WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm Susan Briante.

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It's so nice to be here.

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It's so nice to see
so many of you here.

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It's been a long time.

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And it's a hot,
beautiful, humid night

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to be gathered together in the
presence of such amazing poets

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and their work.

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I teach here in the MFA program.

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I feel so fortunate that we have
the Poetry Center here with us,

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and I'm grateful to have
your company tonight.

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Let me take a sip before I
start because it's humid.

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So reading the work
of Mai Der Vang's two

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brilliant collections over
the past couple weeks brought

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to mind a quote from a poet,
artist, and curator who

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I very much admire--

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Anaïs Duplan.

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He writes, quote, "we often
turn to history for lessons

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that we hope will guide us
through the present moment.

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That's a worthy cause.

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And I'd like to think that the
process of remembering history

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together as a culture
saves us from repeating

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the mistakes of the past.

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As we've seen in this
nation's history,

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however, there are
limits to this process,

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especially when defining the
success of seeing together.

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Seeing together can be
tricky, to say the least.

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Can you remember a time when
all Americans saw together?"

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End quote.

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In my own documentary work, I've
thought about that quote a lot,

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its essential truth and
essential difficulties.

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Reading the work of Mai Der
Vang brings further complication

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to Duplan's thesis.

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Whose culture or history?

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Where do we find the
border of American history?

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How can we be accountable within
the legacies of US imperialism?

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Who do I refer to
when I say "we"?

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In her first book, Afterland,
winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman

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Award, longlisted for
a National Book Award,

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Vang established herself as an
essential contemporary voice,

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writing poems that attempt
that kind of accountability

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to the past as they
chronicle and contemplate

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the violence against
and displacement

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of the Hmong people as
a result of the Cold War

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geopolitical contests and
the Secret War in Laos.

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In the midst of
ongoing conflicts,

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it's a book that provides
an essential reminder

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of how long the legacy of
a war lasts as it explores

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the afterlife for victims of
such conflicts in the after

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land of diasporic survivors.

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In her most recent
collection, Yellow Rain,

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and the book to which I'll
focus my attention in this

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introduction, a finalist--
a book that was a finalist

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for the Pulitzer
Prize in poetry,

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Vang focuses on one particularly
harrowing aspect of that

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legacy--

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the yellow rain which fell over
Hmong villages, a reference

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to a never officially
acknowledged use

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of a brutal chemical warfare
agent and the elaborate methods

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concocted to deny it.

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The poems in the book take
as their sources documents

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from the National Security
Archive and the Armed Forces

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Medical Intelligence Center.

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They include declassified
cables, dissertation,

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congressional reports,
memorandums, and telegrams.

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They tell a story
of gruesome deaths,

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mishandled, lost, and corrupted
evidence, red herrings,

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and scapegoated bees.

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But the documents not
only feed the poems,

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they help define the
forms of the poems.

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The cover-ups and conspiracies
that mire this history

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can be seen in the
overlapping and manipulated

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images of quotes that
float under poems

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or sometimes over each other,
such as in a series of works

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called "Composition."

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Another poem takes the
form of a questionnaire

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given to Hmong refugees.

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But while the language
of imperial bureaucracy

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is left to reveal itself in
all of its brutal banality,

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Vang acts like a
translator, reminding us

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of poetry's ability to return
language to its humanity

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and reveal the costs of military
experiments and exercises.

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And here, I'll just quote
briefly from the poem,

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"Self-Portrait Together as a CBW
Questionnaire" as an example.

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In the poem, you'll
find this stunning line.

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Quote, "we rescue a
hundred whisperers,

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force the utterances of our
feet to survive," end quote.

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But that line is sprawled
across in bold texts

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and with the blank lines that
you'd see in any standard form.

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The result of this kind of work
is work that, to quote Vang,

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"pulls up furtive roots
of a covert history,"

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but it's also work that seeds.

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Vang writes of a
desire to, quote,

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"let the ancient ones utter
the narrative uncloaked,"

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end quote.

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And elsewhere, she
speaks of wanting to,

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quote, "let things come
clean in a scandalous tornado

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of simmering truth," end quote.

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But in that desire,
Vang never shies away

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from allowing the blanks in the
history or the black boxes that

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cover the text in
a redacted document

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to remain as absences,
gaping like wounds.

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For many years-- I'm thinking
back to at least Muriel

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Rukeyser, but we could
probably go way before--

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poets have gone to the
archive and the document

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to recount if not
recover history.

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And those of us who engage in
this kind of documentary work

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are sometimes faced
with or even haunted

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by questions related to
the impact of that work.

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When documents, journalistic
reports, documentaries,

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and book-length
histories already exist,

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why do we turn to poetry
to tell these truths?

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A book such as Yellow Rain
reminds us of the imperative

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to remember, to re-member--

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to gather, to bring together
our history, our memories,

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our humanity, in a
way that only poetry

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can do with its attention
to language and culture,

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to the material
and the imagined.

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It reminds us that
we need to remember

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even when we can't
remember together,

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because it is the only way
to approach our present.

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Again, I'll quote
from Vang, who writes,

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"I gather sharpness of my burn
beyond agony for an answer.

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It is not to know the
shape of what happened,

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but to know it happened.

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It happened."

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The poems in Yellow Rain
are not just documentary.

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They're monuments, memorials,
and temples to ancestors.

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They're tributes to a past
and offerings to the present,

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and they read to me like candles
lit in prayer to a possibility

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of a future wholeness.

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It is such a joy to be
introducing Mai Der Vang.

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[APPLAUSE]

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