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I'm really excited
to now introduce

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Niki Herd to all of you,
which is a great gift to me.

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And thanks for helping
us welcome her back

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to the Old Pueblo.

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Niki is here, especially behind
her most recent book, which is

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called The Stuff of Hollywood.

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And it's a book of
poems that operates

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in the field of documentary
poetics, that probes our--

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and by our, I mean our
American appetite for violence,

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both imaginary and real.

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The consequences
of that appetite

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are our shared history, both
the one that we're taught

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and the many histories
that we are not taught.

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The consequences of
this American appetite

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are also our headlines.

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They are a profound part of
our gross domestic product.

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These consequences are ones that
shape by which we can know--

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a shape by which we
can know our politics.

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And as Herd's book
really expertly shows,

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they're frequently the shape
of our imaginative lives,

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woven in a kind of
lurking inheritance

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that we can't unchoose.

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In this way, Herd's
language is something

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of a mirror, where we see
ourselves as we've always been,

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but more obviously, forged
in the clarifying voice

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of Herd's lyric sensibility,
that records and grieves,

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and that ultimately,
moves as an act

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of critical love, that critiques
as it cares and as it holds us.

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The poet Stanley
Kunitz called poetry

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our most delicate and
sensitive instrument

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for recording
history, and Herd is

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a poet who works in that lineage
of capaciousness and care.

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In doing so, she teaches
us something profound

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about ourselves and asks us all
to step into the circle of what

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that seen and knowing
means for ourselves

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and really for each other.

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In the last poem
in the book, Herd

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asks what can be said that
hasn't already been said?

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And the poems in her book
form their own kind of answer.

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Much must be said
because courage matters

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because history matters
because our interest in

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and care for the lives
of other people matter

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because our interest in and
care for the planet matters.

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Niki was an undergraduate
creative writing major

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here at the
University of Arizona.

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Before other advanced
educational work,

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she's traveled to us from
Franklin and Marshall College

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in Pennsylvania,
where she's recently

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taken a professorship
in creative writing.

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In addition to The
Stuff of Hollywood,

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Herd is also the author of the
book, The Language of Shedding

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Skin, and with the poet Meg Day,
she's co-editor of the book,

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Laura Hershey: On the Life and
Work of an American Master.

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Please help me welcome
to the podium, Niki Herd.

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[APPLAUSE]