Ladies and gentlemen, you are indeed
welcome to this sixth major reading,
poetry reading of the 1970-71 year.
I have an announcement concerning the spring poetry
contest in the campus for students,
anyone who desires and needs information about the poetry
contest should get in touch with the Poetry Center.
And one other announcement, the reception
after tonight's reading, which had been planned
for the South Lawn of the Poetry Center,
has been changed to the Terrace Lounge of the Student Union
due to the threat of inclement weather.
All of you are welcome at the reception to meet our poet
and help drink the punch and eat the cookies.
Some 11 years ago, Ruth Stephan gave
to the University of Arizona a small cottage
on Highland Avenue near Speedway where she had been living
and had been finishing her novel My Crown, My Love.
It was to be used as a library for poetry
where students might drop in and read.
She also gave the initial collection of 600 volumes.
She had had such a library in her own house
when her children were growing.
And she had seen how its presence instilled
in her family a love for poetry.
By the fall of 1961, when Robert Frost was here on the campus,
the new Center was ready for use.
Was with Mrs. Stephan present, Frost gave his blessing
to the unique venture.
In the 10 years since, the Ruth Stephan Poetry Center
has moved into a larger house.
Its library has grown five-fold, and its program
of presenting living poetry and live poets to the campus
and the town has flourished.
Among poets and friends of poetry around the country,
the Center is known and admired.
Its impact has been greatest on Arizona students.
Soon after the Center moved into its present quarters,
I followed one evening two men students
up the steps of the Center heading for an evening
of program of readings.
I overheard this, "Gee," one of them said to the other,
"I wasn't aware that this university
was interested in anything but football."
With the cooperation of the university,
Ruth Stephan has continued to support the Center
with counsel, encouragement, and money.
Because she herself is a fine poet, the giver and the gift
have blended in a rare and happy way.
Many of you know of her accomplishments
as a poet, novelist, editor, translator.
To recall a few of them, very briefly, in the late 40s
she conceived and edited practically single
handed the unusual literary and art magazine
The Tiger's Eye, of which incidentally, the Center owns
a rare complete run.
She published two successful historical novels--
on the 17th century, Queen Christina of Sweden, The Flight
and My Crown, My Love.
She translated and edited a volume of Peruvian folk verse.
She has had two volumes of her own poetry published,
Prelude to Poetry and Various Poems.
And in her travels around the world,
she has been an enthusiastic apostle for poetry and letters
as a medium for international understanding.
In 1963, the University of Arizona
recognized her achievements by awarding her the degree
of Doctor of Letters.
Poet William Meredith, who was here
with Robert Frost on the occasion of the Center's birth,
had wanted to be here for this celebration
of its 10th birthday.
He asked whether he might have the honor of introducing
Ruth for her reading.
To everyone's disappointment, it proved impossible
for him to make the journey from Connecticut at this time.
But I have here his tribute.
And I read Bill Meredith's words,
"If Ruth Stephan had done no more than create and guide
The Tiger's Eye, that brilliant symposium of creative site
and action, poets would have been left in her lasting debt.
I have rediscovered the excellence of the magazine
every time I have stayed at the poet's cottage in Tucson.
But the same imagination went on to contrive in the poet's house
another kind of gift to poetry.
I have stayed there three times and written poems there.
I was privileged to be at the dedication of the house.
And I remember thinking how hard it
must have been to give away even to fellow poets
a place where one's own work had gone well.
For it is as a poet that Ruth Stephan comes
at her other creative acts.
And her latest gift of poetry in Tucson
is an appropriate reminder of this, a reading of her own fine
work.
Ruth."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I'm often asked why I gave the Poetry
Center to the University of Arizona
not to any of the places I have lived.
Well, the truth is that this is where I woke up with the idea
and I had to do it immediately.
It was a completely spontaneous idea.
And this idea couldn't have lasted a year
if it hadn't been embodied.
So while you're thanking me, I think
you should also thank the persons who
entered this in the beginning and have worked
every day for 10 years to give you and me
and the poets what we have now.
Now I'm going to name them in the order of which they
heard of the idea.
Now the first one who heard it was right after I woke up
and that was Lucy Taylor.
Stand up.
And she's been with it ever since.
Now the next one who heard it was about half an hour later
when I made a telephone call to my landlady to tell her I
would buy the house after renting it for two years
if the University of Arizona would accept it as a gift.
