WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:05.680 align:middle line:84% Well I'm thrilled to have Heather here. 00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:11.650 align:middle line:84% Heather McHugh, poet-- poet, punster, logophile, 00:00:11.650 --> 00:00:15.970 align:middle line:84% metaphysics-fixed, philologist of light, 00:00:15.970 --> 00:00:22.990 align:middle line:84% of sight, lover of lights and roots, plunder of portals. 00:00:22.990 --> 00:00:27.790 align:middle line:84% Patient explorer of all things re: reflection, the mirror, 00:00:27.790 --> 00:00:31.210 align:middle line:84% the glass, the tunnel at the end of the light, 00:00:31.210 --> 00:00:33.670 align:middle line:90% and all that's out of eyeshot. 00:00:33.670 --> 00:00:37.810 align:middle line:84% She's the seer that shadows the looker, eye to eye, 00:00:37.810 --> 00:00:40.480 align:middle line:90% the seeker that makes us see. 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.760 align:middle line:84% Those readers who have a hard time seeing 00:00:42.760 --> 00:00:46.390 align:middle line:90% should look twice, or thrice. 00:00:46.390 --> 00:00:48.820 align:middle line:90% Sight preoccupies her. 00:00:48.820 --> 00:00:51.010 align:middle line:90% She's watching her watch. 00:00:51.010 --> 00:00:54.340 align:middle line:84% I mean the one like the night shift that never ends. 00:00:54.340 --> 00:00:57.520 align:middle line:84% The depths is where she's keeping time, 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:01.180 align:middle line:84% she's got seconds on the mind, and you must always second 00:01:01.180 --> 00:01:06.190 align:middle line:84% guess yourself if you read her lines for a single meaning. 00:01:06.190 --> 00:01:16.180 align:middle line:84% Rollicking, rowdy, romping, rhythmic rocker, this sass 00:01:16.180 --> 00:01:19.420 align:middle line:84% is a generous boss of words that wrenches 00:01:19.420 --> 00:01:23.890 align:middle line:84% our hearts out when we're wedged down too deeply in our ways. 00:01:23.890 --> 00:01:28.510 align:middle line:84% She wrangles us out of a complacent monotonal 00:01:28.510 --> 00:01:35.240 align:middle line:84% listening in her reification of the word itself. 00:01:35.240 --> 00:01:36.370 align:middle line:90% What does she do? 00:01:36.370 --> 00:01:41.200 align:middle line:84% It's an optical illusion become textual, now sexual, 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:44.650 align:middle line:90% now ritual, now reverent. 00:01:44.650 --> 00:01:47.230 align:middle line:84% She reinvents the wheel every time, 00:01:47.230 --> 00:01:50.890 align:middle line:84% she revitalizes and recharges context. 00:01:50.890 --> 00:01:55.090 align:middle line:84% What is beheld is merely, and yet also fantastically, 00:01:55.090 --> 00:01:57.910 align:middle line:90% the beholder. 00:01:57.910 --> 00:02:00.490 align:middle line:84% In writing this, and in reviewing her many reviews, 00:02:00.490 --> 00:02:02.560 align:middle line:84% I see that when we all read her, we all 00:02:02.560 --> 00:02:07.360 align:middle line:84% try to riff off her, rip her off, or rhyme 00:02:07.360 --> 00:02:12.940 align:middle line:84% with her, for her wit, rhetoric, music, love, and wisdom, which 00:02:12.940 --> 00:02:18.430 align:middle line:84% her poems are aflame with, are infectious. 00:02:18.430 --> 00:02:24.370 align:middle line:84% Her language can seem oracular but her voice is of this age. 00:02:24.370 --> 00:02:29.080 align:middle line:84% "Language's orders are of means, its disorders are of meaning," 00:02:29.080 --> 00:02:30.970 align:middle line:90% she writes. 00:02:30.970 --> 00:02:36.190 align:middle line:84% Or "content's a good stay against the uncontainable." 00:02:36.190 --> 00:02:40.570 align:middle line:84% Or how about, "love becomes a set of pet names, 00:02:40.570 --> 00:02:42.070 align:middle line:90% all diminutive. 