[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Cynthia, for this beautiful welcome, Cynthia, dear
friend from way back.
How lovely to see you this evening, though at a distance.
Thank you, Tyler and Paola, and everyone here.
Thank you to the signers.
I hope you enjoy signing my poems.
So the full title of my book is the Holy and Broken Bliss:
Poems in Plague Time.
And by plague time is meant both the period
of COVID, which I imagine everyone here remembers,
and the sickness of our society, of our body politic.
And at the same time, the thread that runs through this book
has to do with aging and what we are facing as we age.
So the book meanders back and forth among these themes.
And then ends with a whole section
on my own spiritual quest.
So thank you all for being here.
This is a great thrill for me.
I'm very sorry I'm not here totally personally in the body,
but I'm very happy to be here in this way.