Hi, everyone.
I am so delighted to be here to give this introduction.
I'm speaking not just as an enthusiastic fan
of Jane's work, but as one of her many former students.
There's a lot of us here tonight, I think.
So Jane Miller has a way of saying things both in class
and in poems that shape you.
In class, she would surprise you with an observation,
and then your life for years afterward
would prove her utterly and frighteningly right.
About art, about writing, about yourself.
There are two Jane sayings that I carry with me
and repeat to myself, and repeat to my own students
with attribution.
And they are, one, "If your poem is
20 feet away from its subject, your poem is probably
in trouble.
Either zoom out into outer space or get your nose right up
in there."
Two, "If the poems aren't talking to each other yet--
if you don't have a book quite yet--
don't worry.
Keep writing.
Your obsessions will out."
I don't know if you all find that last one comforting,
but I really do.
And of course, Jane's work enacts her writing advice.
Because if you listen to the subtext of those two
pieces of counsel, one thing you get at the very bottom of it
is an idea of poetry as connective tissue.
Sometimes limber, sometimes creaking, sometimes inflamed.
That ties us to each other and that ties big ideas
to little human moments.
In Jane's work, those connections
are often visible on the page in poems
that echo each other formally.
For example, in a final word that
becomes the title of the next poem,
or in a book of poems rendered as a prose
block from the bottom of the page, or in poems
that take the Q and A format as their guiding principle.
There's often something huge and dark
looming over Jane's poems, and those big forces
hook on to real moments.
As she tells us at one point in her newest book,
"The moon set tonight over the ruined city.
You moved your pillow."
Jane Miller is the recipient of fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation,
among many other awards.
She has taught at Goddard College,
the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Michener Center for Writers,
and of course for many years at the University of Arizona.
And aside from her many honors, Jane consistently writes
some of the realest poetry I know, Reading her,
I always feel like poetry is possible again.
Thank you.
I cannot wait to hear her work in her voice again tonight.
Please help me welcome the luminous Jane Miller.