 We are so delighted you could join us for this very special occasion. I'm Karen Middleman, Executive Director of the Arts Council, and it's my privilege to welcome you and welcome our next poet laureate. The poet laureate position in Vermont is kind of vague and multifaceted, and I hope that that's part of the joy of the position, because every poet can make it his or her own. And we've been so fortunate in Vermont for the past four years to have Char DeNord as our poet laureate. Char has crisscrossed the state. He has done poetry readings in nearly every library in the state of Vermont. He's helped organize the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and he's served as a judge for Poetry Out Loud, our statewide poetry competition, and I'm sure that just scratches the surface of everything that you've done for us, Char, as an ambassador over the past four years. So we asked Char to say a few words and as he passes the baton, or I should say passes the pen to Mary, to our next poet laureate. So please join me in welcoming and thanking Char DeNord. Thank you, Karen. It's really been a great honor and pleasure to work for the last four years in this position, and I'm so happy to hand over the range to Mary Rufel. I would like to start by just reading a few lines from Mary's, a poem by Mary, and then saying a few words. This is from her poem, Tapophilia. What does the outer world know of the inner? It's like listening to wolves or looms. Here comes the snow that ought to make the children happy, as parrots flying over a gorge with a bamboo bridge, built like a xylophone in fruit bats hanging upside down, who look at the world and decide to go airy in ardent pursuit of plums. But what does the inner world know of the outer? And will I find out soon? That word, that word has kept me company all my life. Mary, it's a great honor and privilege to hand over the poetry lanes of Vermont's Poet Laureate to you. I hope you find your time as Poet Laureate as enjoyable, rewarding, inspiring, humbling, and meaningful, and maybe, I hope maybe not quite as exhausting as I have. I'm happy for Vermont and the nation that you have agreed to accept this official position as an acknowledged legislator of the state and the world, contrary to Percy Shelley's view of poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the world. In the spiritual, social, and aesthetic sense, your poems, your laws, do indeed endow your readers with what heart crane called certain liberties, which revel in starling imagery, transcendent leaps, beguiling narratives, and arrangements of unlike things in concert with each other that make memorable new sense. You write courageously with an open line to your unconscious, which in turn redounds powerfully on not just your waking life, but your reader's lives as well. In short, you turn your private property, it's the title of one of Mary's books in case you don't know, into a resplendent public human park, your risible, rueful, grievous, original, and smart. I have every confidence that you're going to inspire a gong in old remonters, a light to find their own language for what you call the goat in your attic, that wears a belt around your neck, and that metaphor for your imagination that you've borrowed from Emily Dickinson. I'm sure she wouldn't mind given your similar sensibilities, but what do I know? Maybe your goat is no metaphor at all. I'd like to believe she's really there, well-fed, happy in the dark, and happy in your arms. May you keep hearing that bell for years to come. Thank you, Mary. I'm very lucky to have a partnership with the Poetry Society of Vermont and Sundoc Poetry, so I want to extend a thank you to Tamara Higgins and George Longnecker. Thank you very much for your generous contributions to the Poet Laureate Honorarium that allows the Poet Laureate to travel and be an ambassador and bring visibility to what otherwise is a very private art of poetry. We're also so lucky in Vermont to have a governor who understands the arts and who has a passionate and real appreciation for how vital arts and creativity are to all of our communities in Vermont. Please join me in welcoming our governor, Bill Scott. Well, thank you very much. It's really a pleasure to be here and appreciate you taking the time to introduce and welcome our new Poet Laureate. Now, this is the second time in a week I've had the opportunity to celebrate the arts with Vermont Council. We just did this in Middlebury last week, which was great. We had a good showing and a lot of energy there. But as I mentioned last week, I see strengthening our creative sector is one way to support my goals of growing the economy, making Vermont more affordable and protecting the most vulnerable. Now, Vermont has a long history of storytelling, spoken word, and poetry. Starting with those who have been here the longest, you have an active people. Our beautiful landscape, foliage, and rural culture certainly provide an endless supply of inspiration, probably most famously by Robert Frost with the poem, Sopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Now, as an aside, I'm hopeful no one is inspired by those words today, or at least another three of those words. We could use the fall and a little bit more time before we get into the winter. Robert Frost, as a matter of fact, was Vermont's first Poet Laureate, inducted in 1961. This is my first opportunity as governor to appoint our Poet Laureate, and I'm honored that Mary Roofle has accepted the position. During the rigorous selection process led by a panel of experts many here in this room, Mary was called one of the best poets in America. Panel members have pointed to Mary's originality, creative writing, and wit. And I experienced some of that just in the last few moments