Oh, thank you, Diana.
That was so-- that was so beautiful.
I feel a little--
I'm like, oh, am I going to live up to that?
Let's see.
Let's see what happens.
So I want to say thank you to the Poetry Center,
to Diana for inviting me, to Paola for keeping me on track
and being so wonderful.
And to Tyler, and to Claire for having me
visit her class this morning.
This has just been great.
It's so nice to be warm.
[LAUGHTER]
It's, like, 40 degrees in Iowa right now.
Spring is coming, is what we're telling ourselves.
So I'm full of tacos.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm wearing my uncle's sandals.
And we'll just--
I got to get y'all laughing because the poems are sad.
[LAUGHS]
So all right.
So I'm going to start--
I'm going to read from--
I'm going to read some poems from Bestiary.
I've been sort of thinking about how that collection sort of set
some--
like, contained seeds for things that I had been thinking about
but hadn't really been able to articulate.
And then I'll move into The Renunciations,
which sort of opens up--
some of those seeds start to bloom.
This is a little sad--
sad plants.
And then I thought I would read some new poems because that'll
bring us, like, up.
So I'm going to start my timer because I enjoy being timely.
And let's get into it.