WEBVTT

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Thank you, Gail.

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And thank you,
everybody who's here

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who's come to see their
friend, or perhaps

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who's come to discover a new
poet in our midst, which,

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of course, is a large part
of what the Mary Ann Campau

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Fellowship is about.

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I want to thank our judges--

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Tony Luebbermann, Pam
Uschuk, and Chris Nelson--

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for their time patience
and judicious reading

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and discussions of
the submissions.

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For the most part, there's
very little arm twisting

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that goes on at the ends
of these discussions.

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But we seldom all begin
on the same point, also.

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So it's fun to see that we
discovered you can do it

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peacefully, even before Obama.

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Thanks also to Gail
Browne, of course,

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and the University
of Arizona Poetry

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Center for their
indispensable support, which

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I hope the U of A continues
to fund adequately.

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And thanks to you who
are, of course, members

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of the Tucson arts and poetry
community for coming here

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tonight.

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Otherwise, there wouldn't
be any point much to this.

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Not quite true
actually-- the media

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being what it is,
you've had-- what--

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two interviews in the
last week so far-- so far,

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because I think there are
plenty more to come up.

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From what I hear,
they've gone very well.

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And also for honoring
Mary Ann Campau.

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I'm not going to tell you
a great deal about Mary Ann

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tonight.

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But I'll tell you something,
at least suggestive.

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She was afraid of flying,
so she took flying lessons.

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She was impatient,
and so when she

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decided she was
ready to fly solo

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and her instructor said she
wasn't ready to fly solo,

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she stole the plane.

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[LAUGHING]

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And when she landed, the
owner had been alerted

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and came to the airport and he
said, you'll never fly again.

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And she says, you're right.

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She says, I won't have to.

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I already have.

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And so that's the kind of woman
she was throughout her life.

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A very memorable friend,
sometimes a very difficult

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friend, if it happened to be
your airplane, for instance,

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but also a woman who
had very little backup

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in her armory of tricks.

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In her 60's, she
wrote this poem.

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This is from the
little collection

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called Like a Waterweed Ghost.

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She was a student
of both of mine,

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through the U of A extended
Center for Education,

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and also of my wife
Pamela's later.

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And she had many
courses from Pam.

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And they came to be quite close.

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But she, Mary Ann, had taught at
Estero Primary School, which is

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on Fort Myers Beach in Florida.

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I happen to have grown up
14 miles from that beach.

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I knew every conch
shell and fiddler crab

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that she wrote about
in some of her poems.

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She was not a teacher of
English, though she was a poet.

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She was a science teacher.

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I'll tell you one more
little anecdote about that.

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She would bring
all kinds of things

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to the class that would
make the class come

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alive for her students,
and apparently

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didn't have a great deal
of difficulty doing that.

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You can see why from this
little anecdote perhaps.

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At one point she acquired a
monkey, a smallish monkey,

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and brought it to class.

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And I don't need to
explain to you why that

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would have been interesting.

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But after a few
years, the monkey

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came down with some
kind of malady and died.

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And so, over the weekend,
she prepared the monkey

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to bring it in again on
Monday by boiling it,

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boiling off all of the flesh
and the hair and so on,

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and was able to reattach all the
bones, which is no mean feat,

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and brought the
monkey on that they'd

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seen on Friday kind of
coughing a bit on Monday,

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and held up the bones of it
and said, this is science.

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And the kids, some of
them I think probably

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became rocket scientists.

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And other ones
probably became poets.

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We still have that
monkey by our bed.

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And I've had any
number of paintings

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offered for it in exchange.

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But so far, I prefer
the boiled monkey bones.

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So this is a poem of Mary Ann's
that she wrote in her 60's.

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And it's called, "Saturday
Dance in a Donegal Pub."

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And it's hard to read it without
almost literally dancing.

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And I'm not a dancer until I'm
so drunk that I can't dance,

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at which point I'll try.

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"Saturday dance
in a Donegal pub.

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Lust is a fiddle
with its strings

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unstrung, wooden pegs
spun, horse hairs hide

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hanging from a frantic bow.

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Now, the tune turned
wrong but dancers

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keep awhirling and the
lads kick and stomp

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in their bog-caked boots.

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And the girls, oh, they
fall about with laughter

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as their skirts fly higher
than the eyebrows raised.

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And the poteen flows
and the poteen flows.

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And the room's gray with smoke
and the room stinks with sweat.

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And bellies friction heat.

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And the heat burns south.

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Hey, jigging turns to jiggle
till the legs fall apart,

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till dancing takes a tumble
from vertical to prone.

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Hey, the fiddling is over and
the diddle dancing is done.

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With the bog mud dung
dust checking music gone,

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ho, lust is a fiddle with
its strings unstrung.

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Stanley Kunitz continued
write up until just about

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the end of his death
but I don't recall

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anything that had
quite that rhythm to it

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in those later days.

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She was indefatigable
and did a lot

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to help young people in the
area learn about poetry,

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as well as people of a certain
age type women and men.

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She would find
sometimes or be brought

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students who had difficulty
making their tuition and so on.

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And she would often cover
it for them, sometimes

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to their knowledge.

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And sometimes they would have no
idea where the money came from.

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She was not rich.

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She was a teacher living
on a teacher's retirement.

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But she loved poetry,
loved it very deeply,

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mistrusted overly
learned poets--

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I must confess,
what she considered

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to be overly learned.

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She wanted them to be
able to get out there

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on the floor and dance.

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And nothing special, but dance
with somebody and with spirit

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and with gusto, et cetera.

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And that's the kind
of poetry I think

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that she enjoyed, though
her tastes were wider

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than her talents.

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And I think she would
very much enjoy also

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hearing the poet that
we have tonight, who

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is of course Stephanie Balzer.

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And I'm going to read
you just a little bit

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about her accomplishments.

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And I'm going to credit
right off the bat

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the information that's coming
from her nominator, who's

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Barbara Cully.

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And her service to
the community has

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involved working for
the Community Foundation

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for Southern Arizona, writing
editorials, newsletters,

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marketing materials, press
releases, fundraising letters,

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reports, all in service of
expanding the receivership

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funding and infrastructure
of the arts in our community.

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Her current work is
as executive director

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of Voices, which continues
her commitment to education

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and the arts.

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Her dedication to
Tucson, in particular,

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manifests from the
many unpaid positions

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that she holds as well.

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She served on the arts
committees for the Arizona

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Commission on the Arts,
currently co-edits

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the prose poem journal CUE.

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Were you able to get hold
of copies to bring tonight?

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Not yet?

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OK.

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Where can people find
them if they want?

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Is there a bookstore
that carries them?

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Antigone, maybe or?

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Yes.

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Antigone?

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OK.

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CUE is a journal primarily
of prose poems, I believe.

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And so, yeah.

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And she's also
currently president

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of the board of directors of the
local arts organization, which

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I'm sure you're familiar with--

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Casa Libre en la Solana.

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Of her work, Barbara
Cully has commented

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in a way that's much
better, I think,

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than anything I
could come up with.

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She knows the work quite well.

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That her recently completed--
not published yet--

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book of poems Revenant-- and do
you have a update on that yet?

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Spring of this year.

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Spring.

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And who is bringing
that one out.

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Kore Press.

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Kore Press, of course--

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is masterful and transporting
in its form and orchestration

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of themes.

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She's using the prose
poem form, the prose

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box as a playground, a diorama.

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The graphic matches the visual
motifs and signature ideas

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a crew making of fragments
a beautiful weave

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and paraphrasable plot.

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And in this case, a woman rents
a house in a scraggly desert

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neighborhood.

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Could happen to any of us.

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The reader enters the
speaker's imagination

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as she is absorbed
into the vacated rooms

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of the previous tenant,
who killed someone

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before moving out.

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The previous tenant and
the person he killed

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are in turns the revenant of
the title, the ghost who haunts

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the speaker and the book.

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From the beginning of Wallace
Stevens' poem, which I'm sure

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many of you are familiar with
called "Of Modern Poetry."

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Reading the first
10 lines or so.

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"The poem of the mind and
the act of finding what

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will suffice.

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It has not always had to find.

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The scene was set.

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It repeated what
was in the script.

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Then the theater was
changed to something else.

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Its past was a souvenir.

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It has to be living to learn
the speech of the place.

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It has to face the
men of the time

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and to meet the
women of the time.

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It has to think about war and it
has to find what will suffice.

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It has to construct a new stage.

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It has to be on that stage.

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And, like an insatiable actor,
slowly and with meditation,

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speak words that in the ear, in
the delicatest ear of the mind,

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repeat exactly that
which it wants to hear."

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Stephanie?

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[APPLAUSE]

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