speaking with her. Over her career, she's received many, many national literary honors, which makes this induction so well deserved. And now I'll read the proclamation, which is, in fact, legislative poetry. We use a lot of the same words, it's whereas. So, whereas, Vermont is enriched by artists who live among its residents as neighbors, colleagues, and friends. And whereas, Vermont has supported the creative output of its diversity of artists for more than two generations. And whereas, Vermont has a rich poetic tradition and throughout its history has been home to numerous nationally and internationally recognized poets. And whereas, it's appropriate for Vermont to recognize and promote poets and poetry as one of the most artistic disciplines that enhance Vermont's quality of life. And whereas, Robert Frost was declared poet laureate in 1961 upon the adoption of Joint House Resolution 54 by the General Assembly, a position he retained for 25 years following his death in 1963. 25 years, Mayor. Whereas, in 1988, Governor Madeline Cunin established a new position by signing executive order number 69. And in 1989, subsequently named Galway Kinnell as the first state poet for a term of four years. And whereas, every four years since the Vermont Arts Council has convened a distinguished panel of the humanists, humanists, poets, historians, and Murmurs to nominate a new poet to the governor. And whereas, Mary Rufel is a writer of worldwide recognition who lives in Bennington, Vermont. Whereas, Mary Rufel received a BA in literature from Bennington College and has taught at Vermont College of Fine Arts in the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. And whereas, Mary Rufel has published a comic book Go Home and Go to Bed. And is an erasure artist whose treatments of 19th century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published in a little white shadow. And whereas, Mary Rufel is the author of many books including Dunce My Private Property, Trances of the Blast and Madness, Rack, and Honey, Collected Lectures. And whereas, Mary Rufel has been a finalist for the National Book Critic-Circle Award in Criticism. I've received some of that by somebody. In selected poems finish on the William Carlos Williams Award for the Poetry Society of America. And whereas, Mary Rufel has been the recipient of numerous honors including the Robert Creamy Award, an award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Whiting Award. Now, therefore, I, Philip E. Scott, Governor, hereby proclaim and name Mary Rufel for my poet lord. You do this officially. But it has a beautiful gold seal like the roof. You don't call it the roof, though. This is a real gold ball. There you go. Thank you. Thank you very much. Congratulations again. Thank you. Oh, we have a very special treat because Mary has agreed to share some of her poetry with us. Yeah. Thank you, Governor Scott. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, board members and the council. And my friends from Bennington, my husband, and my, well, the secrets out people think I don't have a computer but I do and it's driven all the way. She's been putting my poems in her machines since around 1983. And thank everyone so much. I arrived in Vermont in a snowstorm on March 7th, 1971. I fell in love and I stayed. I had never really had a home. I had never really lived for long in one place. And though I was not born here, after 48 years, close to half a century, I call it home and it feels like home. But like all long-term relationships, it is now a love-hate relationship meaning it is one of depth. Depth which evolves over time into something three-dimensional and full-fashioned like most of our most significant and meaningful relationships. So ask me if I love Vermont in March and I will say no. Ask me in May when I wake to the sound of birdsong and I will say yes. I will say no and tell you why I will say yes and tell you why. I am honored to be appointed to this office. I am honored to join the ranks of those who served before me. Two of them are in this room and humbled and scared. But I am used to that. That is how I feel in the face of poetry. It is how I feel as a member of that tribe. A tribe whose members speak the same language and recognize each other without speaking. You know, Ethan Allen once said that when he died he wanted to return to earth and roam the hills of Vermont as a black stallion. I wouldn't go that far but I would not mind when I died to return to earth and live in a hole on the green in adamant as a woodchuck. I would like to read some poems to you in honor of this occasion. Poetry is not about a singular poet or one person. It's about the art continuing to be read and continuing to be written. I'm going to start with a couple poems by Robert Frost, the first public laureate of the state. When I was flipping through Frost this poem well considering it should be evident how the reading of it has changed over the years and it's quite chilling I think. It's called Our Hold on the Planet. We asked for rain. It didn't flash and roar. It didn't lose its temper at our demand and blow a gale. It didn't misunderstand and give us more than our spokesman bargained for and just because we owned to a wish for rain sent us a flood and bid us be damned and drown. It gently threw us a glittering shower down and when we had taken that into the roots of grain it threw us another and then another still till the spongy soil again was natal wet. We may doubt the just proportion of good to ill. There is much in nature against us but we forget. Take nature all together since time began including human nature in peace and war and it must be a little more in favor of man say a fraction of one percent at the very least or our number living wouldn't be