WEBVTT

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Hi.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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Just to say if you're
watching this later on there's

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a great crowd here
and it's really nice

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to look out and see all of you.

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So we're so pleased to welcome
Paisley Rekdal here tonight.

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This is a visit that was delayed
since spring 2020, I think,

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so finally happening.

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Paisley is joining us
from Salt Lake City where

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she's a distinguished professor
of English at the University

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of Utah as well as the director
of the university's American

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West Center.

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From 2017 until
earlier this year

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she was Utah's Poet Laureate.

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Her voluminous list
of publications

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includes seven books of
poetry, most recently West:

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A Translation and
Nightingale, and also

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four books of nonfiction.

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West is just recently
announced to be

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on the long list for the
2023 National Book Awards.

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So yeah.

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Woo.

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So we can all be
cheering for that to win.

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At the end of
"Nightingale: A Gloss,"

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a lyric essay at the center of
her collection, Nightingale,

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Rekdal writes, "I
stand in the field.

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I whistle back."

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Rekdal is whistling
back to a bird who

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mimics human song that she
encounters in an artist's

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residency, but she's
also whistling back

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across the history of poetry
towards Ovid's Metamorphoses,

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considering the fragmented song
of lyric time and the threat

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of transformation,
often violent,

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always complicated,
that runs through it.

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Much of Rekdal as a
writer is encompassed

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by these two short sentences.

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"I stand in the field.

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I whistle back."

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Across her poetry
and nonfiction Rekdal

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stands in the field of
human life and culture.

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Her poems spring from
inquiry in Nightingale

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into violence, language,
and transformation

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through Ovid's text.

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In West: A Translation into
American history and racism

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through the
Transcontinental Railroad

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and the Chinese Exclusion Act.

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Rekdal's investigations are
both into fact and meaning.

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Her poems inhabit
complexity delving

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far beneath the surface.

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From her place there in
the field of inquiry,

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Rekdal then whistles
back, her voice

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on the page as
nimble and musical

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as the bird she encounters.

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As a reader I'm drawn to
the craft of Rekdal's poems,

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sound and life and sentence
all alive on the page.

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I'm also drawn to the
many voices through

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and towards whom she sings,
her song responding to myth,

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history, and human experience.

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Through her own
engagement, she prompts

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us to consider how we too
might stand in the field

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and whistle back.

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So we're so fortunate to have
Paisley Rekdal with us tonight

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and I hope you'll join
me in welcoming her.

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