WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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It's taken a lot
of effort for me

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just not to drink this white
wine that's sitting up here.

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And I would like to say up
front that this is one of--

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I have an odd collection,
which is something

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that probably no
one else has, which

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is a collection of
Spice Girls 12 inches--

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12 inch singles that I
only ask geniuses to sign.

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And I would like you
to sign this for me

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tonight just to give you a
sense of, like, the depth

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of this evening for me.

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The flip side is Eileen
Myles, if that matters.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So it has taken me
at least a decade

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to understand what Mary Ruefle
was trying to say to me in 2001,

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which makes introducing
her on an occasion

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like this an exercise
in speculative fiction

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or maybe what I mean is
that I should prepare

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to understand the way in--

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--which I was wrong
in this introduction

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at approximately
the point I retire

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from the University of Arizona.

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Some of the
administration may hope

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that the day of my retirement
is sooner than later--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--so I can ceasefire
my punctuation

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of their weird shenanigans
with dumb jokes

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about anthropomorphic paperclips
that have evidently really

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ticked them off.

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But to speak of the thin skins
of deans and department heads

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is a terrible misfortune.

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I tried to reduce the
number of jokes about deans

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because there is a
dean in the audience.

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It's a terrible misfortune
on an evening made for art

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and even to give voice to one
in a sentence is too many.

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And there they are, two of
them, in this very sentence.

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I ask you, please, forget.

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In the end, there are no deans.

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There is only art.

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There is also Clippy.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I have come to feel that like
Clippy, Microsoft office's

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maligned, friendly, useless
paperclip assistant,

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Mary Ruefle exists out of
time, that she is existing

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on a different scale
and relationship to art

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and being than I do.

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That I am the shortness of an
attention span, a blink, a clip,

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a TikTok I keep repeating,
a tweet on a dying Twitter,

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and she is long.

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Long as in the long
game that she is

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playing with her art in books.

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In the art wet darkness, Clippy
waits, and so does Mary Ruefle.

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Only one of them wants to help
you write a letter, probably.

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So I would be surprised,
Mary, if you play video games,

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but if you did, I would love
to talk with you about the 1986

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computer game Starflight that
I played obsessively when

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I was young, in which you--

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--explore space, trying
to solve a cosmic mystery,

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which probably has to do
with an apocalypse or one

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sort or another.

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Though I don't remember
it enough to say.

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I remember only
the game Mechanic

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in which you pilot your
ship around the galaxy,

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exploring planets and
mining their materials,

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which you need
for, I don't know,

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upgrades or something
in your ship.

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Capitalist reasons.

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The most important mineral
you're looking for is endurium.

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Cool name.

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I know.

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Which fuels interstellar
flight and is

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essential for deeper
exploration into the galaxy

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as we are trying to
solve the mystery

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of an ancient civilization
that disappeared eons

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ago and foretold our doom.

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I promise, we are talking
about Mary Ruefle here.

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By which I mean we are talking
about deeper exploration

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at a scale beyond
what most of us

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are capable of perceiving,
which is the magic

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she makes in her essays
or poems or books.

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But we're also talking
about Starflight.

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And Mary, you may remember
that the big reveal

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of the plot of the game,
as you approach the crystal

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planet, dodging the
bug like galaxy,

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the chill Elowans, the
big geckos of the Thrynn,

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the blowhard slugs, the Spemin
worshiping the blob goddess,

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the Jesus freaky squid
of the Gazurtoids,

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and the floating brains
of the aggressive Uhlek.

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That big reveal is
that the endurium

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you use to power your hyperspace
engines is the ancients.

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I want to pause, yeah, exactly.

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It's fucking sweet.

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The ancient exists on
such a long timeline

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that what seems to us
to be a chunk of mineral

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on some random planet, inert,
non-conscious, non-sentient,

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is actually alive.

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What?

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These ancient aliens
just moved so slowly

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and lived so long in
many orders of magnitude

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more than our human or sexy
alien life spans in the games

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that we are not able to
perceive their movement

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or their consciousness.

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So we assume they are rocks
and then use them for fuel,

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chucking them in our
interstellar star engines

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so we could get to other systems
and mine those planets too,

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always searching, always
looking outward for answers.

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I was 11.

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This plot blew my freaking mind.

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Everything seemed older
than me and operating

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on a vastly different
scale and was

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concerned with stuff I could not
imagine I would ever care about,

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such as wine or sex or death
or poetry or shrunken heads

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or loneliness.

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I mean, it seemed
to take forever

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to get old enough to understand.

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And the future I knew
then would never arrive.

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Mary Ruefle writes
about these subjects

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but from angles so
acute that I believe

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she would recognize the
intelligence in the endurium

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when I did not.

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Reading Mary Ruefle, "Shout
Out to Dear Friends,"

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by far my favorite of the
essays from your recent book.

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That essay is awesome.

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It's from the book called
The Book, which I never

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wanted to be done reading.

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I could read that book forever.

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Reminds me that the
proper scale of art

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is not the internet or a
CV or a grant application,

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but the eternity of
god, lowercase g.

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Probably?

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I asked with a question mark,
not knowing, not really.

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Or at least it is the duration
of a human thought elongated

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forever.

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Anyway, this is a long way
of saying, I'm sorry, Mary,

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that I dropped
your class halfway

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through the first
session 24 years ago.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I figured the best
way to repay that debt

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was to write poems
in the perspective

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of an anthropomorphic paperclip.

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It took me a while
to get the message,

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but I think I got it now.

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I believe the best way to honor
an artist such as Mary Ruefle

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is in trying to approach the
scale of her sentences, by which

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I mean her ideas.

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And anyway, I'm sorry for
not getting it sooner.

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Mary Ruefle, please.

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[APPLAUSE]