On December 18, 2025, the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art hosted a reading and discussion of Tenny Arlen’s bilingual poetry collection To Say with Passion: Why Am I Here?

Joining Zohrab Center director Dr. Jesse Arlen as readers were his father, mother, and one of his sisters.

During the evening, San Luis Obispo poet laureate Kevin Clark – Cal Poly’s professor emeritus of English and former co-director of the university’s Creative Writing Program – reflected on Tenny’s poetry, placing her work in the tradition of Yeats, Eliot, and Rilke, all of whom, like Tenny, yearned after the ineffable dimension of Being and sought to put words to it.

Paul McCullough – teacher of literature at the San Luis Obispo Classical Academy – also offered reflections, calling Tenny’s poetry an invitation to a way of “iconic seeing” that sees “all things in God, all things shining with the original light of their creation.”

A recording of the moving program is available to view on YouTube: