WEBVTT

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We meet Filemon, the
ambulance driver,

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crashed his taxi into the fish
market at Broadway and Coal.

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We meet the snooty
girls from Peralta

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who refused to speak Spanish.

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We meet Uncle Rudy, too cheap
to go to the chiropractor,

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and so he has himself hung
by his feet to cure his back

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and then falls on his head.

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These examples are from
Quintana's most recent book,

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The Great Whirl of
Exile, published in 1999.

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But the same impulse,
to record moments

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in the greater life
of a community,

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goes back through the poems
he wrote about his comrades

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in arms in the Vietnam
War to his book, Sangre,

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in which the stories reach
back even farther to the tales

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Quintana heard from
his grandparents

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about his Mexican
ancestors in New Mexico.

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The poems are full of wordplay,
especially bilingual wordplay,

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and the other devices
of contemporary poetry,

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even as they form a single,
lifelong collection of cuentos,

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traditional stories like those
told by Quintana's grandparents

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back in Albuquerque.

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As such, this whole body
of work participates

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in a great and ancient life,
like Whitman's in scope,

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and like Williams' in scale.

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Quintana himself notes that
he is in many ways still

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a small town New Mexico boy
carrying on the oral tradition.

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So it's especially
pleasing to bring this poet

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to this stage uniting
the Southwestern Literary

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Institution with this
poet, Leroy Quintana, who

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brings us tonight his
own profound connections

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to the traditions
of the Southwest.

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Will you give a
warm, Tucson welcome,

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please, to Leroy Quintana.

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[APPLAUSE]

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