WEBVTT

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It was approximately
five years ago

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when a friend and
colleague of mine

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and an alumna of this
institution I might

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add Diana Rebolledo who's
now a professor of Spanish

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at New Mexico in
Albuquerque sent me

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some photocopies of
poems that were still

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in manuscript stage that
were not published yet.

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And she said with a
note read this stuff.

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So I read the stuff.

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And the stuff that I
read was bewitching,

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was very much speaking in
the language of a woman

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and very much speaking in the
language of a desert dweller.

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And those poems that
I read in manuscript

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were written by Pat Mora.

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And they came out later
in her book Chance.

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And I would like to read
to you a little bit of what

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the editor of the collection
in which her first book

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Chance appeared said on the
back cover of her first book.

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El Paso, the pass to the North
lies between vast stretches

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of desert.

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This is a geographic accident,
yet like everywhere people

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live, love, marry,
grow old and die.

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They also rejoice and despair.

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These poems relate to
all these experiences

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but in the magical presence,
the tulyric force of the desert.

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Two women poets sings
here one in the guise

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of the desert and the other
in the figure of Pat Mora.

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Together they intone chants.

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Then a very significant
book came in 1986

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and it was also by Pat Mora.

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And if you look closely,
you have the sign for woman

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and the sign for
man on the cover.

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But the title its borders,
which again is very significant

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and I think very evocative
of that border line

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in between the two sexes
and the two genders

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were of course to us
as dwellers of Arizona

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and as dwellers of this desert
of the great Arizona Sonora

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region speak to
the line sometimes

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imaginary, sometimes the realm
of dreams that are the borders.

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Pat Mora in this later book
explores many issues that

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have to do with the desert.

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She has social, political,
cultural, emotional issues

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in this poetry.

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And I may add that now she
is working on a third book

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and she will read to us
tonight from that third book,

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and also that her first book,
Chance received The Southwest

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Book Award for what they
called the desert incantations.

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Also last year, Yale
University Press

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with the addition
of Vera Norwood

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and Jan Monk who's sitting
here in the audience

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put out a book of essays on how
women have viewed landscapes,

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the geography, the inner and
the outer spaces of the desert.

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And they chose for the title,
the title of one of Pat Mora's

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poems The Desert Is No Lady.

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So I give you this
bewitching, enchanted lady

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who is no desert.

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My pleasure to
introduce Pat Mora.

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