I'm Mark Wunderlich, the acting director of the University
of Arizona, Poetry Center.
And I want to thank you all for coming here this evening.
First, I have a few announcements.
The next reading in our series will be the Poetry Center
contest awards reading, featuring winners
of the Academy of American Poets Prizes and the University
Activities Board awards.
That reading will take place on Wednesday, April 3, at 8:00 PM
here in Modern Languages.
Also, the final event in the Primavera Women in the Arts
celebration will be an open studio at the Kore Press, which
will feature demonstrations of letterpress printing and works
in progress, which include a new edition of Gertrude Stein's
Tender Buttons and broadsides by local authors such as Nancy
Mendoza and Barb Cully.
That event will be this coming Saturday, March 30, from 1:00
to 5:00 PM.
And you can speak to Karen Falkenstrom,
who is here in the second row for more information.
Copies of Pat Mora's books are for sale in the lobby, courtesy
of ASUA Bookstore, and they are available at a discount of 10%.
And I'm sure Pat would be happy to sign books
after the reading.
Tonight's reading is co-sponsored by the Arizona
State University, Prescott and Yavapai colleges,
and the Academy of American Poets, who
provide a generous funding to make this event possible.
For more information about the Academy's national and regional
programs, I would direct you to information in the lobby.
Pat Mora is the author of four collections of poetry,
the most recent of which is Agua Santa, Holy Water, which was
issued by Beacon Press in 1995.
Her other collections include Communion, Borders, and Chants,
all published by Arte Publico Press.
Mora is the author of Nepantla, Essays
from the Land in the Middle, and a forthcoming memoir entitled
Voces del Jardin, Voices from the Garden,
and a number of award-winning children's books.
She is the recipient of a 1994 Creative Writing
Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, three
Southwest Book Awards, and a Kellogg National
Fellowship for the study of cultural conservation issues
nationally and internationally.
She is originally from El Paso and currently lives
in Cincinnati.
In her fourth book, Agua Santa, Holy Water,
Pat Mora speaks to her readers in poetic voices transformed
by the poet's intense lyricism and poetic exactitude, which
has merged with the storyteller's
love of the mythic.
Mora is a chronicler of the tension and passion,
both physical and spiritual, that
exists throughout the Southwest borderlands,
and her imaginative world is full of celestial advisors.
Whether she is channeling the voice of an Aztec goddess
or that of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
Mora's poetics braids the practical and the otherworldly
to create poems of enduring wit, acute perception,
and tender-heartedness.
In one poem, we are given a tip, quote,
"Remember, monolinguals know about linguistics,
the way atheists know about theology."
And bilingualism is at the heart of Mora's poetic vision.
Unfolding in two languages, Mora's poems,
as part of the dynamic body of literature documenting
the Latina experience in the United States,
acknowledges poetic traditions and helps to renew them.
It is my great pleasure to introduce Pat Mora.
[APPLAUSE]