>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ No audio ]
>> Grant Harris: Ladies
and gentlemen,
welcome to the Library of Congress.
We are very pleased to
have you here today.
My name is Grant Harris.
I'm Head of the European
Reading Room here
at the Library of Congress.
We're in the Madison
Building as you know.
The European Reading Room is
over in the Jefferson Building,
the oldest of the 3 buildings.
Together with the Library's Poetry
and Literary Center we are delighted
to welcome friends from the First
Chapters Literary Art Center also
SWEA International, which
is the Swedish Women's
Educational Association.
Thirdly, Milkweed Editions, a
non-profit publishing house,
and the Swedish Arts
Council, all of whom helped
to make this event possible.
Ms. Terri Merz from Chapters
Literary Art Center will introduce
our speakers, Malena Morling and
Jonas Ellerstrom, but before they do
that let me say that the
Library of Congress is proud
with approximately 100,000
titles from or about Sweden.
We think we have one of the largest
if not the largest collection
of materials outside of
Sweden that concern Sweden.
We have an extensive collection with
that of monographs on the subject
of Swedes in the United
States and Swedish Americans.
Each year we receive about
1,500 items from or about Sweden
and we are proud that all 8 poets
represented in this anthology
that we're celebrating
today are represented
in the Library's collections
in addition
to works by our 2 speakers today.
Taru Spiegel, our reference
specialist
for Nordic countries will
moderate this event today.
She has compiled a handout
providing a selected bibliography
of our holdings of these
authors' works along
with Taru's contact information
if you have questions now or later
about using the library's
collections.
The Library of Congress's
Poetry and Literature Center,
also across the street in the
Jefferson Building, it fosters
and enhances the public's
appreciation of literature.
The Center administers
the endowed poetry chair
for the US poet laureate
and coordinates an annual
literary season of poetry, fiction
and drama readings, performances,
lectures and symposium.
The European Division where I
and Taru work is responsible
for providing reference
and for developing the
Library's collections relating
to continental Europe.
After the reading, there
will be time for questions
and answers before the book signing.
We hope you enjoy today's event
and that you will come back
to use our collections.
I thank all of you who have
made this event possible today.
Please turn off your cell
phones and recording devices
for the duration of this program.
Also be aware that this
event is being recorded
as a Library of Congress webcast.
I would now like to ask Terri
Merz to introduce our speakers.
Terri is President of the
Chapter's Literary Art Center,
a cultural non-profit
based here in Washington.
Her love of poetry and
literature is readily apparent.
She is working on an
international poetry anthology
and is also the moving force
in making today's event happen.
Terri, thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Terri Merz:
[ Speaking foreign language ]
. It is fun to say a
brief but plentiful thanks
[ speaking foreign language ]
to our gracious host here at the
Library of Congress, Rob Casper,
head of the Poetry
Center [inaudible]
and the program coordinator therein
thank you, Grant, and thank you,
Taru, for so rounding
welcoming this event.
And a huge thank you to SWEA,
the Swedish Women's Educational
Association of Washington, D.C.,
and their chair Marianne Krell, who
cannot be with us today but is here
in language and in spirit.
SWEA's mission of promoting
Swedish language
and culture underwrite scholarships
and Christmas cheer as well
as unique cultural
exchanges such as this.
Sincere thanks I will
reiterate to [inaudible]
at the Swedish Arts Council
and Milkweed Editions
to distinguish literary
press, publisher of the Star
Above my Head Poets From
Sweden edited and translated
by our guests here today, Malena
Morling and Jonas Ellerstrom.
Malena Morling spent her childhood
in Sweden and perhaps because of
that she became [inaudible]
something new in American poetry.
Author of 2 of her own collections,
Ocean Avenue and Astoria,
she has also become one of Tomas
Transtromer's best translators
into English.
She has received [inaudible]
Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship,
and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship,
and she currently teaches both
at New England College and the
University of North Carolina.
Jonas Ellerstrom, who flew in
from Stockholm, [inaudible],
he is truly a Swedish
man of letters.
He's a poet, an essayist, an art
critic, a translator and publisher
and he's written about
the blues and chess.
His translations into Swedish
include William Blake, [inaudible]
and T.S. Elliott, and he's twice
been honored by the Swedish Academy.
Malena and Jonas have previously
collaborated on a translation
of [inaudible] poetry and
have a forthcoming anthology
of Swedish writers on writing,
but today they bring us 8 luminous
British voices, Edith, Guttenberg,
[inaudible], Tomas, [inaudible]
Christina, Marie and Bruno.
Each poet a world unto themselves
and all together a
dazzling constellation.
Please welcome Malena and Jonas.
[ Applause ]
>> Jonas Ellerstrom: Good afternoon.
Devoted Swedish poetry should
start with a poem in Swedish.
I will read you one and for
those linguistically interested,
please note that my Swedish is a
southern Swedish kind although I
live in Stockholm, I've
been back for 10 years,
it has not changed my dialect.
This is by Edith Sodergran
who herself would have spoken
in a Finland/Swedish dialect.
[ Speaking foreign language ]
And in Malena Morling's
and my translation those
are true code translations.
We don't sign them separately.
The stars, as night derives I
stand on the steps and listen.
The stars are swarmed over the
garden and I stand in darkness.
Did you hear?
A star fell with a clang.
Don't walk barefoot in the grass
my garden is full of shards.
We have divided Malena and I this
program between us so that I will
in the impossibly short time
of some 10 minutes contextualize the
Swedish poetry by saying something,
at least some things, about
the history, the geography
and linguistic grounds
for Swedish poetry.
We should know that what
characterizes Sweden as a state,
and it is a very old state
in all contemporary meaning
of the word state it's been
in existence since the 9th
or 10th Century, it has
been a country at peace
for more than 2 centuries.
The last war was fought in 1814.
The 2 World Wars of the last century
did, of course, not pass unnoticed
but no fighting except by people
going to fight against Franco Spain
and against the Russian
invasion of Finland took place.
And this coincides with a general
prosperity in modern times.
Since the late 19th Century
beginning of 20th Century, we saw,
of course, the major Swedish
immigration to the United States
and many Swedish, many
Swedes settled in Minnesota
where we are going next on this
small tour of the United States.
You could say that from the 1950s
onward Sweden has been a quite
prosperous country and also
a very stable democracy.
This has meant I think it's fair
to say that literature, culture,
the arts, have been able
to play a large part
in the Swedish society
life and an old, a very old
and rich tradition has
achieved a century-long bloom.
The first Swedish poems are
actually runic inscriptions
on runestones from the 9th Century.
They do have poetic qualities
and it should be noted
that they are also not,
they're in a language
that is bridging the
old Norse language
of the Icelandic sagas
and present day Swedish.
They do have wonderful
poetical qualities,
but after that as Sweden
became a Christian country,
its official religion was for a
long time Lutheran Protestantism.
These days you can
say official religion
as the Lutheran Church is no
longer affiliated with the state,
but during the long
years, the long centuries
from the 11th Century onwards,
the written language of Sweden,
the language of sermons
and the language
of proto literature
was, of course, Latin.
A turning point was the translation,
of course, of the Bible into Swedish
in the 16th Century and from
the 16th Century we also have a
tradition of poetry
written in Swedish.
It has taken on many aspects and
I think if we try not to get,
cover all of history but
concentrate as our book does
on the 20th Century,
the earliest poem,
the earliest poems are [inaudible]
certainly on the one I read is
from 1916, and the latest
poems or the most recent poems
in [inaudible] are from 2008.
So we cover practically a
century of modern poetry.
That is not to say that
the poets we have chosen,
the poems we have chosen, can always
be classified as modernist poetry.
Sweden is a country on the
northern fringe of [inaudible].
Today Sweden has 9
million inhabitants.
There's a small Swedish-speaking
minority in Finland,
which early on was a
member and still, of course,
this is a very small language.
The country though
is not that small.
There is a classic school example,
now I play the role of the teacher
and tell you that if you take
this elongated country of Sweden
and tip it over like this,
the northern tip of Sweden,
which is quite longer and
past the polar circle,
would actually touch
the Mediterranean Sea.
So it covers, it's a length
that covers all of Europe.
It is a sparsely populated
country and it was
up until the 1960s I would
say predominately a rural
[phonetic] country.
What I think everybody notices in
Swedish poetry is the proximity,
the abundance of nature both as
poetic symbols and as motives
within the poems themselves.
Still you find [inaudible]
dependency upon nature is perhaps no
longer there but it is not
as easily described as saying
that Swedes just have
a love of nature.
Nature is still very much a
force to be reckoned with.
This very long country
covers several climate zones.
Not all of them always
friendly towards humans.
I've touched on the origins of
the language and it has evolved
into a very rich language and, of
course, I'm a bit partial but, yes,
it is, it is a beautiful language.
It is characterized as you will
hear I will finish a short while
with another poem and you'll
hear Malena read examples
from the other poets
in the anthology.
It is characterized by what
English mostly lack the open vowels.
So, to you, of course, I'm
Jonas and Malena is Malena,
but actually at home
the US is Malena's home,
we would be Jonas not Jonas,
Jonas, and Malena not Malena.
You hear the difference in the
closed vowels and the open vowels.
Also there is a very marked
inflections creating the musical
rhythm to the language.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a small language,
a large country in relation
to its population, a
long poetical tradition,
a very rich poetical tradition.
We see before us a country that is
a stable democracy where many layers
of society have expressed
themselves in literature.
Sweden has one of the richest
working men's worker's literature
of the world.
We also have a very old nobleman's
tradition of writing poetry.
We have seen in the 20th Century
a decline of the importance
of the Protestant church, but I
do think that is a major feature
of the role of poetry in Sweden
today that poetry has proven
that like no other literary genre it
is able to soothe existential unrest
and to answer the spiritual
needs of readers.
I will finish with what is, in
fact, request from [inaudible].
It's a short poem and you may
if we look at it very hastily
and misread it's title
for an English verb [phonetic] it's
a Chinese time period it's soon,
which, of course, a period
characterized also by rich poetry
and rich pottery [phonetic]
of course.
[Inaudible] is the
major Swedish modernist.
He introduced realism in Sweden
but like so many other trends
like so many other revolutions they
took some time to reach Sweden.
Sweden has, Swedish
authors have turned
that into an advantage
of being on the fringe.
Yes, [inaudible] have been
somewhat slow in Sweden,
but then we have been able
to turn them into something
of our own not following
set patterns.
Soon. This is not the
poem with stars figure.
Soon.
[ Speaking foreign language ]
Soon. The night tonight
is a starry clear one.
The air is clean and cold.
The most is searching in all
things for its lost inheritance.
A window, a blooming
branch, that's enough.
No flowers without earth,
no earth without space,
no space without something blooming.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Malena Moring: Hello everyone,
and thank you for coming.
I also want to thank the Library
of Congress for having us here
and in particular Mr. Grant I
want to thank you and I want
to thank Terri Merz and Taru
Spiegel and Anya Critney [phonetic].
It's really a great pleasure
for us to be here today.
I will begin by reading two
poems by Edith Sodergran,
who Jonas mentioned, this
Finland/Swedish poet who lived
at the turn of the Century
and whose influences are still
incredibly strong.
And as you will see, notice
too I also have a southern,
South Swedish accent.
I teach in North Carolina now
and sometimes I tell my colleagues
I say don't think it only once,
[inaudible] accent.
And for some reason they don't
quite believe me but anyways.
[ Speaking foreign language ]
I Saw a Tree.
I saw a tree larger than
all the rest and full
of unreachable pine cones.
I saw a larger church with its
front doors swung open and all
who walked outside were pale
and strong and ready to die.
I saw a woman who smiling
and wearing makeup gambled
with her luck, and
I saw that she lost.
A circle was drawn around these
things no one will step across.
And the next poem that was
actually the first poem
in the first book by
Edith Sodergran.
That came out in 1916.
Now I would read a
poem called Decision
and in a sense this poem
is an [inaudible] poetica.
There's some great emotional
intensity about Sodegran's work,
which is I think why I love it.
In a sense, I feel like what
she's saying with this poem is
that she doesn't only want to
write a poem she also wants to sort
of redefine or she also
wants to destroy the poem
at the same time in a sense.
Anyways and then say perhaps
that's what [inaudible] is,
[inaudible] something
beyond the definition of it.
Decision. I'm a remarkably mature
person but no one knows me.
My friends create a
false image of me.
I'm not tame.
I have [inaudible] tameless in
my eagle class and know it well.
Oh, eagle, what sweetness
in your wing's flight.
Will you stay silent
like everything?
Would you perhaps like to write?
You will never write again.
Every poem shall be the
tearing up of a poem.
Not a poem but claw marks.
I'll now read one, the
first poem actually
in I believe [inaudible]
first book as well just
for the fun of it and it's untitled.
The flowers are sleeping in the
window and the lamp is staring light
and the window stares
thoughtlessly into the dark.
The paintings soullessly
show their untrusted content
and the flies are standing
still on the walls and thinking.
The flowers are leaning
towards the night
and the lamp is spinning
light into the corner.
The cat spins yarn of
wool to sleep with.
On the stove from time to time the
coffee pot is snoring with comfort
and the children play quietly
with words on the floor.
Set with a white cloth
the table is waiting
for someone whose steps will
never come up the stairs.
A train that pierces the silence
in the distance does not
reveal the secret of things
but fate is counting the strokes
of the clock with decimals.
I'm not, I wish I could read a
poem from each and every one,
but I think it would be too
fast but I'll read a few more.
I'll read now I'll read a
poem by Tomas Transtromer
who perhaps you are all
familiar with because he's
such a well-known poet and this
is called Secrets on the Way.
Daylight struck the
face of one who slept
who received a livelier
dream but did not wake.
Darkness struck the face of
one who walked among the others
in the sun's strong impatient rays.
Suddenly it turned
dark as in a downpour.
I stood in a room that held
every moment, a butterfly museum
and still the sun is
as strong as before.
It's impatient brushes
painted the world.
I'll read one more by Transtromer.
This is called Nocturne.
I drive through a village at night.
The houses that bowed into
the headlights they are awake.
They want to drink.
Houses, barns, signs,
stray vehicles,
it is now that they assume life.
The people are sleeping.
Some sleep peacefully others have
strained features as if they were
in hard training for eternity.
They don't dare to let go of it all
even though their sleep is heavy.
They rest like lower beams
when the mystery passes by.
Outside the village the road
runs a while through the trees
of the forest and the trees, the
trees resonant silence between them.
They have a theatrical color that
occurs in the light of fires.
Their leaves are so clear they
follow me all the way home.
I lie about to fall asleep.
I glimpse unknown images and
signs drawn on the inside
of my eyelid on the
wall of darkness.
In the crack between wakefulness
and dream a large letter tries
in vain to push its way through.
I will now move on to
2 poems by [inaudible],
which is another Finland
Swedish poet contemporary.
This has no title.
There is something about the
cab drive's child-like cheek,
which means that it exists,
that it really exists,
that it streams a nightly
music along the ice cold road.
Yes, there is a glowing point
somewhere for all of us where rags
and masks fall so that rags
and masks no longer existed.
There we are eye to
eye, ashes in rain.
And this next poem by
[inaudible] is called The Angels
of Karis [phonetic].
The angels of Karis walk in
much too light shoes in February
at the train station in
Karis back and forth smoking.
Trains arrive and depart.
Tomorrow will be the same.
Snow falls lightly glittering.
It falls lightly on their eyelashes.
They breathe lightly
like [inaudible].
They know that God forsaken places
they laugh nothing terrifies us more
than when they laugh.
Nothing terrifies us more
than the God forsaken places
and that which is red rimmed.
Let's see here moving right along.
I will read one poem by [inaudible]
who is a contemporary poet
and then I will end with a
poem by Verna [inaudible].
And this one is called
Hold Him There.
The tile oven, I don't know
if you're familiar with
Swedish tile ovens.
They are these tile ovens
that are always in the corner
of the room in order houses.
Anyway one figures here.
The tile oven stood silent and cold
like a queen in her long, white gown
and guarded, reigned over the
room with her single glass eye.
She saw everything that occurred,
where the dye had rolled
under the couch.
That one of the Crayons was
broken in half, that the purse
on the table was thin
and nearly empty.
She saw and heard everything
and never made a face.
Not even when New Year's Eve
snow or death came to visit.
She heard the old wall telephone
ring beside a mirror in the hallway,
heard the sparrows
scratching the windowsill.
She heard the black steam engine
pull its freight around the room,
rattle its way through the evening
darkness with its tiny eyes raised
above the carpet and in the dream
everything was obvious and simple.
Without thinking I had
phoned my childhood,
listened to the dial tones that went
through and when my mom answered,
I asked to speak to myself.
After a long while a 7-year
old boy took the receiver
and his phone pierced my heart.
I asked how it all was.
I said I often thought
of him and missed him,
but I must have interrupted
his playing.
He seemed both preoccupied
and disinterested.
Every attempt at conversation was
met with an impatient silence.
I heard him shift his feet
on the linoleum floor.
Nothing I said or asked
about, nothing I tried to say
or explain could hold him there.
And I will conclude now with
a poem by Werner Aspenstrom.
And I'll read it in Swedish and
then English if I can find it.
Okay. Here we go.
[ Speaking foreign language ]
You and I and the world.
Don't ask who you are or
who I am and why what is it.
Let the professors sort
it out it's their job.
Place the scale of the kitchen
table and let reality weigh itself.
Put your coat on and turn the light
off in the hallway, close the door,
let the dead embalm the dead.
