WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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In Splay Anthem, the
book Splay Anthem,

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Nathaniel Mackey
invokes jazz music

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and shows us how
music can be a vessel

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that we can climb into
our own experiences,

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lived and inherited.

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So in Splay Anthem,
Nathaniel Mackey

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says, "Abbey Lincoln sang a
Sufi lament, truth blurred,

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if not blue, blue bereft.

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Face never seen they say,
lookless, faceless, voice

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heard in hell, life,
love, alluded to, lifted.

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Love's laryngitis address."

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But what I wish I could show
you is how skillfully Mackey

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breaks the line and
infuses white space

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to form a notation system
that we can read his music by.

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And a few years ago, I was
a student in Sylvia's poetry

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workshop, an intro
to poetry workshop,

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and Splay Anthem was
one of the 455 books

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that she assigned to us.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it was hard core, and she
was a very committed and very

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influential teacher.

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And I was really
thankful for that.

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But Splay Anthem is a poetry
that lives with music,

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and it's a poetry unwilling
to strip the strand of song

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from its DNA.

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And I don't know how DNA
works or if that happens.

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But music wasn't
foregrounded in the workshop

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that I took, although now I
understand that it was really

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everywhere in those
readings, and I understand

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that as I've read We Remain
Traditional, how central it is.

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So there's an interview
with Sylvia Chan

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in the Poetry Center website
with U of A alum Jon Riccio.

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And I recommend you read it.

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And we recommend that you buy
maybe three to five copies each

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of We Remain Traditional
and read them one at a time,

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but in between those, you
can read the interview.

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Of We Remain
Traditional Sylvia Chan

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says, with regard to form
and lineation, "How I write

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poems is everything
to do with how I read,

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write, and play music.

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I follow my ear.

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I trust my musicality.

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I know where it hurts."

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And so in We Remain
Traditional, Sylvia Chan

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investigates themes
of hurt, states

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of brokenness and resilience
of the body and spirit,

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themes of lineage,
of the familial,

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of love, and also
how environment

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overlays environment.

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We have Bay Area, Vilnius,
Berlin, over these themes,

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and how place modulates
our sense of them.

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And this is a musical process.

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Intuitively derived as they are,
Sylvia's enjambments surprise,

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yet are unassumingly deft, like
another planet's clockwork.

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The speaker will devastate you.

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The speaker in this poem--

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in these poems will devastate
you in a measured way,

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arrived at through
multiple passes,

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through variations of
tone, mode, and rhythm that

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accent the changes of the
speaker and the changes

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we undergo as a reader, not
unlike the variations of Erik

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Satie, who has a bit part
in this book and who I think

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joins us tonight in
welcoming Sylvia Chan.