Of course, I said I didn't know anybody
at all at the university but this was just an idea.
Now this lady was Ada McCormick
[APPLAUSE]
You see, she's still working with us.
In four hours, Ada McCormick had me
sitting in the Office of the President of the university who
had never heard of me nor I ever met him.
And this president immediately recognized this idea
as something he liked for the university and accepted it.
This is Dr. Harvill.
Who still--
[APPLAUSE]
So Dr. Harvill appointed a board.
He asked me if I knew anyone at the University of Arizona
and I said no.
And then I said I did meet one man at the party of a friend.
So he appointed this man as the chairman of the board, Dr.
Laurence Muir, stand up.
Now let's see who we've got next.
Oh, yes the next one who was then
vice president of the university,
is the one who changed the name.
The name was to be the University of Arizona Poetry
House.
And this wonderful man, David Patrick,
who can't be here in person because he's not alive,
took me to lunch, and gave me one or two martinis,
I don't know if I counted, insisting
that it had to be called the Ruth Stephan Poetry Center.
I kept insisting that if he named it
that I would think I was dead every time
I looked at the name.
But after a couple of martinis, you just
don't know if you're dead or alive so we did it.
Then came the rest of the board and there's
one I don't know if she's here tonight, who was teaching
the only class of modern poetry at the time,
if my history is accurate, Dorothy Fuller.
Has Dorothy come?
Where is she?
There she is.
Then I walked into the Poetry Center after I had given it
and they started it.
And there was sitting a graduate student
or I didn't know who it was.
There was sitting a young man reading,
said he was a graduate, in fact, I walked in the door,
just been set up with the books, and I said, who are you?
And he said, to me, who were you?
So we exchanged names.
And that young man has been one of the most important persons
in the Center.
That's Richard Shelton.
Did he come?
And as you know, he is not only carried
out teaching creative poetry, but is now
known all over the country as one of our finest poets.
Magazines big and little compete for his poems.
And he has just won the United States award.
Is that the name for his last book?
Well, after Dick, the next person
was when we had to-- who really came and still is
with us working hard was the next year when the university
gave us a director.
And our first director was LaVerne Clark
who is still our photographer.
And has become noted in her own field of folklore.
Well, there are two other people here
that have been important parts of the Center
and have returned.
One was a teacher who became a poet,
well, very well known who has spoken here,
and that's Keith Wilson.
who flew over for this celebration.
And then if he has come to the reading as he promised,
I think a young man you should see
because he was the first student in this university.
And you know how many students now go to the Poetry Center.
But this was the first student who
had the courage to walk alone to the poet's house
to meet the poet.
And I was the guinea pig poet before anybody else
was invited.
They had to see what would happen if they
asked the students to come.
So this young man, who no one knew wrote poetry,
answered this kind of posters, I don't
know what they put around, and he came to the house
and he met me and we talked about poetry.
And he then-- Peter, are you here?
Peter Andros, did he come?
Oh, he won't stand up.
He called yesterday and said he was going to come, where is he?
He wrote the first poem that was written because of the Poetry
Center by a student and I gave it to the university,
and he said it was in my honor, it
was called "The Indian at the Supermarket."
Now the Poetry Center, I don't know if all of you know,
had a child.
About six years ago, we had started another small poetry
center at the University of Texas.
And Richard Shelton, the director at that time
flew over and blessed the child.
So they have sent back, I understand, a young man to help
us, that is Mr Patterson.
This is our child.
Now, Mr Patterson represents a legitimate child.
I have now heard that there are all kinds
of illegitimate children springing
out all over Arizona, that there's
no birth control in poetry.
So the poets have written many letters and telegrams.
They too have been part, great poets.
As you know, you've heard them, poets
from all over this country, Canada, and even
to the present poet, laureate of England Cecil Day-Lewis
who came here before he was appointed poet laureate,
has written a handwritten letter.
I have a stack of these laudations for the Center
today and our celebration.
They have loved the idea from the beginning.
And of course, we couldn't have grown as we did without them.
Now there's just one more and that's all of you.
What the poets have said is that they
find the greatest audiences in America
here, the most responsive.
And Walt Whitman has said that great audiences
make great poets.
So I thank you.
I'll clap for you.
Now I'm going to ask you to forget the Poetry Center.
I'm going to ask you to forget that I had
or have anything to do with it.
I am a poet.
Now we have to go into the universe, you and I,
with what I have to say about it, together.
Here's the universe.