WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.120 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.120 --> 00:00:05.000 align:middle line:84% A year ago, responding to an interview at Harvard's Radcliffe 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:08.760 align:middle line:84% Institute, after a talk there on the notion of poetry 00:00:08.760 --> 00:00:11.160 align:middle line:90% as a philosophy for being-- 00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:15.880 align:middle line:84% Tracy remarked about often getting questions like this. 00:00:15.880 --> 00:00:18.400 align:middle line:90% "Does poetry matter? 00:00:18.400 --> 00:00:21.080 align:middle line:90% Or why does poetry matter?" 00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:22.578 align:middle line:90% And Tracy's response floored me. 00:00:22.578 --> 00:00:24.120 align:middle line:84% And you have this script, if you have 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:27.440 align:middle line:84% one of the little postcards that's on your seat. 00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:30.840 align:middle line:84% And she said back, "Does mystery matter? 00:00:30.840 --> 00:00:32.920 align:middle line:90% Does or matter? 00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:35.040 align:middle line:90% Does courage matter? 00:00:35.040 --> 00:00:37.400 align:middle line:90% Does resilience matter? 00:00:37.400 --> 00:00:40.960 align:middle line:84% Does our interest in the lives of other people matter? 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:45.680 align:middle line:84% Do our actions and their bearing upon the planet matter? 00:00:45.680 --> 00:00:48.440 align:middle line:84% It's an awesome reply to that question. 00:00:48.440 --> 00:00:49.770 align:middle line:90% Socrates would be proud. 00:00:49.770 --> 00:00:52.400 align:middle line:90% 00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:55.540 align:middle line:84% Where do you go to experience the splendor of wildness, 00:00:55.540 --> 00:00:58.720 align:middle line:84% or the possibility of a right relationship 00:00:58.720 --> 00:01:01.760 align:middle line:84% to the magnitude of the simultaneous beauty 00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:04.959 align:middle line:84% and wretchedness that are always possible in this world. 00:01:04.959 --> 00:01:08.540 align:middle line:84% What do we do with that, those possibilities? 00:01:08.540 --> 00:01:11.700 align:middle line:84% I think maybe another way to say this is, why would a research 00:01:11.700 --> 00:01:13.940 align:middle line:84% one university that has $1 billion 00:01:13.940 --> 00:01:17.620 align:middle line:84% worth of research every year need a poetry center? 00:01:17.620 --> 00:01:19.900 align:middle line:90% Does poetry matter? 00:01:19.900 --> 00:01:24.140 align:middle line:84% I'd argue that what we're doing is a research here, too, 00:01:24.140 --> 00:01:25.260 align:middle line:90% every day. 00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:29.560 align:middle line:84% A research based on language, on or, on mystery, 00:01:29.560 --> 00:01:33.280 align:middle line:84% on courage, on resilience, and also on freedom. 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:35.700 align:middle line:84% And also, what it means to be just, 00:01:35.700 --> 00:01:38.900 align:middle line:84% or to seek justice in our relationships." 00:01:38.900 --> 00:01:42.400 align:middle line:84% One assertion that Tracy's newest book, Fear Less, makes, 00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:47.340 align:middle line:84% is that poetry provides a way through fear to its opposite. 00:01:47.340 --> 00:01:50.460 align:middle line:84% And that in its most profound, but maybe also in its most 00:01:50.460 --> 00:01:54.060 align:middle line:84% simple iteration, is to be in relationship 00:01:54.060 --> 00:01:57.900 align:middle line:90% with the capacity for a love. 00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:01.280 align:middle line:84% And here's Carl Phillips the poet on that idea in his book, 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:02.660 align:middle line:90% The Art of Daring. 00:02:02.660 --> 00:02:06.720 align:middle line:84% He says, "A poem, whether we're reading one or writing 00:02:06.720 --> 00:02:11.000 align:middle line:84% one more actively grapples with, refines, 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.520 align:middle line:90% and embodies experience. 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:17.720 align:middle line:84% The experience of choosing rather than to pass 00:02:17.720 --> 00:02:21.360 align:middle line:84% through the world, to instead take into ourselves 00:02:21.360 --> 00:02:27.120 align:middle line:84% the world with all its sometimes brutalities, sometimes joy. 00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:33.160 align:middle line:84% This taking in of the world is a kind of loving, a sustenance. 00:02:33.160 --> 00:02:35.440 align:middle line:84% Never mind that it might not save us. 00:02:35.440 --> 00:02:41.520 align:middle line:84% Every poem is somewhere, both a form and an act of love." 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:45.440 align:middle line:84% This is the orientation to the world I feel most readily when 00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:48.640 align:middle line:84% reading across Tracy's remarkable work, including 00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:51.720 align:middle line:84% her five poetry collections, the most recent of which, 00:02:51.720 --> 00:02:55.960 align:middle line:84% In Such Color, her new and selected poems, her memoir, 00:02:55.960 --> 00:02:58.600 align:middle line:84% and now, with the publication of Fear Less, 00:02:58.600 --> 00:03:01.080 align:middle line:90% the two books of nonfiction. 00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:04.680 align:middle line:84% In Fear Less, she describes the stakes of a lyric poem, 00:03:04.680 --> 00:03:06.520 align:middle line:90% and what it makes possible. 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:09.860 align:middle line:84% "A deeper relationship based on our openness 00:03:09.860 --> 00:03:14.180 align:middle line:84% to the possibilities of language beyond the transactional spaces 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:17.420 align:middle line:90% that otherwise fill up our days. 00:03:17.420 --> 00:03:21.020 align:middle line:84% The poet, Charles Simic, has said that lyric poems perpetuate 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:24.220 align:middle line:90% the oldest values on Earth. 00:03:24.220 --> 00:03:27.160 align:middle line:84% So perhaps that's what we're also doing at the Poetry Center, 00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:32.060 align:middle line:84% maintaining an archive of our oldest and most durable ethics, 00:03:32.060 --> 00:03:36.180 align:middle line:84% that you matter, and that I do, too, and the fundamental stakes 00:03:36.180 --> 00:03:37.780 align:middle line:90% of a lyric poem. 00:03:37.780 --> 00:03:40.940 align:middle line:84% And we have to keep reckoning with that exciting 00:03:40.940 --> 00:03:46.020 align:middle line:84% and possibility rich like our lives depend on it, 00:03:46.020 --> 00:03:47.820 align:middle line:90% because they do." 00:03:47.820 --> 00:03:50.180 align:middle line:84% I could keep quoting Tracy, or we could also 00:03:50.180 --> 00:03:53.540 align:middle line:84% just ask her to come up here and share with us herself. 00:03:53.540 --> 00:03:57.320 align:middle line:84% Thank you for being here tonight, for choosing mystery, 00:03:57.320 --> 00:04:00.560 align:middle line:84% choosing courage, choosing resilience, and most of all, 00:04:00.560 --> 00:04:01.820 align:middle line:90% choosing each other. 00:04:01.820 --> 00:04:03.320 align:middle line:90% You've made a great choice. 00:04:03.320 --> 00:04:06.220 align:middle line:84% Please help me welcome Tracy K. Smith to Tucson. 00:04:06.220 --> 00:04:09.570 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:09.570 --> 00:04:11.000 align:middle line:90%