Thank you all so much for taking the time out of your busy lives
to be here today.
There are a few people in particular I would like
to thank-- the marvelous staff at the University of Arizona
Press that helped make this book a reality, especially Acquiring
Editor Kristen Buckles and wonderful Publicist Holly
Schaffer.
Thank you to Cybele for helping coordinate
this very complicated and wonderful event.
And of course, thanks to my family, who dutifully drove
with me through blizzards from Southern California yesterday,
especially my young sons Connor and Quinn.
Thank you.
I'll be reading for you today two longish poems
from the poetry collection Torch Song Tango Choir
which is inspired by the music, song,
and dance traditions so important to my mother's
family, which is Argentinean, and to my father's
family, which is Latvian.
The first poem I will read, "La Primera Nieve,"
translates to "the first snow."
This poem is dedicated to my mother
and recalls her first experience of a blizzard in the West
Desert of Salt Lake City, Utah where
she landed after emigrating from Argentina at the age of 18
years old.
My mother's parents' generation was particularly persecuted
under the military dictatorship of Juan and Eva Perón.
And you'll hear some references in the poem
to the family's flight from Buenos Aires
to the northwestern remote province, Catamarca, Argentina.
You'll also be hearing references
to two tangos, "La Cumparsita" and "A Media Luz."
The Spanish phrases in the first poem are from "A Media Luz."
This tango is particularly important to my family
because when my great uncles were fleeing Buenos Aires
and hiding in Catamarca, one of my great uncles,
[? Chojito, ?] would warn them that the secret police
were coming by playing "A Media Luz."
So I grew up hearing this tango very often
and never really understood why there was such tension
and emotion around what's really a very sensual and loving,
lovely tango.
The second longish poem I will read from
is a double sonnet crown.
A sonnet, as many of you I'm sure know,
is a poem of 14 lines and a rhyme scheme.
In a sonnet crown, the first line of every sonnet
is a close repetition or variation
on a repetition from the last line of the prior sonnet.
And then a double sonnet crown--
14 of these sonnets culminate in a 15th master
sonnet, which is made up entirely of the repeated lines.
So I'll be reading nine sonnets from the crown,
in which the poems cycle in their studies
between Spain, Argentina and the United States
and which move across, in some cases, decades,
or in some cases, centuries.
In the crown, you'll be meeting a number of prominent women,
including, of course, Eva Perón who helped bring Juan
to prominence in his presidency or dictatorship--
depending on your perspective, Catherine of Aragon
was Spanish queen who was married
to Henry VIII of England, blues legend Billie
Holiday, and Barbara Washburn, the first woman
to summit Denali or Mount McKinley.
I wrote the crown in the aftermath of the Trade Towers
falling.
And so climbing and falling literally, politically,
and in terms of power or craft were foremost in my mind.
First, "La Primera Nieve" for my mother.