steadily more our hold on the planet wouldn't have so increased. This is a poem by Frost called Moon Compasses. I stole forth dimly in the dripping paws between two downpours to see what there was and a masked moon had spread down compass rays to a cone mountain in the midnight haze as if the final estimate were hers and as it measured in her calipers the mountain stood exalted in its place so love will take between the hands a face. Frost again on making certain anything has happened I could be worse employed than as watcher of the void whose part should be to tell what star if any fell. Suppose some seed pearl sun should be the only one yet still I must report some cluster one star short I should justly hesitate to frighten church or state by announcing a star down from say the cross or crown to make sure what star I missed I should have to check on my list every star in sight it might take me all night in a glass of cider it seemed I was a might of sediment that waited for the bottom to ferment so I could catch a bubble in a scent I rode up on one to the bubble burst and when that left me to sink back reversed I was no worse off than I was at first I'd catch another bubble if I waited the thing was to get now and then elated and this is a poem by Ron Padgett who lives in Calus it's called Harold Clow in 1895 or thereabouts Harold Clow was born in East Calus, Vermont I knew him for the last oh 25 years of his life deep into that time I thought to talk with him with a tape recorder running I never did you'll never hear his voice saying anything what a dope I am when he started driving a car there was no such thing as a driver's license he was under five feet tall with huge hands and feet and his hair stuck out from beneath his dirty baseball cap like pills on a porcupine it didn't bother him to hold live wires and he could find water with a stick or a coat hanger it didn't matter which the skin on his hands was so tough he could just reach in and take a pie out of the oven he showed me how to hold a nail and at the same time to drive it with a hammer using only one hand around 80 he discovered Playboy amazed that he could see those girls all totally naked and glowing right there he once mailed a donut to my dog he knew how to lift a barn all by himself one day I got a call from a friend who said old Harold just died in the hospital heart attack an hour later the friend called back Harold ain't dead he come back to life not only that when the nurse returned he was sitting up and smiling a few years later he really did die of a fire in the house he was born in I once asked him for his mailing address you can put Harold Clow East Calus Vermont or Harold Clow Adamant or North Montpelier Woodbury or Calus don't matter none it'll get to me and I'll close with a few poems of my own my life as a farmer being a farmer is the loneliest thing in the world the field is like a religion you dedicate yourself to and when there's a cloud burst you can't be elsewhere hopefulness and a worrisome nature are among the attributes of a basically farming man you're all alone with your seeds and your concentration you don't have time to see friends and it's not for them to understand you don't have anybody only a pig and some chickens and you have to think for them you're all alone with their feed and your concentration and that's all you have you're a farmer actually I didn't really write it you see the real subtitle is my life as a farmer by James Dean because I visited the James Dean Museum and whatever state that would be in and there was a little thing he had written my life as an actor what it was like to be an actor and I just put farmer everywhere he said actor being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world acting is like a religion you do and it works for poetry too reminded me of or politicians or politicians being being the governor is the loneliest thing in the world government is like a religion you dedicate yourself to and when there's a cloud burst you can't be elsewhere you see it works for everything it really it really it really it really does I really wrote this one it's called the great loneliness by March the hay bales hay bales were ripped open exposed in the fields like bloated gray mice who died in December I came upon them at dusk and there a tar lifted my spine until I felt like turning over turning over an old leaf so I walked on a walking pitchfork from every maple hung a bucket or two collecting blood to be distributed across America so people could rise from their breakfast healthy hoping to make a go of it again now this is a riddled explanation but I am a historian of pagan means and must walk five miles a day to cover the period I will call the great loneliness and the name will stick so successfully that for years afterwards children will complain at meals and on sunny days and in the autumn and at Easter that their parents are unnecessarily mute and their parents will look down harshly upon the plates and beach tiles and leaves and bunnies and say you don't know what you are talking about you never lived through the great loneliness and if you had you would never speak and the children will turn away and consider the words or lack of them and how one possible explanation might be that inside our bodies skeletons grow at an increasingly secretive rate though they never mention it even amongst themselves that obviously was inspired by the fact I grew up by parents who lived through the great depression that's all I ever heard about and let's close because this one might put it where we want to be right about now it's called barbarians here and there between trees cows lie down in the forest in the mid-afternoon as though sleep were an idea for which they were willing to die thank you