What occupies us is a reflection or a glimpse at the skill
set that we have.
But what preoccupies us is an introduction to who we are.
And with that in mind, I would like
to have Rebecca Seiferle introduce herself to you
through a wonderful essay that she wrote,
"The poem is not a closed system."
I seldom use anthologies when I teach.
Instead, I hand out long poems that reflect my preoccupations.
Though these are rarely included in anthologies
because of their length I think there are other reasons too.
The highly polished individual poem
has become the goal for many writers
in contemporary workshops.
Prizing the perfected lyric has led to an emphasis
upon closure, the strong and memorable ending.
To revision as most often a practice of deleting
and to the poem as a self-referential and closed
system.
For me though, the vitality of much modern and postmodern
poetry is most often expressed in the sequence,
an extended form in which disparate realities,
personal experience, cultural threads or texts can
intersect and flux and ebb across formal boundaries.
To include such works in the canon
shifts our gaze to poetry as an intimate and ongoing process,
a life work as well as an artwork.
Catchy, right?
It's very difficult to argue that any sequence is perfect
but in their rawness, their dangling threads, their knots
and sprawl, many sequences resemble
a living and particular body imperfect, but loved as it is.
These words provoke and engage me.
Their limitations, interruptions, failures,
and birth marks indicate the hour and place
of their origins.
And I love their complexities, depths
of feeling and linguistic and formal beauty.
And fortunately, she gives us eight examples
of what she's referring to in this concept of the sequence.
The eight are Migraciones by Gloria Gervitz,
The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley,
Calamus by Walt Whitman, The Fascicles of Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson, Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell,
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson,
The Great Zoo by Nicolás Guillén and The Heights of Machu Picchu
by Pablo Neruda.
So once again, Rebecca, thank you
very much for joining us today.
Rebecca Seiferle.
[APPLAUSE]