WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.780 align:middle line:90%


00:00:00.780 --> 00:00:02.640 align:middle line:90%
Good evening and hello.

00:00:02.640 --> 00:00:06.540 align:middle line:90%


00:00:06.540 --> 00:00:08.940 align:middle line:84%
Boyer Rickel is the
author of a collection

00:00:08.940 --> 00:00:12.090 align:middle line:84%
of poems called "arreboles"
from Wesleyan University

00:00:12.090 --> 00:00:16.410 align:middle line:84%
Press, a memoir in essays
called "Taboo" in the University

00:00:16.410 --> 00:00:18.810 align:middle line:84%
of Wisconsin's
Living Out series,

00:00:18.810 --> 00:00:22.740 align:middle line:84%
and of a new collection of
poems called "remanence."

00:00:22.740 --> 00:00:25.440 align:middle line:84%
He is the recipient of a
National Endowment for the Arts

00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:27.900 align:middle line:84%
Fellowship in
poetry, and his work

00:00:27.900 --> 00:00:31.590 align:middle line:84%
appears widely and regularly
in literary journals,

00:00:31.590 --> 00:00:37.860 align:middle line:84%
including Kenyon Review, Sonora
Review, Volt, Harvard Review,

00:00:37.860 --> 00:00:40.890 align:middle line:90%
Ploughshares and CUE.

00:00:40.890 --> 00:00:43.530 align:middle line:84%
He has been a sought-out
and adored teacher

00:00:43.530 --> 00:00:46.200 align:middle line:84%
of poetry in the MFA
program here where

00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:50.620 align:middle line:90%
he has taught since 1991.

00:00:50.620 --> 00:00:55.120 align:middle line:84%
Readers and critics have
called his work variously

00:00:55.120 --> 00:01:01.990 align:middle line:84%
evocative, moving, fragile,
balanced, brilliant,

00:01:01.990 --> 00:01:10.950 align:middle line:84%
self-possessed, fearless,
sane, edgy, devoted, calm.

00:01:10.950 --> 00:01:14.730 align:middle line:84%
From the start, what I have
responded to perhaps most,

00:01:14.730 --> 00:01:17.460 align:middle line:90%
is Rickel's poetic ear.

00:01:17.460 --> 00:01:21.330 align:middle line:84%
The power of this ear to
transform the settings

00:01:21.330 --> 00:01:27.060 align:middle line:84%
and dramas of the body into the
rarefied and pristine durations

00:01:27.060 --> 00:01:29.560 align:middle line:90%
in time.

00:01:29.560 --> 00:01:36.100 align:middle line:84%
The childhood memory of a
parakeet, a boat made of ice,

00:01:36.100 --> 00:01:40.390 align:middle line:84%
seagulls in formation
in reflection,

00:01:40.390 --> 00:01:46.750 align:middle line:84%
the worn face of a fresco,
the mind's tribunal,

00:01:46.750 --> 00:01:51.610 align:middle line:84%
are all elevated, examined,
given eternal station

00:01:51.610 --> 00:01:54.310 align:middle line:84%
in the pantheon of
hours that become

00:01:54.310 --> 00:01:58.570 align:middle line:90%
Rickel's essays and his poems.

00:01:58.570 --> 00:02:01.300 align:middle line:84%
The prose poems of his
most recent collection

00:02:01.300 --> 00:02:04.150 align:middle line:84%
are a fissured,
risky demonstration

00:02:04.150 --> 00:02:09.320 align:middle line:84%
of what Rosmarie Waldrop
calls gap gardening.

00:02:09.320 --> 00:02:13.160 align:middle line:84%
Spare, obsessed
with synaptic pause,

00:02:13.160 --> 00:02:19.580 align:middle line:84%
each poem accrues through
association and indirection.

00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:23.870 align:middle line:84%
By way of a sometimes
loose sometimes terse lyric

00:02:23.870 --> 00:02:27.080 align:middle line:84%
parsing of concept
and materials,

00:02:27.080 --> 00:02:31.010 align:middle line:84%
Rickel tracks the
ghost-ridden voices in matter

00:02:31.010 --> 00:02:35.460 align:middle line:90%
and the mattering of meaning.

00:02:35.460 --> 00:02:39.750 align:middle line:84%
In all his work, mellifluous
and fiery constructions

00:02:39.750 --> 00:02:42.450 align:middle line:84%
push us beyond the
comforts of Earth

00:02:42.450 --> 00:02:46.680 align:middle line:84%
and hearth toward the
transforming destruction

00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:49.620 align:middle line:90%
promised by the fire.

00:02:49.620 --> 00:02:54.450 align:middle line:84%
His is a body of work in which
we are dressed and redressed,

00:02:54.450 --> 00:02:58.080 align:middle line:84%
masked and unmasked,
stripped down

00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:04.980 align:middle line:84%
but not judged, or, if judged,
condemned to a life saturated

00:03:04.980 --> 00:03:10.740 align:middle line:84%
by the senses, saturated by
the undeniable sense in which

00:03:10.740 --> 00:03:13.515 align:middle line:90%
and sense of us.

00:03:13.515 --> 00:03:16.620 align:middle line:90%


00:03:16.620 --> 00:03:20.040 align:middle line:84%
And, besides that,
Boyer is my best friend

00:03:20.040 --> 00:03:23.520 align:middle line:84%
in a life that has blessed
us both with more than one

00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:25.050 align:middle line:90%
best friend.

00:03:25.050 --> 00:03:28.470 align:middle line:84%
And to appropriate
a line from Lorca

00:03:28.470 --> 00:03:34.100 align:middle line:84%
about one of his dear friends,
"Boyer Rickel comes flying."

00:03:34.100 --> 00:03:52.000 align:middle line:90%