WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.530 align:middle line:90%


00:00:02.530 --> 00:00:03.160 align:middle line:90%
Hi.

00:00:03.160 --> 00:00:06.100 align:middle line:84%
Thank you for coming tonight
to hear Ray Gonzalez read.

00:00:06.100 --> 00:00:08.570 align:middle line:84%
I think we have a fantastic
lineup this semester.

00:00:08.570 --> 00:00:12.280 align:middle line:84%
So I hope you'll come
back for other readings.

00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:14.740 align:middle line:84%
Next, as Gail mentioned, is
Tony Hoagland-- two weeks

00:00:14.740 --> 00:00:17.440 align:middle line:90%
from tonight, here.

00:00:17.440 --> 00:00:20.330 align:middle line:84%
Ray Gonzalez is the author
of nine books of poetry,

00:00:20.330 --> 00:00:23.530 align:middle line:84%
including the book-length
sequence, Turtle Pictures,

00:00:23.530 --> 00:00:26.110 align:middle line:84%
published by University
of Arizona Press--

00:00:26.110 --> 00:00:30.310 align:middle line:84%
and, most recently, Humans
Crying Daisies, prose poems

00:00:30.310 --> 00:00:32.830 align:middle line:90%
published by Red Hen Press.

00:00:32.830 --> 00:00:36.850 align:middle line:84%
The Heat of Arrivals and The
Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande,

00:00:36.850 --> 00:00:40.390 align:middle line:84%
both published by Boa Editions,
received the PEN Josephine

00:00:40.390 --> 00:00:42.670 align:middle line:84%
Miles Book Award and the
Minnesota Book Award,

00:00:42.670 --> 00:00:44.350 align:middle line:90%
respectively.

00:00:44.350 --> 00:00:47.590 align:middle line:84%
Gonzalez is also the author
of the nonfiction collections

00:00:47.590 --> 00:00:50.290 align:middle line:84%
Memory Fever and the
Underground Heart

00:00:50.290 --> 00:00:53.950 align:middle line:84%
and the short story collections
Circling the Tortilla Dragon

00:00:53.950 --> 00:00:56.080 align:middle line:84%
and The Ghost of
John Wayne, which

00:00:56.080 --> 00:00:59.050 align:middle line:84%
won an award from the National
Cowboy and Western Heritage

00:00:59.050 --> 00:01:00.460 align:middle line:90%
Museum.

00:01:00.460 --> 00:01:04.090 align:middle line:84%
Forthcoming are
Consideration of the Guitar:

00:01:04.090 --> 00:01:08.110 align:middle line:84%
New and Selected Poems from
Boa, and The Religion of Hands

00:01:08.110 --> 00:01:11.200 align:middle line:84%
and Renaming the Earth:
Generational Time in the Desert

00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:15.470 align:middle line:84%
Southwest, both from
University of Arizona Press.

00:01:15.470 --> 00:01:17.620 align:middle line:84%
In addition to his
own writings, Gonzalez

00:01:17.620 --> 00:01:19.900 align:middle line:84%
is the editor of
numerous anthologies,

00:01:19.900 --> 00:01:24.130 align:middle line:84%
the editor since 1982 of
the Bloomsbury Review,

00:01:24.130 --> 00:01:27.550 align:middle line:84%
the editor since 1984
of Mesilla Press,

00:01:27.550 --> 00:01:29.980 align:middle line:84%
and the founding
editor, in 1998,

00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:32.470 align:middle line:90%
of Luna, a poetry journal.

00:01:32.470 --> 00:01:34.540 align:middle line:84%
He has been the Director
of the Colorado Poetry

00:01:34.540 --> 00:01:37.450 align:middle line:84%
Festival, the Literature
Director of the Guadalupe

00:01:37.450 --> 00:01:39.850 align:middle line:84%
Cultural Arts Center
in San Antonio,

00:01:39.850 --> 00:01:42.430 align:middle line:84%
and is now a Professor of
English at the University

00:01:42.430 --> 00:01:45.310 align:middle line:90%
of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

00:01:45.310 --> 00:01:48.850 align:middle line:84%
As Frost belongs to New
England, so Gonzalez is ours--

00:01:48.850 --> 00:01:51.400 align:middle line:84%
with his tropes of
border and desert,

00:01:51.400 --> 00:01:54.130 align:middle line:84%
the surreal hypnosis
of heat and horizon

00:01:54.130 --> 00:01:56.710 align:middle line:84%
that wend their way
through his books.

