[CLAPPING]
It's a pleasure to be here.
Can you hear me?
Good.
As Renee said, I was born and raised in Casa Grande--
Casa Grande, Arizona.
I didn't leave Arizona until graduate school.
I have a BA in Chicano Studies from Arizona State--
don't hate me-- and an MFA from Iowa, so.
I hated flying as a young man.
So when I got into graduate school,
I took a Greyhound bus from Casa Grande, Arizona
to Iowa City, Iowa--
which is a 3 and 1/2 day trip--
with my mother, because she refused to let
me go alone until she saw where I was going be
living for the next two years.
3 and 1/2 days on a bus with your mother.
So it was quite interesting.
[LAUGHTER]
Many thanks to Kurt and Amy for helping us
be here and for teaching the work.
I'm going to start with a poem called "The Blindfold."
When I was in Casa Grande, Arizona-- born and raised
there-- we were surrounded by cotton fields all the time.
I mean, now those cotton fields have been--
it's housing now, and mini malls, and strip malls.
But in the summers, I would run through those fields,
and pretend the cotton was snow.
And as a child your imagination is so strong.
I would shake and shiver in the middle
of the summer in those fields.
And also, I also remember running back home to the house,
and asking my mother-- in the middle of summer--
for a coat.
And I remember-- I always say this,
because I remember the look on her face.
She was really worried about me.
I could tell.
Like, what is going to happen to you?
And this poem kind of tries to capture the magic--
the kind of surreal magic I felt in those fields.
"The Blindfold."
"I draw the curtains.
The room darkens, but the mirror still reflects a crescent moon.
I pull the crescent out a rigid curve that
softens into a length of cloth.
I wrap the cloth around my eyes, and I'm
peering through a crack in a wall,
revealing a landscape of snow."
People often ask if-- there's a lot of snow in my work,
and people say, you're from Southern Arizona.
Why there is snow?
Because of those fields.
Those fields.