00:02:42.070 --> 00:02:47.980 align:middle line:84% And as for God, we saw it was the dark that made the stars." 00:02:47.980 --> 00:02:51.850 align:middle line:84% She's got Eckhart and Beckett within earshot, one in each ear 00:02:51.850 --> 00:02:53.140 align:middle line:90% perhaps. 00:02:53.140 --> 00:02:56.200 align:middle line:84% Between opposing poles of abundance and nothing 00:02:56.200 --> 00:03:01.150 align:middle line:84% she tosses her balls, syntax, semantics, and tactics, rhythm, 00:03:01.150 --> 00:03:04.840 align:middle line:84% and a smile, for she is a humorous too. 00:03:04.840 --> 00:03:08.740 align:middle line:84% She's a poet's poet they say, but I'd say she's a pet. 00:03:08.740 --> 00:03:09.820 align:middle line:90% Let's not forget-- 00:03:09.820 --> 00:03:13.510 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHTER] Let's not forget the warmth 00:03:13.510 --> 00:03:19.300 align:middle line:84% it takes to put it all down for us mere mortal readers to get. 00:03:19.300 --> 00:03:20.950 align:middle line:84% Reading her work, I get the sense 00:03:20.950 --> 00:03:24.070 align:middle line:84% she has to restrain herself on our behalf. 00:03:24.070 --> 00:03:25.930 align:middle line:84% For the love of whole other meanings 00:03:25.930 --> 00:03:28.660 align:middle line:84% is a calling, a hole down which she could happily 00:03:28.660 --> 00:03:31.810 align:middle line:84% slip, in a tonal cone of surround sound 00:03:31.810 --> 00:03:35.470 align:middle line:84% and multiple rounds of song that could endlessly reflect, echo, 00:03:35.470 --> 00:03:37.240 align:middle line:90% and suggest. 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:41.830 align:middle line:84% Somewhere a pattern's under-sung, I read her say. 00:03:41.830 --> 00:03:45.760 align:middle line:84% And lucky for us, she frames her partiality 00:03:45.760 --> 00:03:50.080 align:middle line:84% in a perceptible pitch, leaving behind potential alternatives 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:53.710 align:middle line:84% or alternative motives for next time. 00:03:53.710 --> 00:03:55.480 align:middle line:84% "The artist, in particular, has always 00:03:55.480 --> 00:03:58.690 align:middle line:84% been someone who had to get away to understand 00:03:58.690 --> 00:04:02.128 align:middle line:84% what he was part of," she writes, and somehow I 00:04:02.128 --> 00:04:02.920 align:middle line:90% think that applies. 00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:06.480 align:middle line:90% 00:04:06.480 --> 00:04:08.310 align:middle line:84% Heather's honors include two grants 00:04:08.310 --> 00:04:11.970 align:middle line:84% from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Griffin Poetry 00:04:11.970 --> 00:04:15.660 align:middle line:84% Prize, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. 00:04:15.660 --> 00:04:19.230 align:middle line:84% Her books include 10 volumes of original poetry, poetry 00:04:19.230 --> 00:04:24.330 align:middle line:84% and translation, and essays, one a book-- 00:04:24.330 --> 00:04:27.510 align:middle line:84% National Book Award finalist, and another Pulitzer Prize 00:04:27.510 --> 00:04:28.080 align:middle line:90% finalist. 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:30.198 align:middle line:84% This should be the easy part to read but-- 00:04:30.198 --> 00:04:33.480 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:35.910 align:middle line:84% Her translation of the poems of Paul Celan 00:04:35.910 --> 00:04:38.340 align:middle line:84% won the Griffin International Poetry Prize, 00:04:38.340 --> 00:04:44.160 align:middle line:84% and her new book of poems is forthcoming from Copper Canyon. 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:47.120 align:middle line:84% Please help me welcome Heather McHugh.