Here we walk now the one
wearing white rubber boot is you,
the one wearing black
rubber boots is me
and the rain falling
on us both is the rain.
Thank you so much for listening.
[ Applause ]
>> Taru Spiegel: Hi, I'm Taru
Spiegel from the European Division.
Can you hear me back there?
You know sometimes after these
really powerful readings I feel
like we should just have
a moment of silence.
[Laughter] I don't know my
boss left, yeah, we can do it.
No. [Laughter] So anyway we will
have a brief discussion here
and we'll open up for
questions and answers.
These author events are
always really wonderful
and today's book is very special.
These poems you can return
to time and time again.
They just, I almost cried.
I don't know if you can
see but this is fabulous.
The translations are excellent.
The scholarly apparatus, the
introduction and the history
of modern Swedish poetry they are
brief but very much to the point,
which I like to think is sort of
a Scandinavian characteristic.
So, Malena, I was really
struck by your introduction
where you asked first what is a
poem and how to translate a poem
and then you quote Transtromer.
Could you say a little
bit about that?
>> Malena Morling: Yes, I will try.
There's a, in the introductions
of Tomas Transtromer's selection
of translations in
Swedish in Sweden, he,
that's where I got that [inaudible].
And he essentially says that
every poem is an invisible poem
that exists beyond conventional
languages and that it's,
to translate a poem into another
language is an opportunity
to make contact in
this original poem.
And when I read that, it
just opened things up for me
and made me feel incredibly excited
about the possibilities that lies
in the world of translation.
And so, yeah, that's something
that I would like to say, yeah.
>> Taru Spiegel: I had never
heard poetry explained like that.
It really was wonderful.
>> Malena Morling: There's
also a poem that I love
by a Japanese 16th
Century poet [inaudible].
He said who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
When you understand that my
poems are not poems we can begin
to discuss poetry.
[Laughter] I feel like in a sense
these two poets are maybe cousins
or something.
>> Taru Spiegel: Yeah, yeah.
Wonderful.
And now, Jonas, your description
of the modern Swedish poetry
puts the people in this book,
the authors in this book in context.
Now I don't want you to go all the
way back to the Vikings and 950,
but if you could talk a little
bit about the current poetry scene
in Sweden and how it relates
to the authors in this book.
[ Inaudible ]
children who are too young to speak
Swedish as yet it means, of course,
that you're also dependent
on translation
to keep the literature
of such a small language
[ Inaudible ]
So many Swedish poets and authors
have used translation and not
[ Inaudible ]
These days [inaudible]
we speak English
as his or her second language.
It used to be French,
it used to be German
and for a long time now
it has been English.
And so that also helps
understand the richness
of such a small [inaudible].
[ Inaudible ]
>> Taru Spiegel: Thank you.
Now, the poems in this book they
kind of transcend the everyday
or another way of looking
at it I think is
that they capture the
essence of an experience
and it makes it a little
difficult to understand,
but I was wondering
how, how does this,
you're both poets and you write.
How does a poet go about doing this?
I don't know if you can possibly
even answer this question,
but let's say compared to
Milton or Pope or somebody.
How, what goes through
a modern poet's head
when they write something like this?
[ Inaudible ]
>> Malena Morling: And also
I think something that goes
from the poet's head
might be the idea
of trusting the original experience.
That walking through
the rain is enough.
I mean in a sense it's what
you said, but you know,
and that sometimes less is more
and the minimal approach
linguistically speaking is more.
And the poem I read by
[inaudible] earlier about the boy
who dials his childhood, I mean
that kind of thing, of course,
what goes through a poet's head on a
daily basis is thinking and dwelling
about what it means to be
[inaudible] and how do we engage
with the passage of time and
how do we resolve our memories?
And so it's a lot of that
I would imagine, yeah.
I don't know if that's an answer.
>> Taru Spiegel: It's
very, very wonderful.
Thank you both.
Now you both speak several languages
obviously and then you're fluent
in Swedish obviously and English
and I don't know what
else you have learned
but does the poem affect you
differently when you experience it
in Swedish say as opposed
to English?
Personally I can just, you know,
when I read in my old language,
Finnish, it affects
me very differently
than reading a poem in English.
So I was wondering, but I'm no
poet and I'm no expert certainly.
So.
>> Malena Morling: Yeah, I mean
for me [inaudible] it's almost
like [inaudible] languages
that are similar in many ways.
I mean it's not Chinese and
English, you know, but it's almost
like reality takes, moves a few
inches to the right or left,
I don't know which, but there's
something that changes when I read
in Swedish and when I
read in English and it's,
I don't know exactly what it is.
