WEBVTT

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Hi, everyone.

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Is the sound OK in the back?

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Can you hear me?

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Great.

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I'm Hannah.

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I am the coordinator of the
reading and lecture series

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here.

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And I'm happy to welcome
you to the Poetry Center

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and to part two of a four part
series on spectacle and poetry.

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So welcome.

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I want to get-- to, again,
thank our major series

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supporters, the U of A
department of Africana Studies,

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and the U of A Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry.

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Additionally tonight
I want to thank

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the Department of
East Asian studies

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and the program in
medical humanities

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for helping us
bring Kimiko here.

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That's really great.

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Also I want to thank the Whitman
circle, friends of the Poetry

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Center, the National
Endowment for the Arts.

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These are all
reasons that we can

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be here together on a Thursday
night thinking about poetry.

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So thank you to all.

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So last week we heard
from Terrance Hayes.

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Tonight from Kimiko Hahn.

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Next week and the week after
that we'll have in this order

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Khadijah Queen and Adrian
Matejka visiting us.

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Each of these four
poets is tasked

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with speaking to frictions,
overlaps, and confluences

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across the categories
of spectacle and poetry.

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The question we've
asked is this.

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If poetry engages with
spectacle, why and in what

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ways?

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We're curious about the
21st century in poetry

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and how we orient to the
world around us, filled

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as it is with bright screens,
with flashing lights,

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and with the ever present sense
of the self as a potential

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or an actual audience
to the spectacular.

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While it might not make
immediate sense, come with me,

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I want to honor the
spectacle inside the series

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and start my introduction
of Kimiko Hahn's work

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by thinking a little about
Beyonce's newly released song,

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Formation, and about the role
of the past in the present

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and the present in the future.

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So if you haven't seen the
music video for Formation,

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I do recommend it.

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It's for the old, it's for
the young, it's for the tall,

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it's for the short, for
those pumping their fists

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in the back.

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It's really happening.

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So for me, sometime around
my fourth or fifth viewing

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of the video, I
found myself thinking

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about the timing of it.

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It was released not only 24
hours before Beyonce's Super

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Bowl performance, but also
in the midst of Black History

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Month, between what should
have been Trayvon Martin's

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21st and Sandra
Bland's 29th birthdays.

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And it struck me that
Formation isn't necessarily

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a video for Black History Month,
but perhaps one that helps us

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think about ways
in which we could

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envision a Black present month
or even a Black future month.

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Beyonce's work in this video and
in her Super Bowl performance,

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which included dancers
fashioned after Black Panthers,

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has been placed by
The New York Times

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somewhere in history between
Nina Simone and Madonna.

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While taking on the very
contemporary Black Lives

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Matter movement, while being
the newest of new music,

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breaking the internet
as some might say.

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Ushering in new memes, new
GIFs, and new consciousness.

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To quote Simone, "what are
you doing if you're not

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reflecting the times?

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How can you even call
yourself an artist?"

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To borrow a different
phrase from the Jazz poetry

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collective, Heroes
Are Gang Leaders.

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This all reminds me of
vintage music for the future.

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Which is, it happens,
not a bad description

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for what Kimiko Hahn
is up to in her work.

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Hahn has been prolific,
authoring nine full length

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books that are each quite
different from each other.

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But something that
unites them is

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the thread of history inhabited
by a very present self.

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She takes on forms like the
zuihitsu, tanka, and nüshu,

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relishing in deeply textured
and meditative explorations

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of the self, of family, of
love as these forms were

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intended to be used for.

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And yet these are
also poems that

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are capable of craving
Twinkies, nachos, and Snickers.

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Of googling Syria, of pausing
over the news at 6:00 of Abu

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Ghraib and waterboarding.

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Hahn inhabits the past
not for nostalgia's sake,

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not for a fetishizing
of what's gone,

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but as a way of
being in the present.

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Of reckoning with what our world
is and has been and will be.

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This is, indeed, some
really good vintage music

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for the present.

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And it's a present her poems are
doing some much needed work on

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and with.

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Kimiko Hahn's most
recent book, Brain Fever,

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takes recent science findings
on the inner workings

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of the brain as source material
and as a conversation partner

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in order to meditate on
the mysteries of the human.

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The book is both phenomenal
and the next logical step

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for a poet who has long been
an avid hunter of inspirations.

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A deft synthesizer
and aggregator

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of all within her
ever expanding reach.

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Hahn's most recent award
was a Guggenheim Fellowship,

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which she added to
fellowships from the National

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Endowment for the Arts and
the New York Foundation

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for the Arts, as well as a
Lila Wallace Reader's Digest

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writer's award, the Theodore
King Memorial Poetry Prize,

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and an Association of
Asian-American Studies

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literature award.

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I think I need a drink
of water after that list.

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She is a distinguished
professor in the MFA program

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in creative writing and literary
translation at Queens College

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at City University of New York.

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Please help me
welcome Kimiko Hahn.

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