Thank you everyone for being here.
I'm really pleased tonight to introduce Lee Ann Brown.
Lee Ann's books include verse Polyverse,
which was selected by Charles Bernstein for the New American
Poetry Series; The Sleep that Changed Everything
from Wesleyan University Press; and many collaborative works,
including The 3:15 Experiment with Bernadette Mayer, Jen
Hofer, and Danika Dinsmore; and Diagnostic with painter Anne
Slacik.
She teaches poetry at St. John's University in New York City
and has taught at Naropa, Barnard, Bard,
the New School for Social Research,
and in the New York City public schools
through the organization Teachers and Writers
Collaborative.
She's editor and co-founder of Tender Buttons Press
and co-founder of a new project for multidisciplinary poetry
and performance, the French Broad Institute of Time
and the River in Marshall, North Carolina.
She's performed her work internationally
at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Foundation
Royaumont, the Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club, and Alice
Tully Hall.
In 1999 when her first book, Polyverse, came out,
I wrote the following.
"Last night I dreamed that Polyverse
was such a voluminous book that I couldn't lift it
with one hand, but it wasn't a book at all.
It was more like a mysterious black box
containing multimedia images and texts, which
moved of their own accord.
Every time I opened the box, a new kaleidoscope of movements
would begin."
Looking back on the statement, I see now how it remains true.
In a time when many poets are defining themselves
early into a niche, into an aesthetic,
and a particular singular focus, within a book project
it is increasingly rare to find a poet who
is willing to extend and expand and to do so, so wonderfully.
It also strikes me that images and text which
move of their own accord are alive, meaning nothing here
is entirely fixed and predetermined.
The written word is pliant, leans in, and listens.
In other words, the work isn't merely to be received.
It is, by nature, relational.
The reader leaps onto the page.
How does she do this?
Perhaps it has something to do with being numerous,
à la Oppen.
She writes, polymorphously we walk in the park.
She does not negate one lineage to celebrate another.
She writes, I've slept with both Emily and Whitman
and feel no need to choose one lover over the other."
Perhaps it has something to do with her formal range.
For instance, in any of her books
you may find an eloquently rendered flower,
a song, a Dickinson cut-up, a cafeteria menu,
a tribute to another poet, a collaboration, an erotic love
poem, a sestina, a chance operation, an Olympian game,
an occasional poem.
Her work has, and continues, to illustrate that a book is not
a finite thing.
Please welcome Lee Ann Brown.
[APPLAUSE]