WEBVTT

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To introduce Dick today, I'm
excited to welcome Susan Aiken

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up to the stage.

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Susan is an emeritus professor
at the University of Arizona.

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She was a University
Distinguished Professor

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in the departments of English
and Gender and Women's Studies.

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She was a founding
faculty member

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of the Gender and Women's
Studies department here

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at the University of Arizona.

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She knows a lot about
how to fix up old houses.

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So if you have any
questions about that,

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she's done that multiple times
in El Presidio neighborhood

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here in Tucson.

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Her areas of focus are
19th and 20th century

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British and American literature,
gender studies, and poetry.

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We're a fan of hers.

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We're really glad
that she's here.

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Please help me
welcome Susan Aiken.

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[CLAPPING]

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Can you hear me?

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I'm always challenged
by not being high enough

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to speak through the mics.

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Is it all right?

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Back to the back, can you hear?

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OK.

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Wonderful.

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I can't be as spontaneous as
Mark Doty spoke so wonderfully

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about Dick.

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But of course, he
and Michael speak

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for everybody who's ever had
their lives touched by Dick.

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So how do you
introduce someone who

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has been named an
Arizona legend, who

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has won so many awards that
one could never enumerate them?

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Dick is very modest, and he
wouldn't like effusiveness,

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but I'm going to
effuse a little bit.

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He'd probably invoke Lois,
his beloved wife, who as many

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of you know was famous for
introductions to visiting poets

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that combined warmth,
wit, humor, capaciousness,

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and brevity.

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It's an impossible
model to follow,

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and I'm not even going to try.

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43 years ago, as a young
assistant professor,

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newly arrived in the
English department,

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I met this red-haired
bearded dynamo

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named Richard Shelton, a man
whose passion for poetry,

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for the Sonoran desert, and for
the moral dimensions of what

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we practice as
teachers and writers,

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became for me a model of what
is best in our profession.

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Later, when I had
the opportunity

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to team teach graduate
seminars on poetry with Dick,

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I saw that commitment in action.

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There was nothing
showy about Dick.

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Everybody who knows
him knows that.

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Yet with his deceptively
casual, unpretentious manner,

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he could open up a
sizzling discussion,

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made everyone in the
room feel that we

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were launched on a momentous
enterprise of discovery.

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So thinking about how I
could possibly convey all

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that Dick has meant to the
life of the creative writing

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program, the University,
our community, and the world

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of literature, I've
reflected about

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his countless contributions.

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But with a nod to Lois, I'll
just touch on a few of them,

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almost like bullet points.

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Dick's rare, luminous
poetry and evocative prose

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have earned
international acclaim,

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drawing attention to the
landscapes of the American

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Southwest as unique sites
of power and beauty,

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sources of both inspiration and
ethical obligation in a world

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of environmental degradation.

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His decades of steady
leadership, inspired teaching,

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and plain hard work helped shape
our creative writing program

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into one of the
nation's very finest.

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It would be difficult
to overestimate

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the extraordinary impact
he's had on that program

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or on the lives of thousands
of students, thousands

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he's taught over the
years at the University.

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Dick also provided, as just
about everybody in this room

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is aware, unflagging dedication
and visionary leadership

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to assure the flourishing
of the Poetry Center.

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From its modest inception
in 1960 as a place,

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quote, "to maintain and cherish
the spirit of poetry," Dick,

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together with Lois,
played a pivotal role

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in shepherding the Center to
its current distinction as one

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of the foremost literary arts
institutions in the world.

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That work is part of what
led to their receiving

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a Governor's Award for support
of the arts in Arizona,

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and to the designation
of both of them

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as official Arizona
literary treasures.

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It's entirely appropriate
that Dick's poetry

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is literally inscribed in
the walls of this building,

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as you know from
the far east wall.

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Dick has authored over a
dozen collections of poems,

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three books of
creative nonfiction,

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and scores of essays.

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His work has been published
in the most celebrated

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literary journals
here and abroad

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and has been translated
into many languages.

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He's won the International
Poetry Forum's United States

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award, fellowships
from the Lannan

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Foundation and the National
Endowment for the Arts,

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a Regents' Professorship,
the highest

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award the university offers,
and nominations for the National

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Book Award and the
Pulitzer Prize, twice I

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believe in the case
of the Pulitzer Prize.

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His first book of
creative nonfiction,

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Going Back to Bisbee, received
the Western States Book Award

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in 1992 and is widely recognized
as an American classic.

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It's been reprinted more
times than I can remember,

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at least 10 or 11.

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But perhaps dearest
to his own heart

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is a singular and
profound achievement,

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one that has translated
hundreds of lives

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that might, but for Dick's
influence, have been wasted.

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Over 40 years ago, impelled
by the belief and the power

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of poetry to reclaim and
illuminate the human spirit,

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Dick established a
creative writer's workshop

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in the Arizona State Prison.

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Despite staggering obstacles,
this trailblazing project

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flourished, tapping
sources of creativity

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whose efforts have reached
far beyond prison walls.

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Teaching writing in
the prisons, Dick

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brought hope to those in
the bleakest circumstances.

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He opened a future to those
who faced only dead ends.

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A number of his former
students in the program

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have gone on to their own
successful literary careers.

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Some of them have won
major national awards.

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Many credit Dick with
literally saving their lives.

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Michael Hogan would
be one of those.

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It was his stunning memoir of
his journey, Crossing The Yard,

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that earned him one of the
nominations for the Pulitzer

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Prize.

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And PBS, as some of
you will remember,

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aired a terrific
segment on Dick.

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As these achievements
demonstrate,

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Dick Shelton's allegiance
to the writing life

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is at once an
aesthetic and moral.

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He believes quite
unsentimentally

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that honest speech can
change lives for the better.

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His reverence for truth, for
the power of the right word,

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allows him not only
to create works

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that illuminate
the human condition

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but also to enable others to
participate in his conviction

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that, through
imaginative literature,

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we may remake ourselves
and perhaps the world.

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Toward the end of
Crossing The Yard,

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Dick writes that
the power of a story

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is amazing, even a little story.

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A story, like a poem, can
tell the truth obliquely,

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tell it slant, as
Emily Dickinson says.

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So it is with Nobody
Rich or Famous,

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which we celebrate today.

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Dick Shelton has always
had a yen to travel.

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Think of The Bus to Veracruz,
Going Back to Bisbee,

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or the deep travel he
embarked on each time he

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crossed the yard.

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Nobody Rich Or Famous
is, in many ways,

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his ultimate travel story.

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The unsparing record, all
his life in the making,

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of his meandering,
sometimes searing journey

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back into his own history,
over the great open spaces,

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as he puts it, once traversed
by his tough, gutsy, flawed,

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passionate forebears,
the family he

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seeks to as a way
of knowing himself.

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In the last line of
Going Back to Bisbee,

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Dick affirmed the journey's
finest end is going home.

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In Nobody Rich Or Famous, for
all the pain, contradictions,

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and anguish that journey
entails, he goes home again

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and he takes us along with him.

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And the last word of that book
is also its best description,

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beautiful.

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Dick Shelton.

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