutrition
therapist and mother

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who lives right here in Tucson.

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And his son, David, who
is an architect in Boston,

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Massachusetts.

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Stern was the first Poet
Laureate of New Jersey.

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He was born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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in 1925, the son of Polish and
Ukrainian immigrant parents.

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He received degrees from
the University of Pittsburgh

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and Columbia University.

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And spent his 20s
living and traveling

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between New York City
and Europe, principally

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in France and Italy.

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He wrote and published
poetry in his early 20s,

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but began to publish extensively
in his middle and late 40s.

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He has taught at
many universities,

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including Temple University
in Philadelphia, New York

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University, and for 14 years,
at the esteemed University

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of Iowa's Writer's Workshop,
before retiring in 1995.

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He is the recipient
of many awards.

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I think, actually, you had heard
part of that when I walked in.

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But I'll go through it again.

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Including a
Guggenheim Fellowship,

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three National Endowment
for the Arts Fellowships,

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the Governor's Award for
Excellence in the Arts

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for the State of Pennsylvania,
the Lamont Poetry Prize,

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the Melville Kane Award, the
Bernard F. Conners Award---

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Mommy!

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The Jerome J Shestack Poetry
prize, the Bess Hoskin award,

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a Penn Award, the
Patterson Poetry Prize.

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The fellowship of the Academy of
American Poets, the Ruth Lilly

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prize, and in 1998, the
National Book Award.

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He has published
11 books of poetry,

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and his most recent which he
will read from tonight among

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others is American Sonnets.

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I really discovered
Gerald Stern in 1997,

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at the Aspen Writers'
Workshop, surrounded by beauty,

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and had five days to
focus on just poetry.

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He was an encouraging,
generous teacher.

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And he said, I looked back at
my notes to remember exactly,

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that the most important
thing for a poet to do

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is read poetry.

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Don't be linear,
and he never is.

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I'm still struggling
with that one.

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Stern's poetry is both
celebratory and dark.

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Gail Mazur of the
Boston Globe says

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he shows us the
paradoxical nature of life.

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We see it at the end
of "Hot Dog", one

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of his most well-known poems.

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And I quote, "I was the oldest.

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I felt very old.

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Though truth was, I was
youngest too, my own riddle.

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I felt young today,
what with the rain,

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what with the wind, what
was the rolling bottle that

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won't let me alone,
and yesterday

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morning's news still underfoot.

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And all those trees, still bare,
but starting to turn a little.

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And two or three birdlets,
getting ready again

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for the next eternity."

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He has been compared
to Walt Whitman, who

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celebrated and sang
of himself, and in so

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doing, sang of others.

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So too does Stern sing.

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And I quote, "I walk between
my avenues singing my note.

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And it's our note too."

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Gerald Stern's Judaism
informs his work.

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We see it constantly,
as in, and again

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I quote from "Hot Dog", "I who
didn't shower at Auschwitz,

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you should forgive me
for mentioning it again.

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I breathed my fire
wherever I went."

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Well, breathing fire he
is, but in a humane way.

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We see it in his newest
book, American Sonnets.

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One reviewer said of
Stern, "he is still

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making his inventory of
the American sublime."

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Here we see poems
about string beans,

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sinks, the smell
of snow in 1940,

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shadows, spiders, God's round
eye, a goose honking with love.

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And American heaven
is--bad news for us

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out West--in the Hamptons.

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These 59 love poems are so
fiercely intelligent, burning

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with passion, zany, irreverent,
and I think, full of light.

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A marvelous light that
exposes, it dazzles,

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it illuminates the humaneness
of life, of the poet,

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the humaneness of us all.

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It is with great
pleasure, and I'm

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very proud to
introduce Gerald Stern.

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[APPLAUSE]

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