It's my pleasure to welcome Jane Miller, a stranger to very
few of us here, and one of my heroes in Tucson,
and a maker of this place.
And she's going to introduce her friend, Rita Dove.
Please help me welcome Jane Miller.
Our wildly acclaimed guest tonight
has been a student of poetry all her life.
For poets in the audience, for audiences in general,
the question about poetry it seems to me is always,
is it true?
Which I think is asking not whether a story or a feeling
is simply actual, although that matters
very much in the case of our guests tonight.
More than the actual, what poetry registers
finally is a clarity that is spiritual.
How does Rita Dove apply the beauty of the sensorium
for spiritual purposes?
From experience as a musician, dancer, singer, historian,
researcher, leader in the community, and mentor
to young artists comes a relationship with language
that is sensual and intimate.
For those of you awake late at night,
perhaps you are experiencing what the nocturnal Ms.
Dove receives as a poet seeing clearly
into the dark matter of the soul.
Perhaps it's her own tenderness and compassion
that becomes the basis for the many dignified acts
and voices in her poems, or it may simply
be that a shy, shy girl from Ohio, which has given us
poets as various as James Wright, Hart Crane, Thylias
Moss, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Juliana Spahr.
It may be that this shy girl from Ohio
paid the kind of attention early on that later gave her
the courage to lead readers to their full
and to their proper history.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege, also my delight,
to introduce one of the most distinguished and honored poets
of our time, but also one of the most humble.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Rita Dove.