On behalf of the Poetry Center, I'd
like to welcome you to the continuation of our reading
series.
I have a few announcements to make
of upcoming events in the community
and in our series that may be of interest to you.
Our next reading will be two weeks
from tonight on October 17th.
It's an invitational undergraduate reading,
and it will feature readings by Sherwin Bitsui, Paul Tsu,
Melinda Caroline, Eric Higgins, Jocelyn Goodman,
and April Greengard.
So that will be here, 8 o'clock, October 17.
In two events in the community, one,
for the benefit of the wonderful feminist press, Kore Press,
in town, who, just incidentally, is issuing an audio CD
of my poem, "The Monarchs."
The poem sequence, is going to have a release
party for that audio with a reading, cake, and champagne,
this Saturday at 7:00 at the Hazmat
MOCA Gallery, downtown on Toole Avenue.
And the other event is the POG Series.
The POG Poetry Collective will host a reading
on Saturday, October 13, at 7 o'clock,
in the Living Community Center, 330 East Seventh Street.
This is a reading that will feature a dozen local writers
of note, including our own esteemed and beloved Frances
Sjoberg, others, Tim Peterson, Tenney Nathanson, Jonathan
VanBallenberghe, Maggie Golston, Heather Nagami, Charles
Alexander, and others.
So those are other things that are happening in town.
And, in conjunction with this event tonight,
tomorrow morning at 10:30, Mary Leader
will give a craft lecture.
That's another opportunity to learn more about her work
and her thinking about poetry.
So I urge you to join us for that.
That will be tomorrow morning at 10:30 in the Alumni Building
at the corner of Cherry and Speedway.
I'd like to thank those who've made this reading possible,
our funding sources.
We're always very grateful to them.
And they include, for this series,
the University of Arizona Foundation,
the Arizona Commission on the Arts,
and Friends of the Poetry Center.
Mary Leader spent years practicing
law, first as Assistant Attorney General of Oklahoma,
and then as referee for the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Her first book, Red Signature, won the National Poetry Series.
Her second, The Penultimate Suitor,
won the Iowa Poetry Prize.
She holds a PhD in literature from Brandeis University,
an MFA from Warren Wilson College,
and a JD from the University of Oklahoma.
She's currently teaching at the University of Memphis.
We were talking at dinner about how strange
it seems to most of us to meet somebody
who has the capacity of mind both to practice law
and to be a poet.
And I floated a hypothesis, which, I am grateful to say,
the poet didn't think was too far-fetched,
that I'll share with you, which is that, we think
of law as an extremely linear and bounded pursuit with rules
that are quite fixed.
And one of the very interesting things about Leader's poetry,
for me, is how each poem declares very clear
and strict rules and boundaries.
Every poem declares new rules and boundaries,
but each one has a kind of code.
And, for me, I see both that linear mind
and that wild exploratory mind working in tandem in her work.
Leader is a poet of formal exuberance.
By this, I do not mean that she writes cheerful sonnets.
But that, for her, the impulse to explore
the possibilities of form is free-ranging
and wildly energetic.
Whether she is scoring, in the musical sense of the word,
a poem across the white space of the page
or creating a fairy tale, a letter, a litany,
a table of contents-- she has several poems that are tables
of contents-- a grid of goofy iconographic symbols, a collage
made of found memorabilia of a life gone by,
or a transcription of the inner dialogue induced
by erotic desire, she makes the music of the language sing.
She is a polyvocal and polyformal poet,
and while one feels her delight in words and invention,
there is a tough-minded honesty that keeps her playfulness
from being trivial.
Poet Frank Bidart writes of her, "The poems are like looking"--
and he was talking about Red Signature.
"The poems are like looking at a great John Ford film, something
elemental within American experience, something born
of deprivation but capable of possessing grandeur,
has found classic expression."
Please welcome Mary Leader.
[APPLAUSE]