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Barbara Cully's first book The
New Intimacy won the National

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Poetry Series open competition,
a nationwide poetry contest,

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for which literally
thousands of manuscripts

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are submitted for a single
chance at publication.

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Through this work
and her other work,

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Shoreline Series, published
locally by Kore Press,

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Barbara has gained a
far flung readership.

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We get visitors to the
center from the East Coast,

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and all over really,
who come in and ask us

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if we actually
know Barbara Cully,

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and we are pleased
to say, we do.

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Barbara's regular presence
at the Poetry Center

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is really one of
its nicest features.

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To me, the central
aspect of Barbara's work

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is a profound understanding
of the paradox of loss,

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that what reduces us outwardly,
augments us inwardly,

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that what take-- that
what it takes from us,

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lives in us-- what is
taken from us, lives in us,

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so that we continue in
totality either way.

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"At the very moment
when I am dismembered,"

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Cully writes in her poem
"Solo," "I am not dismembered.

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When evening comes,
your phantom appears.

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We will never meet
again face to face."

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Understanding this
paradox, Cully

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can present language
that encompasses

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the whole of gain and
loss, that manages

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to affirm in its negatives--
that is encomium in elegy.

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She ends the poem
"Solo" this way--

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"it knows nothing about itself.

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Indeed, it is not yet itself,
not those nights of love,

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not those roads, not one
waking touch of you."

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In the new work, a collection
entitled Desire Reclining,

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her mortal apprehension
opens into scenes

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that embody this delicate
and inclusive vision, given

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and taken, present and
absent, lost and found.

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That's the true work
of poetry, I think--

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holding on to life's wholeness
in a way that ordinary language

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often won't.

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So I'm pleased to you to
present a friend, a colleague,

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and a Tucson poet of national
stature, Barbara Cully.

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[APPLAUSE]

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