It was approximately five years ago
when a friend and colleague of mine
and an alumna of this institution I might
add Diana Rebolledo who's now a professor of Spanish
at New Mexico in Albuquerque sent me
some photocopies of poems that were still
in manuscript stage that were not published yet.
And she said with a note read this stuff.
So I read the stuff.
And the stuff that I read was bewitching,
was very much speaking in the language of a woman
and very much speaking in the language of a desert dweller.
And those poems that I read in manuscript
were written by Pat Mora.
And they came out later in her book Chance.
And I would like to read to you a little bit of what
the editor of the collection in which her first book
Chance appeared said on the back cover of her first book.
El Paso, the pass to the North lies between vast stretches
of desert.
This is a geographic accident, yet like everywhere people
live, love, marry, grow old and die.
They also rejoice and despair.
These poems relate to all these experiences
but in the magical presence, the tulyric force of the desert.
Two women poets sings here one in the guise
of the desert and the other in the figure of Pat Mora.
Together they intone chants.
Then a very significant book came in 1986
and it was also by Pat Mora.
And if you look closely, you have the sign for woman
and the sign for man on the cover.
But the title its borders, which again is very significant
and I think very evocative of that border line
in between the two sexes and the two genders
were of course to us as dwellers of Arizona
and as dwellers of this desert of the great Arizona Sonora
region speak to the line sometimes
imaginary, sometimes the realm of dreams that are the borders.
Pat Mora in this later book explores many issues that
have to do with the desert.
She has social, political, cultural, emotional issues
in this poetry.
And I may add that now she is working on a third book
and she will read to us tonight from that third book,
and also that her first book, Chance received The Southwest
Book Award for what they called the desert incantations.
Also last year, Yale University Press
with the addition of Vera Norwood
and Jan Monk who's sitting here in the audience
put out a book of essays on how women have viewed landscapes,
the geography, the inner and the outer spaces of the desert.
And they chose for the title, the title of one of Pat Mora's
poems The Desert Is No Lady.
So I give you this bewitching, enchanted lady
who is no desert.
My pleasure to introduce Pat Mora.