WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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I think that's pretty good.

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Can you hear me?

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Can you hear me through the mic?

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Great?

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I had several weeks, maybe
a month, maybe two months

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to work on this introduction.

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And I pretty much worked on
it every day for those months.

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And every day I came up with the
same word, which was embodied.

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So I would write the word down
and I'd be done for the day.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Around yesterday,
last night, I realized

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I had to have more
than one word.

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There were a couple of
things I wanted to do,

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I wanted to bring something
personal to the introduction.

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I also wanted to bring something
smart to the introduction.

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The personal part, a lot of
it has to do with the fact

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that I had a stroke a
couple of years ago,

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and I'm having trouble
being embodied.

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And Dana's work has become
even more important to me

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because of that.

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As for something
smart, I couldn't do it

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because I had a stroke.

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I couldn't do it better than
she has already done it.

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So what I want to do is
share some of the things

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she said about having
a body in interviews.

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Dana and I shared a
mentor, Louise Glück,

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and she was diamond smart.

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Louise also struggled
with her body

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and she liked to live
the life of the mind.

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And I prefer the
life of the mind.

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Though I'm OK with the
body as a metaphor.

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And Louise and I could be
very severe, unembodied and at

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times compassionless.

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Dana did not take that path.

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In an interview with Wesley
Sexton for the Adroit Journal,

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Dana says, "Art
and religion were

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born the first time the living
came in contact with the dead.

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The first time our
primordial ancestor

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found her friend
dead on the ground,

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touched him with
her hand and shook

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him was the beginning of
our central realization.

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The body and the animating
spirit are not the same.

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For in death, the spirit
vanishes, and yet the body

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remains.

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Our technological innovations
have always been in the service

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to making work
easier on our bodies,

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to accomplishing tasks with
greater ease and greater speed.

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What would be easiest
and speediest of all

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to not have a body, to not be
bound by time and space, to move

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and change all things
simply by thinking it.

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Hence, hands free communication
tools, selfdriving cars,

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increasing automation in
all areas of manufacturing,

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and soon everyday access
to virtual reality,

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which I fear more than anything
else because it will make it

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even easier and more attractive
to ignore the karma of being

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an embodied spirit on Earth."

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She continues,
"Most of the time I

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think we're embodied because
we are supposed to be.

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I don't think the
goal is to leave

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our bodies behind despite
what many religions tell us.

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Humanity seems hell
bent on ridding itself

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of its pesky body, both the
personal body and the Earth.

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So there are other moments
where I think, well, hey, we're

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tool making animals.

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Maybe we're destined
to become cyborgs.

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What do I know?

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And we may be taking such
bad care of the Earth

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that our cyber bifurcation may
be our only hope for prolonging

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the species.

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Poetry has always been sparked
by the body, spirit problem.

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It is the central thing it sings
about, whether in love poetry,

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religious poetry, or
poems of resistance.

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Even in surrealist
work, in poetry,

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that seems driven primarily
to explore and express

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the imagination circus.

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The underlying tension is
the way such poems sing

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against the imagination's
annihilation,

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inevitable because it is
housed in a mortal body: cf.

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Keats Urn.

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Technology and poetry
sing out of the same mouth

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because it's the only
mouth we've got."

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Please join me in
welcoming Dana Levin.

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[APPLAUSE]