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So throughout a career spanning
seven books of poetry to date,

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Eleanor Wilner makes a tacit
argument for the necessary work

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poetry can do in
our difficult world.

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She puts it this way
in a poem titled,

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"Never Apologize for Poetry."

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"In this union with the
word, the long reach

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of our little minds that
compass galaxies and quail

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before the corners
of a room at night

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can still ignite what otherwise
might just go darkly on."

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Igniting is a key
metaphor for understanding

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what Wilner does in her poems
as she considers history,

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the natural world,
mythology, scripture,

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visual art, and the effects
of war and violence.

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Wilner constantly shifts
the expected perspective,

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setting familiar scenes
ablaze with light

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that reveals them anew.

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In her most recent
book, Tourists in Hell,

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published in 2010, she
engages most deeply

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with the ever present
specter of war and violence.

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A topic to which she has born
unwavering witness since Maya,

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her first collection of
poetry published in 1979.

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In Wilner's poetry, we
find our way to, quote,

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"mourners, weeping at
the cemetery we have made

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of what was once their home."

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We find the work of
poetry enacted by a girl

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in the rubble, quote, "who
will never understand.

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Who, nevertheless, is
picking up stone after stone,

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trying to piece it
together again."

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Poetry, in the hands
of Eleanor Wilner,

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not only confronts the
violence that we perpetuate,

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but also transforms it.

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In the blaze of the
poet's eye, pain

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can be transfigured
into renewal.

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In "Up Against
It," for instance,

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the crack of the bullets which
ended the life of poet Federico

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García Lorca during
the Spanish Civil War,

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can be replaced with,
quote, "the shift and seethe

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of the sap forcing its slow
way toward the branching twigs.

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The ear splitting crack as
the end is riven by budding.

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A salt breeze in the
orchard, the small

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leaves trembling with light."

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Wilner trains her attention
on heartbreaking moments.

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On narratives that
feel inevitable.

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And she transforms
them with a vision

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that dares to imagine
something better.

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Eleanor Wilner is the author
of seven books of poetry,

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including Reversing the
Spell: New and Selected Poems.

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She is also the author
of Gathering the Winds:

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Visionary Imagination and
Radical Transformation

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of Self and Society.

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And co-editor of The
Rag-Picker's Guide to Poetry.

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A faculty member of the MFA
program at Warren Wilson

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College and former editor of the
American Poetry Review, Wilner

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has been recognized with
fellowships from the National

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Endowment for the Arts and
the MacArthur Foundation.

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In her poetry we
encounter the life

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of a rigorous, capacious, and
fiercely imaginative mind.

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Please join me in
welcoming Eleanor Wilner.

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