00:01:56.710 --> 00:01:59.410 align:middle line:84%
It would be easy for
Gonzalez, in his ease

00:01:59.410 --> 00:02:02.650 align:middle line:84%
with mythic reference, to make
the Rio Grande a sort of river

00:02:02.650 --> 00:02:04.720 align:middle line:84%
Lethe, that river
of forgetfulness

00:02:04.720 --> 00:02:06.760 align:middle line:84%
between the living
world and Hell.

00:02:06.760 --> 00:02:09.039 align:middle line:84%
But Gonzalez sees a
more complicated myth

00:02:09.039 --> 00:02:10.060 align:middle line:90%
in the Rio Grande--

00:02:10.060 --> 00:02:12.370 align:middle line:90%
the myth of a river of memory.

00:02:12.370 --> 00:02:14.320 align:middle line:90%
In Turtle Pictures, he writes--

00:02:14.320 --> 00:02:17.020 align:middle line:84%
"They had wooden limbs
for arms and legs,

00:02:17.020 --> 00:02:19.000 align:middle line:84%
roots growing out
of their snouts,

00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:21.820 align:middle line:84%
their barks petrified
into the tree.

00:02:21.820 --> 00:02:24.010 align:middle line:90%
It was my vision of rabies.

00:02:24.010 --> 00:02:26.890 align:middle line:84%
I didn't know why it came after
we talked about the children

00:02:26.890 --> 00:02:30.520 align:middle line:84%
drowning in the river,
crossing illegally from Mexico.

00:02:30.520 --> 00:02:33.830 align:middle line:84%
I wanted to find out
without guilt. When I woke,

00:02:33.830 --> 00:02:35.380 align:middle line:84%
I walked along the
river to search

00:02:35.380 --> 00:02:38.650 align:middle line:84%
for things I left there,
objects I tossed into the water

00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:41.800 align:middle line:84%
years ago, surrounded by
the quiet sobs of children

00:02:41.800 --> 00:02:46.600 align:middle line:84%
I had never met and can never
allow into my dreams again."

00:02:46.600 --> 00:02:49.660 align:middle line:84%
If poetry is an attempt
to capture the ineffable,

00:02:49.660 --> 00:02:52.510 align:middle line:84%
then Gonzalez is a
worthy practitioner.

00:02:52.510 --> 00:02:55.840 align:middle line:84%
His language frames mystery,
mind, and the soul--

00:02:55.840 --> 00:02:58.660 align:middle line:90%
both S-O-U-L and S-O-L-E--

00:02:58.660 --> 00:03:00.940 align:middle line:84%
in an effort not to
shape an experience,

00:03:00.940 --> 00:03:03.710 align:middle line:84%
but to exact its
shape from hiddenness,

00:03:03.710 --> 00:03:07.660 align:middle line:84%
to bake it into consciousness
both individual and communal.

00:03:07.660 --> 00:03:11.230 align:middle line:84%
In his 1999 collection
of poems, Cabato Sentora,

00:03:11.230 --> 00:03:13.810 align:middle line:84%
the dedication reads:
"For the silence of

00:03:13.810 --> 00:03:17.230 align:middle line:84%
my father and my
grandfathers, for the language

00:03:17.230 --> 00:03:19.060 align:middle line:90%
of their silence."

00:03:19.060 --> 00:03:22.300 align:middle line:84%
Gonzalez's fluidity of
language and experience,

00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:26.800 align:middle line:84%
like that of silence and dreams,
implies an actual ability

00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:29.830 align:middle line:84%
to be fluent in
silence as a language.

00:03:29.830 --> 00:03:32.800 align:middle line:84%
In that influence, with
Gonzalez, we are rooted.

00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:36.270 align:middle line:84%
Please help me to
welcome Ray Gonzalez.

00:03:36.270 --> 00:03:39.000 align:middle line:90%