Ellen Bryant Voigt is the author of several books of poetry,
including "Claiming Kin", "The Forces of Plenty,"
"Two Trees," and "Kyrie," a book-like sonnet sequence that
inspired "Voices of 1918," a symphony composed
by Ken Langer.
Her most recent collection "Shadow of Heaven"
was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award.
Voigt has also written "The Flexible Lyric,"
a collection of craft essays.
Is it 77, you founded--
76.
Somewhere in the mid 70s.
In 1976 she founded and directed the first low residency
MFA writing program at Goddard College.
And she now teaches in its relocated incarnation
at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina.
She has received grants and awards from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace Foundation,
and the Fellowship of Southern Writers, among others.
And she is the state poet of Vermont.
And they have yet to raise a ruckus about her.
Because I read for music and a playfulness with language,
I find that I must read Ellen's poems immediately over.
Her linguistic compositions lure and divert me.
Once I've mined a Voigt poem for its musical intention,
I reread it to find, with pleasure, that it's also
saying something.
What she says is often a hard wrought insight
about the dynamics of family, of waning,
and pining and the depths of pathos.
How she says it is unflinching and concise.
In her first book, "Claiming Kin,"
she writes an ars poetica that can be traced through each
of her subsequent books.
"The real poem is a knife edge, quick and clean.
The bird needs no extra feather.
The stone sits in its own shape."
What distinguishes Ellen's poetry
is her ability to meld rhythmic measures to semantic intention.
Most poets seemingly favor either potent music
or semantic content, but Ellen's poems seamlessly comprise both.
They ring true to the ear, and further, they're
truly rung by the mind.
Composer Aaron Copland has said that the poet has
a more daunting task than the composer, that language is
at a disadvantage to tone in making music.
The work of Ellen Bryant Voigt is a resounding counterpoint.
She charms language off the page.
Her work cries to be let loose in the air reading voice
silently.
My mouth aches from the viscous vowels she shapes in my mouth.
She makes a musical instrument of any voice
that reads her work aloud.
We're lucky tonight to have the craftsman's own instrument.
Please welcome, Ellen Bryant Voigt.