I got some stuff hidden in here.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for that introduction.
Thank you all for being here.
50th anniversary.
It's really nice to be back in Tucson, see all my friends.
And I got a couple of thank yous to say to everybody
at the Poetry Center.
We've been here for about a week,
and it's been really amazing.
I've been going between there and there in my slippers.
A lot.
And Cybele, Gail, Wendy, Julie, Renee.
Janice had me into some of her classes.
I want to say thanks to Kate.
It's really great to finally meet Kate,
and to read with her, and Brent, and Zia, and Chicken, and Hawk,
and the whole gang.
Ander Monson published my first chapbook.
He also published the broadside tonight.
I think he already skipped out and went to the bar.
But thanks, Ander.
And all my Tucson friends.
You're still here.
Some of you guys have moved back,
and it's really great to see you all.
And I got to thank my teachers.
Jane shredded my bones when I was here.
Shredded them.
There was-- there was a moment where, I remember,
I used to live over on First Street near Fourth Avenue.
And I rode my little, sad bicycle home one night
and I was like, well, I'm done.
It was good.
She was good, she was good.
Alison Hawthorne Deming, Tenney.
That passion.
You know, I was going to read from--
I edited this anthology called Poets on Teaching,
and it talks a little bit about Tenney in the beginning of it.
And I was going to read from that tonight,
but I think I've humiliated Tenney enough.
But there's a little paragraph in there
about what it's like to be in a class with Tenney
when you are looking at an Emily Dickinson poem,
or a Frank O'Hara poem.
And it's pretty much the best thing I've ever been a part of.
And so thanks.
Thanks, Tenney, and Boyer, too.
All of you guys.
It's really great to see you again.
Thank you for coming.
I wanted to read a Jon Anderson poem,
and commemorate my half of the evening
to Jon, along with Steve, and I think that's all right.
It's a little one.
It's called "Beginning Again."
"I'll go there.
I can see myself close to the dead.
Like a child with no coat, like a man without words.
Then I will respect happiness."