WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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Can you hear me OK?

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OK.

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This is a real
special night for me.

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It's an honor to
start things off here,

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and to behold for a
moment all the lived time,

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and determination,
and open searching

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that went into the work
you'll hear tonight.

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I've known Richard Siken
for more than a dozen years,

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and I count him as one of my
best friends here in Tucson.

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And in the spring,
it'll be 20 years--

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he said scratching
his gray beard--

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that I've known Annie
Guthrie, who's been all along

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and in changing ways
an important part

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of how I understand
poetry, and what

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it can set as its missions.

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As a matter of fact,
the first or second time

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I visited Annie, and started
to fall in love with Tucson,

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she was living with Richard.

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We were just talking
about this at dinner.

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They were housemates on Third
Avenue in Armory Park, I think.

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And some part of tonight once
I sit back down and listen,

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I will relish
wondering how it is

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that these two
strikingly different ways

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of understanding, and
pursuing understanding,

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ever came to terms about
where the butter knives go

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and whether to
hang the bath mat.

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So relish that with me tonight.

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Part of what we're doing
tonight, as Tyler suggested,

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is celebrating the publication
of Annie Guthrie's The Good

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Dark.

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Here it is in my hand,
soon can be in yours.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Yeah, The Good Dark, which
is all of about 10 days old.

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Today in Tucson, near
the end of the monsoon,

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was a good day
for The Good Dark.

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I mean, the day sort of looked
like this beautiful painting

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on the cover of The Good Dark.

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And to use Annie's
opening title in the book,

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this was a day where Tucson
was kind of weathered.

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Something was changing, and
something was hanging around.

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And that suits the mood
of the book, to my ears.

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It's the recurring
starting place of the book.

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It seems to me that this
book is a seeker's book.

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A seeker's book with the
guts to admit and embody

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a disorientation.

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If God is at home, are we in
the far country, as she tells us

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Meister Eckhart says.

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Or is the near where we are,
and we must begin very near

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to go far, as she quotes
Krishnamurti 20 pages later,

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reconfiguring the quest.

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Managing to be both
allegorical and large,

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and minute and
delicately measured,

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The Good Dark is something
like if Stephen Mallarme tried

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to synopsize Piers Plowman.

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A Throw of the Dice meets
The Dark Night of the Soul.

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She writes, "the water
rushing shelters every sound

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I shout out into it.

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The form of the shore is lost
to the counting of the sand.

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The count is lost to the sound."

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Or elsewhere, "the visible
of violent character here.

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She's tethered to a game.

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Man will play the ground."

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An ingenious element
of this book,

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which is really like a single
long poem the way I read it,

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is its Middle Passage.

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A kind of theater of counsel
the seeker passes through.

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In which every player, the
Gossip, the Others, the Oracle,

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the Priest, has
their sides to read.

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Their rehearsal is the
speaker's preparation,

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and their help is
hard to integrate.

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Sometimes it provides
a dicey object lesson.

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And I want to read just a little
short poem from that section

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called "The Priest."

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"The Priest."

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"Imagine the Lord
performs a test

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with one mirror
in an empty room.

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The entrance to his home.

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And the call to his guests,
'Come, I'm in the back.'

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Watching through a secret
opening as they pass.

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Imagine the whispers.

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I don't care for submission,
as much as coincidence.

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And I'm not good
at being very happy

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when not spoken to directly."

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Annie is known to some of you
as also as a wonderful jeweler.

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And for the name of her
operation some years ago,

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she borrowed from her
late father's heritage--

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Guthrie Mining Company.

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I think you'll see
tonight, that's

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also a pretty good name for
the business of her poetry.

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Get ready to play the
ground, Annie Guthrie.

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[APPLAUSE]