WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.900 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.900 --> 00:00:01.980 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:01.980 --> 00:00:03.810 align:middle line:84% Thank you so much Gail, thank you 00:00:03.810 --> 00:00:06.450 align:middle line:84% everybody for being here tonight, 00:00:06.450 --> 00:00:10.020 align:middle line:84% joining in this wonderful celebration of our community, 00:00:10.020 --> 00:00:13.680 align:middle line:84% and our shared love of poetry and the literary arts. 00:00:13.680 --> 00:00:18.030 align:middle line:84% I'm so honored and delighted to be able to introduce my friend 00:00:18.030 --> 00:00:20.310 align:middle line:90% and colleague, Richard Shelton. 00:00:20.310 --> 00:00:23.070 align:middle line:84% I've done lots of things with Richard Shelton. 00:00:23.070 --> 00:00:27.870 align:middle line:84% I've talked with him, I can see him chuckling back there. 00:00:27.870 --> 00:00:29.610 align:middle line:90% I hiked with him. 00:00:29.610 --> 00:00:34.380 align:middle line:84% I've leapt for safety from a rattlesnake with him. 00:00:34.380 --> 00:00:39.910 align:middle line:84% I've leapt for safety from a Gila monster with him. 00:00:39.910 --> 00:00:43.500 align:middle line:84% I've had whiskey down in that hotel in Douglas with him 00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:47.400 align:middle line:84% while students did Indian tarot cards for us. 00:00:47.400 --> 00:00:51.810 align:middle line:84% We've had a wonderful friendship on the edges of our shared life 00:00:51.810 --> 00:00:53.850 align:middle line:90% in this art. 00:00:53.850 --> 00:00:57.230 align:middle line:84% Richard has had a remarkable career, 00:00:57.230 --> 00:01:01.110 align:middle line:84% and he is one of the great poets of our region, 00:01:01.110 --> 00:01:06.160 align:middle line:84% and one of the great citizens of poetry for our country. 00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:09.540 align:middle line:84% He's published, I think, 12 books 00:01:09.540 --> 00:01:11.220 align:middle line:90% and a number of chapbooks. 00:01:11.220 --> 00:01:16.020 align:middle line:84% His first book "The Tattooed Desert" came out in 1971, 00:01:16.020 --> 00:01:20.610 align:middle line:84% marked him as one of the great celebrants of our landscape. 00:01:20.610 --> 00:01:23.580 align:middle line:84% He continues to be a celebrant of our landscape, 00:01:23.580 --> 00:01:25.185 align:middle line:84% but some of his poems, as you know, 00:01:25.185 --> 00:01:28.080 align:middle line:84% are also the great elegies and requiems 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:32.460 align:middle line:84% for what our places in the Southwest has suffered. 00:01:32.460 --> 00:01:35.880 align:middle line:84% "Requiem For Sonora", "Glen Canyon On The Colorado", 00:01:35.880 --> 00:01:41.040 align:middle line:84% many of you know those poems as lessons in our relationship, 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:44.010 align:middle line:84% and our sense of loss about this region. 00:01:44.010 --> 00:01:47.070 align:middle line:84% He's also written "Of all the dirty words", 00:01:47.070 --> 00:01:51.870 align:middle line:84% "Among the Stones", "Hohokam", his wonderful chap 00:01:51.870 --> 00:01:56.070 align:middle line:84% book of poems celebrating those predecessors in these lands, 00:01:56.070 --> 00:01:59.940 align:middle line:84% his wonderful prose series "The other side of the story", 00:01:59.940 --> 00:02:02.850 align:middle line:84% "The bus to Veracruz", I say these things because many 00:02:02.850 --> 00:02:04.440 align:middle line:84% of you love him as a prose writer, 00:02:04.440 --> 00:02:07.950 align:middle line:84% he's become celebrated as a nonfiction writer since "Going 00:02:07.950 --> 00:02:10.289 align:middle line:84% back to Bisbee", but it's important to know 00:02:10.289 --> 00:02:13.650 align:middle line:84% that for at least 30 years, Dick's face was 00:02:13.650 --> 00:02:16.050 align:middle line:84% all over the New Yorker and Harper's and the Atlantic's, 00:02:16.050 --> 00:02:18.300 align:middle line:84% and everywhere else that really distinguished 00:02:18.300 --> 00:02:19.530 align:middle line:90% poets were appearing. 00:02:19.530 --> 00:02:24.900 align:middle line:84% And we still love to celebrate the sharpness 00:02:24.900 --> 00:02:27.960 align:middle line:84% of his work, the irony of his work, 00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:31.530 align:middle line:84% the landscape of his language, which is so impeccably 00:02:31.530 --> 00:02:35.190 align:middle line:84% cadenced, and I think you'll hear from that tonight, work 00:02:35.190 --> 00:02:38.310 align:middle line:84% from his last book of poems "The Last Person to Hear 00:02:38.310 --> 00:02:40.380 align:middle line:90% Your Voice". 00:02:40.380 --> 00:02:43.290 align:middle line:84% When Dick published "Going back to Bisbee", 00:02:43.290 --> 00:02:47.370 align:middle line:84% which was a nostalgic account of his first 00:02:47.370 --> 00:02:51.540 align:middle line:84% coming to this region, and teaching down in Bisbee, 00:02:51.540 --> 00:02:55.560 align:middle line:84% and living down in Sierra Vista, we all 00:02:55.560 --> 00:02:59.070 align:middle line:84% realized that the story was merely 00:02:59.070 --> 00:03:02.580 align:middle line:84% an excuse for him to show the many ways that he 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:05.730 align:middle line:84% loved and knew a lot about this region. 00:03:05.730 --> 00:03:12.210 align:middle line:84% Folklore, history, conflicts, nature, flora, fauna, 00:03:12.210 --> 00:03:16.350 align:middle line:84% the digressions in that book are a great lesson to all of us, 00:03:16.350 --> 00:03:18.810 align:middle line:84% and I use the word lesson, because Dick 00:03:18.810 --> 00:03:21.660 align:middle line:90% is one of the great teachers. 00:03:21.660 --> 00:03:26.640 align:middle line:84% His lectures on surrealism with students were legendary. 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:31.260 align:middle line:84% I used to see him turning people loose wearing blindfolds. 00:03:31.260 --> 00:03:36.030 align:middle line:84% His line editing for students was brilliant and rigorous, 00:03:36.030 --> 00:03:39.540 align:middle line:84% and as we know, not only has he helped generations of students 00:03:39.540 --> 00:03:42.600 align:middle line:84% here at the university, but his dedication 00:03:42.600 --> 00:03:45.540 align:middle line:84% to working with the most neglected 00:03:45.540 --> 00:03:49.950 align:middle line:84% citizens of our state, those who are residing in our prisons, 00:03:49.950 --> 00:03:53.100 align:middle line:84% is something that we need to honor and celebrate. 00:03:53.100 --> 00:03:55.350 align:middle line:84% He's written now about that experience 00:03:55.350 --> 00:03:59.940 align:middle line:84% in "Crossing the Yard, Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer". 00:03:59.940 --> 00:04:04.560 align:middle line:84% I ask you to please welcome a great friend, a great poet, 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:09.480 align:middle line:84% a great nonfiction writer, and a great citizen of our region 00:04:09.480 --> 00:04:14.150 align:middle line:84% and of the human family, please welcome Richard Shelton.