It's probably my relationship to my
comprehension of the complexities
of language and what all of that
means on a sensory level in a way
as well as, you know, in
relation to thought, you know,
how things look slightly different
in a different language, you know,
and has a different
texture something like that.
>> Terri Merz: Jonas?
[ Inaudible ]
Thank you.
And developing a little
bit on that theme how
about a poem that's
read aloud as opposed
to a poem that's read on a page?
Does that resonate
differently with you?
>> Malena Morling: Absolutely.
I think they are 2
separate experiences
and I think they are both
incredibly important and, yeah,
I think something else
happens when you're hearing,
listening to a poem read out
loud than seeing it on the page.
The 3 dimensionality, a resonance,
that might not be available
on the page.
So, yeah. Absolutely.
[ Inaudible ]
[ Applause ]
>> Terri Spiegel: Oh,
that was wonderful.
We're open for questions
and answers now.
So maybe --
>> -- yes, I want to know if you
have your poems in this book?
We didn't hear your work
and I'm so wanting to.
This is a new experience
for me [inaudible].
So you have anything
that you could read?
>> Malena Morling: I didn't
bring my own work today.
>> And you're not in the book?
>> Malena Morling: They're
not in the book, no, no.
I don't have it myself.
[ Inaudible ]
[ Applause ]
[ Inaudible ]
>> Malena Morling: This,
I'll read this one.
It's called for Alice.
On the earth and in the
universe that does not end
that has never had an
end and no center either.
I'm here in my room
breathing and outside
in the garden the 8-story
high Maples breathe
in the cold June wind.
At this time in the afternoon my
neighbor's daughter walks home
from school.
Only a few drops away.
Sometimes it takes her 2 hours.
She must notice the smallest things.
Now, for instance, in the sunlight
which is weightless wearing her
dark blue dress she lifts up a stone
and puts it back down in the
same place with the same side up
and now she stands totally still
as if listening for something.
Maybe she can hear
the immense silence
that is the one cloud billowing its
thick white smoke growing new shapes
and floating in the
otherwise clear sky.
[ Applause ]
>> Taru Spiegel: Michael,
speak into the microphone.
>> Oh, oh.
Would you mind reading in
Swedish the [inaudible] poem
about [inaudible]?
>> Malena Morling: [inaudible]?
Yes, I'm happy to.
[ Inaudible ]
Sure.
[ Speaking foreign language ]
[ Applause ]
>> Terri Merz: And there's
a question over there.
>> I appreciate your comments
about language and poetry
and the difference between the
form on the page and poem as sound.
And it seems to me
although I'm not expert
that there is a lot less memorizing
of poems in American schools
by children and I wonder first of
all if Swedish children [inaudible]
by heart -- I always
liked that phrase --
and if you yourselves
memorize poems?
[ Inaudible ]
>> Malena Morling: [inaudible].
[Laughter] Yeah, growing
up in Sweden I don't think I
even studied poetry in school.
I don't remember anything like that.
I discovered poetry here after I
came in high school first to the US
and I discovered poetry
in high school and, but I,
only later on in college did I,
was I assigned to memorize poems
and it was probably a poem a week
by particular professors, but I do,
I do it now and sometimes
there is a revolution involved
in the classroom, but sometimes
not and actually I think today
and many people are grateful
at the end of the semester
because I believe it's a gift that
you can carry with you until the end
and I believe that today
it is more important
to memorize poetry than ever before.
Precisely because what we have
all of what we have in our hand.
I mean we can read poems on our
iPhones, but once they go kaput
at certain moments we might
be stuck in an elevator,
we might be on a train, we
might be walking who knows
where what a great opportunity
to spend time with a poem
at such a moment and to really
spend time with a poem and also
when you memorize a poem, you know,
we talked about briefly before
how a poem heard out loud and read
on the page are 2 different things.
I believe when you have a poem
memorized that's a third experience
and it's possible that to
actually understand a poem
for the first time almost as though
you're looking at it from behind
or from a new angle because it's
in our minds, it's in our hearts,
it's come part of our bodies.
So, yeah, I value that tremendously.
>> Terri Merz: Thank you.
Any other questions?
Oh, my gosh.
All right.
Anya is taking them.
[ Inaudible ]
Okay. I'm getting the
non-poetic sign like this.
[Laughter] We'll have
the book signing
and maybe you can chat a little
bit if you go and get the book.
Thank you very much.
This was very moving.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us as loc.gov.