WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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That was amazing.

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All right.

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Hello, everyone.

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Good evening.

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That was amazing, Farid.

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Thank you.

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I'm just buzzing.

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In the Western
United States, ruins

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present themselves both
as timely and untimely,

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and cultural discourse
as materials.

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They are often associated with
quaint tourist attractions

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as metaphor and process.

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However, they are
timelier than ever

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before as they speak to the
decay of the American dream

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and other myths
associated with progress

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narratives of Western
expansion and Manifest Destiny.

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I have always loved the
way that Susan Briante's

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poetry and critical
writing have considered

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the ways in which infrastructure
underscores social space

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and relationality,
and how ruins tend

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to erase history
and inspire myth.

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Briante's work is an
elegant critique in depth

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as we visit places full
of holes, landscapes

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with no past, an attempt
to imagine the ghosts

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and structural conditions that
haunt those locales that Susan

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refers to as settlements--

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Newark, Chicago, Tulsa,
Guapiles, Mexico City, Miami,

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and the I-35 between
San Antonio and Austin.

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We are here to celebrate Susan
Briante, who has gifted us

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a new selection of work in 13
Questions for the Next Economy,

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gathered in a substantial
textual object,

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with a reprinting of her first
three out-of-print books,

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Pioneers in the Study of Motion,
Utopia Minus, and The Market

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Wonders.

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This is good news for
the completists among us.

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We're here to celebrate the
poet who has given us "Mother is

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Marxist," "The
Eventual Darling,"

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and who has asked us
to critically tune

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in to the heart-dropping,
soul-shaking,

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rhizomatically-vexing
"Aleph," Borges' "Aleph,"

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known as "The Market."

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Today, an anecdote I
share from earlier today,

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where it was in the Mexican
consulate waiting room, where

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I encountered a series of
photographs of the Arizona

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Mexico borderlands that run
through the unceded territory

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of the Tohono
O'odham Nation, there

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was Baboquivari
Peak, which always

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strikes awe each time my gaze
lands on the neck between two

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heads--

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a holy place that lies on land
that I have walked through

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in the summer of 2017, on a
ride along with humane borders,

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on a Saturday long
mission to fill water

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barrels to help people traveling
by foot as they seek out

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a chance at an affordable life.

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This was a journey made possible
by the inaugural Southwest Field

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Studies program that launched
that year, with Susan Briante

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at the helm.

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I was one of Susan's students,
eager to feel my way through

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the geo-, necropolitically
fraught landscapes that lie

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beyond us not a mere
45 minutes away.

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It was the forging
of this program that

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brought us, the MFA students,
close to the material

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lived experiences of those
caught between life and death

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and the policies
that dictated each.

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These experiences catalyzed
Defacing the Monument, one

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of the most important
contributions

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to the field of critical
creative writing,

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a powerful hybrid
text that draws on

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primary source, documents
of national identity,

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immigration juridical
proceedings, criticism,

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or what I like to call--

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it is a poet anarchist cookbook,
a book that helped many of us

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consider the implications
of our positionality

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and the ideologies
that imbricated

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the safety of our
privileges, that ignited

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a reckoning with the
means of representation,

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for the old adage
of, those who control

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the means have the power.

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That held us to account
when we consider

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telling the story of the
other, as well as what

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it meant to be the
other in question

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at the helm of that writing.

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And for this work and all of the
works, and for the poet herself,

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I'm grateful.

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I'm grateful for you who
walks in dreams with us.

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Una luchadora para los
derechos, para el ajeno:

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mi amiga, querida Susan Briante.

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