Thank you all.
It is so nice to see you all.
I feel words have felt so divisive lately,
and it's really, really beautiful
to see a bunch of folks getting together to hear some words.
So thank you, Poetry Center, thank
you Marilyn, and thank you to the universe for just even
the smell of rain in the air right now--
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
--which for Tucsonans it's like you're
bringing the magic already.
It's amazing.
So I want to start by using the words of Marilyn Chin herself.
In one moment she described herself as, quote,
"an activist, subversive, radical, immigrant, feminist,
transnational, Buddhist, neoclassical, nerd poet."
[LAUGHTER]
And what is so fantastic about that phrase
is that it's not even complete when
you start to look at the trajectory of her work.
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland,
Chin once recalled that as a child
her grandmother carried her on her back chanting Chinese poems
and sayings.
This bilingual and bicultural attunement
would lay the foundation for groundbreaking
writing that has done nothing less than expand
the canon of poetry today.
Chin has been credited with creating
the Chinese-American quatrain, the lyric
manifesto, the erotic haiku, and the remix sonnet.
And that's probably among other things.
Adrienne Rich once said that Marilyn Chin's poetry, quote,
"excites and incites the imagination."
Rich continued that, "reading her,
our sense of the possibilities of poetry is opened further,
and we feel again what an active powerful art it can be."
In addition to authoring six books of poems including
the most recent collection, Sage, as well as fiction,
Chin has translated poetry by various Asian writers
and edited groundbreaking anthologies
of Asian-American writing.
She's won the prestigious Ruth Lilly
prize, the Academy of American Poets Arts and Letters
award, the United Artists Foundation award,
the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard,
the list goes on.
And I usually don't read those lists,
but it just feels like there's so much.
You got to give it credit.
She's been variously described as, quote,
"a poet of contradictions, poignant sentiment,
beat your ass toughness, and unexpected humor."
And I can tell you that she will seduce you
one minute with an image, for example, this one's
from her poem, "Love poem from Nagasaki" such as, quote,
"10,000 dragons flies spinning around the moon,"
then have you laughing out loud with the first stanzas
of her poem, "So you fucked John Donne," which reads,
I couldn't resist, "So you fucked John Donne?
Wasn't very nice of you.
He was betrothed to God, you know, a diet of worms for you."
[LAUGHTER]
And then she'll leave you moved and mesmerized
with questions from her identity poem, "Number 99," such as,
are you baby's breath face down on a teenage road in America?
Are you earphones left dangling on an airplane jack
to diaspora?
In her "Brown Girl Manifesto" she writes, quote,
"the speaking subject is always an oppositional voice.
If the majority says, no dogs allowed,
she says grrrr, and wags her tail,
and bites the man in the ass, and won't let go."
"If the majority says, we don't want you immigrant.
We'll send you back."
The speaking subject writes on the walls of Angel Island,
"I shall stay firm.
I shall endure.
I shall not be erased."
Unerased, enduring, and firmly established as a poet
of immense talent, Chin is an innovator
whose experiments were born not just from her genius
but out of survival.
Born from her need to stretch a language and a tradition
to accommodate her experience and vision.
In doing so she not only created and continues
to create a stunning legacy, but she's
made more room within that tradition for all of us.
Please join me in welcoming Marilyn Chin.
[APPLAUSE]