WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.520 align:middle line:84%
I had the great pleasure
of being able to introduce

00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.320 align:middle line:90%
Andy Grace to you all.

00:00:05.320 --> 00:00:07.240 align:middle line:90%
He's a really good friend.

00:00:07.240 --> 00:00:11.160 align:middle line:84%
And when I tell you that he and
I were 22-year-olds thinking

00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:16.780 align:middle line:84%
about poems together more
than that many years ago,

00:00:16.780 --> 00:00:19.858 align:middle line:84%
it was a long time ago
now when we were 22.

00:00:19.858 --> 00:00:22.400 align:middle line:84%
I mean to tell you that we were
22-year-olds who were eagerly

00:00:22.400 --> 00:00:25.800 align:middle line:84%
thinking about the world that
poems make and how to move

00:00:25.800 --> 00:00:29.280 align:middle line:84%
into that world ourselves, and
how we could imagine a kind

00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:31.162 align:middle line:84%
of future that would
have poetry in it.

00:00:31.162 --> 00:00:33.120 align:middle line:84%
And it's been such a huge
pleasure to watch all

00:00:33.120 --> 00:00:36.640 align:middle line:84%
that Andy has accomplished
across his four books of poems.

00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:39.560 align:middle line:84%
When you think about poets that
have a profound sense of place

00:00:39.560 --> 00:00:42.320 align:middle line:84%
in their work, something that
distinctly holds it or anchors

00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:45.180 align:middle line:84%
it to a kind of geography,
lots of poets come up.

00:00:45.180 --> 00:00:47.640 align:middle line:84%
You might think of Robert
Hass's Central California

00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:51.920 align:middle line:84%
Coast or Ofelia Zepeda's
amazing sense of the Sonoran

00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:55.480 align:middle line:84%
and how that makes its way
into her words and her work.

00:00:55.480 --> 00:00:58.920 align:middle line:84%
C.D. Wright's American South,
Patricia Smith's Chicago.

00:00:58.920 --> 00:01:01.360 align:middle line:84%
This is my favorite kind of
map, not the one that shows us

00:01:01.360 --> 00:01:04.560 align:middle line:84%
where the borders are, or
where the blue highways are,

00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:06.730 align:middle line:84%
or where the bodies
of waters exist,

00:01:06.730 --> 00:01:09.430 align:middle line:84%
but one instead that comes
off of a bookshelf that

00:01:09.430 --> 00:01:11.822 align:middle line:84%
lists a landscape into
lyrics and narrative,

00:01:11.822 --> 00:01:14.030 align:middle line:84%
and you get a whole new way
of thinking about a place

00:01:14.030 --> 00:01:17.070 align:middle line:90%
beyond its shapes and its edges.

00:01:17.070 --> 00:01:21.070 align:middle line:84%
Andy's a poet of the Midwest,
and his most recent book

00:01:21.070 --> 00:01:23.710 align:middle line:84%
is called A Brief
History of the Midwest.

00:01:23.710 --> 00:01:26.270 align:middle line:84%
It's the kind of textbook
for what might otherwise

00:01:26.270 --> 00:01:29.190 align:middle line:90%
seem mutually exclusive.

00:01:29.190 --> 00:01:31.390 align:middle line:84%
How can a place
teem with abundance,

00:01:31.390 --> 00:01:34.670 align:middle line:84%
grow anything, but also
become a crisis of faith

00:01:34.670 --> 00:01:37.150 align:middle line:84%
at the same time,
or how can a place

00:01:37.150 --> 00:01:38.870 align:middle line:84%
be a place where
in one hand, you

00:01:38.870 --> 00:01:42.230 align:middle line:84%
have a fistful of chicory and
tiger lilies and on the other

00:01:42.230 --> 00:01:44.150 align:middle line:90%
a fistful of fentanyl.

00:01:44.150 --> 00:01:46.375 align:middle line:84%
Ohio, where Grace
makes his home,

00:01:46.375 --> 00:01:47.750 align:middle line:84%
used to have a
license plate that

00:01:47.750 --> 00:01:49.500 align:middle line:84%
claimed that the state
was the heart of it

00:01:49.500 --> 00:01:52.670 align:middle line:84%
all, the fundamental middle
of the country, some kind

00:01:52.670 --> 00:01:55.150 align:middle line:90%
of core part of the corpus.

00:01:55.150 --> 00:01:59.310 align:middle line:84%
Grace's work sings of middleness
and not the middleness

00:01:59.310 --> 00:02:02.070 align:middle line:84%
of unimportance or the thing
that you have to endure or get

00:02:02.070 --> 00:02:04.750 align:middle line:84%
through, which I know sometimes
we think about Ohio that way

00:02:04.750 --> 00:02:08.085 align:middle line:84%
when we're driving through
it or flying over it.

00:02:08.085 --> 00:02:10.710 align:middle line:84%
But I want to encourage you to
think of it more in its broadest

00:02:10.710 --> 00:02:13.430 align:middle line:84%
possibilities, a middleness
that connects us to all

00:02:13.430 --> 00:02:15.190 align:middle line:90%
the other parts of ourselves.

00:02:15.190 --> 00:02:18.630 align:middle line:84%
An essential piece that, by
geography and imagination,

00:02:18.630 --> 00:02:21.310 align:middle line:84%
augurs something more
essential, a critical way

00:02:21.310 --> 00:02:23.910 align:middle line:90%
of understanding the whole.

00:02:23.910 --> 00:02:26.230 align:middle line:84%
Ultimately, I think
Grace reminds us

00:02:26.230 --> 00:02:30.030 align:middle line:84%
that places are made out
of language in the end.

00:02:30.030 --> 00:02:32.270 align:middle line:84%
He reclaims a
declarative sentence

00:02:32.270 --> 00:02:34.510 align:middle line:84%
from the muck of politics
and puts it firmly

00:02:34.510 --> 00:02:37.390 align:middle line:84%
back in the aesthetic
realm, often forged

00:02:37.390 --> 00:02:40.830 align:middle line:84%
in the funk of language shaping,
where syntax can skip the tracks

00:02:40.830 --> 00:02:43.350 align:middle line:90%
and veer back towards singing.

00:02:43.350 --> 00:02:46.550 align:middle line:84%
His spectacular attention to
getting the world into words

00:02:46.550 --> 00:02:50.910 align:middle line:84%
is as fine and original
as any poet I know.

00:02:50.910 --> 00:02:51.890 align:middle line:90%
Buckle up.

00:02:51.890 --> 00:02:54.590 align:middle line:84%
We're about to land in a
cornfield with the power

00:02:54.590 --> 00:02:57.990 align:middle line:84%
to erase a neighbor's house off
the face of the Earth all August

00:02:57.990 --> 00:02:59.030 align:middle line:90%
long.

00:02:59.030 --> 00:03:01.970 align:middle line:84%
Grace teaches at
Kenyon College in Ohio,

00:03:01.970 --> 00:03:04.730 align:middle line:84%
and A Brief History of the
Midwest is his fourth book.

00:03:04.730 --> 00:03:07.650 align:middle line:84%
Please help me welcome him
back to Tucson to read for us.

00:03:07.650 --> 00:03:11.000 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:17.000 align:middle line:90%