WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.590 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.590 --> 00:00:03.360 align:middle line:84% To come across reviews or criticism 00:00:03.360 --> 00:00:05.520 align:middle line:84% of any one of Peter Gizzi's collections, 00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:07.590 align:middle line:84% be it his first, Periplum, published 00:00:07.590 --> 00:00:11.490 align:middle line:84% by Avec Books in 1992, or the three books that followed, 00:00:11.490 --> 00:00:15.270 align:middle line:84% Artificial Heart, Some Values of Landscape and Weather, 00:00:15.270 --> 00:00:17.580 align:middle line:84% or his latest, The Outernationale, 00:00:17.580 --> 00:00:19.560 align:middle line:84% is inevitably and quite regularly 00:00:19.560 --> 00:00:23.090 align:middle line:84% to come across swells of admiration and praise. 00:00:23.090 --> 00:00:25.130 align:middle line:84% Variously, his work elicits words 00:00:25.130 --> 00:00:32.840 align:middle line:84% like passionate, baffling, numinous, plaintive, unnerving, 00:00:32.840 --> 00:00:37.940 align:middle line:84% quixotic, generative, and haunting. 00:00:37.940 --> 00:00:40.310 align:middle line:84% It's an appreciation that carries over 00:00:40.310 --> 00:00:44.060 align:middle line:84% to his diligence as an editor, most recently of The House 00:00:44.060 --> 00:00:45.920 align:middle line:84% that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures 00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:49.430 align:middle line:84% of Jack Spicer and My Vocabulary Did This to Me: 00:00:49.430 --> 00:00:52.490 align:middle line:84% Spicer's Collected Poetry, two volumes 00:00:52.490 --> 00:00:55.400 align:middle line:84% and a four-volume project that have been widely hailed 00:00:55.400 --> 00:00:58.490 align:middle line:84% as some of the most important curatorial work in the past 50 00:00:58.490 --> 00:01:00.218 align:middle line:90% years. 00:01:00.218 --> 00:01:01.760 align:middle line:84% For these endeavors and others, Gizzi 00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:05.060 align:middle line:84% has been recognized with a number of honors, including 00:01:05.060 --> 00:01:07.340 align:middle line:84% the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy 00:01:07.340 --> 00:01:10.070 align:middle line:84% of American Poets, as well as fellowships 00:01:10.070 --> 00:01:12.380 align:middle line:84% from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts 00:01:12.380 --> 00:01:15.140 align:middle line:90% and the Guggenheim Foundation. 00:01:15.140 --> 00:01:16.880 align:middle line:84% But let me return briefly to the poetry 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:19.490 align:middle line:84% by way of an excerpt from an interview, one in which 00:01:19.490 --> 00:01:22.460 align:middle line:84% Gizzi is reflecting on his time in residency 00:01:22.460 --> 00:01:24.320 align:middle line:90% in Marseille, France. 00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:29.000 align:middle line:84% He says, "The past is always visibly haunting the present. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.040 align:middle line:84% You see a building that begins in the first century, 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:34.550 align:middle line:84% the second floor's from the 13th century, 00:01:34.550 --> 00:01:37.310 align:middle line:84% and the third floor is from the 20th century, 00:01:37.310 --> 00:01:40.670 align:middle line:84% some incredible piece of architectural genius. 00:01:40.670 --> 00:01:42.980 align:middle line:84% Everywhere you look, the Modernist notion 00:01:42.980 --> 00:01:46.520 align:middle line:84% of parataxis or collage surrounds you. 00:01:46.520 --> 00:01:49.430 align:middle line:84% There are always structures being worked on. 00:01:49.430 --> 00:01:51.650 align:middle line:84% Wherever you go, there's no vista 00:01:51.650 --> 00:01:53.870 align:middle line:84% where there's not some crane or some team 00:01:53.870 --> 00:01:56.720 align:middle line:90% of people rebuilding something. 00:01:56.720 --> 00:02:00.680 align:middle line:84% People are actually repairing the view." 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:03.350 align:middle line:84% The surprise and delight Gizzi registers here, 00:02:03.350 --> 00:02:06.200 align:middle line:84% and so elegantly, that people are actually 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:10.580 align:middle line:84% repairing the view gets right at the heart of Gizzi's project. 00:02:10.580 --> 00:02:14.420 align:middle line:84% At a creative destruction or onbuilding, 00:02:14.420 --> 00:02:16.850 align:middle line:84% that is also one of the more ambitious impulses 00:02:16.850 --> 00:02:19.430 align:middle line:90% in all of contemporary poetry. 00:02:19.430 --> 00:02:21.260 align:middle line:84% On the one hand, to acknowledge how 00:02:21.260 --> 00:02:25.280 align:middle line:84% poetry is haunted by textuality, while on the other, 00:02:25.280 --> 00:02:28.730 align:middle line:84% to insist that poetry remain vulnerable to emotion 00:02:28.730 --> 00:02:32.750 align:middle line:84% and determined to know something, anything, however 00:02:32.750 --> 00:02:34.800 align:middle line:90% fleetingly. 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:37.140 align:middle line:84% This, I think, begins to explain why Gizzi is already 00:02:37.140 --> 00:02:40.660 align:middle line:84% lauded as one of the best poets of his generation. 00:02:40.660 --> 00:02:45.810 align:middle line:84% He's a reconciler, a poet intent on repairing the view. 00:02:45.810 --> 00:02:49.410 align:middle line:84% Like Wallace Stevens, a poet to whom he's often compared, 00:02:49.410 --> 00:02:51.960 align:middle line:84% Gizzi is a poet of the imagination, 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:53.940 align:middle line:90% one for our moment. 00:02:53.940 --> 00:02:57.720 align:middle line:84% If not romantic, than perhaps remantic, 00:02:57.720 --> 00:03:02.430 align:middle line:84% deft at delivering pleasures, both sensual and intellectual, 00:03:02.430 --> 00:03:02.970 align:middle line:90% even-- 00:03:02.970 --> 00:03:05.370 align:middle line:84% or maybe especially, when composing out of doubt. 00:03:05.370 --> 00:03:07.960 align:middle line:90% 00:03:07.960 --> 00:03:10.840 align:middle line:84% "I am far, and I am an animal, and I am just 00:03:10.840 --> 00:03:15.280 align:middle line:84% another I-am poem, a we-see poem, a they-love poem," 00:03:15.280 --> 00:03:16.900 align:middle line:90% he writes. 00:03:16.900 --> 00:03:18.010 align:middle line:90% "The green. 00:03:18.010 --> 00:03:20.410 align:middle line:90% All the different windows. 00:03:20.410 --> 00:03:22.570 align:middle line:90% There is so much stone here. 00:03:22.570 --> 00:03:24.400 align:middle line:90% And grass. 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:29.230 align:middle line:84% So beautiful each translucent electric blade. 00:03:29.230 --> 00:03:31.030 align:middle line:90% And the noise. 00:03:31.030 --> 00:03:34.180 align:middle line:90% Cheers folding into traffic. 00:03:34.180 --> 00:03:36.220 align:middle line:90% These things. 00:03:36.220 --> 00:03:43.630 align:middle line:84% Things that have already been said many times, leaf, zipper, 00:03:43.630 --> 00:03:50.650 align:middle line:84% sparrow, lintel, scarf, window shade." 00:03:50.650 --> 00:03:53.250 align:middle line:84% It's a huge pleasure to be able to introduce to you tonight, 00:03:53.250 --> 00:03:54.420 align:middle line:90% Mr Peter Gizzi. 00:03:54.420 --> 00:03:56.270 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]