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Good evening, and welcome
to the first reading

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in the Spring 2006 Visiting
Poets and Writers Reading

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series.

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I'm Frances Sjoberg, literary
director of the Poetry Center.

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And we're thrilled to have Cal
Bedient with us here tonight.

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Hi, Jami.

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And Jami McCarty
back from Vancouver.

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Tonight, he will
read from his work.

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And tomorrow evening,
he will offer a lecture,

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"5 Theses of
Contemporary Poetry,"

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at 6:00 PM at the Poetry Center.

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That lecture is co-sponsored
by Tucson Writers'

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Project, a program of the
Tucson Pima Public Library.

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And we hope to see
you there as well.

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And I won't bend your ear with
a long list of announcements.

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So please take a look
at the Poetry Center

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table in the lobby outside.

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But I do want to
mention that there

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will be a reading in a
couple of weeks with Kenneth

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McClane, Robert Hass,
Brenda Hillman, Alison

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Deming, and Dick Shelton
sponsored by Singing Wind

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Bookstore in Benson.

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And that information's
out there as well.

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And I also want
to mention that I

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am very glad we are able
to offer this reading

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series free to the
public, something

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that not many cities can boast.

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This is possible in part by the
Friends of the Poetry Center.

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And we are currently two
months into our annual appeal

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and halfway to our goal to raise
$25,000 for the reading series

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and education
programs this year.

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If you are able to and if you
would like to support Friends

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of the Poetry Center,
please pick up a brochure

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or just talk to me in the
lobby after the reading.

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And in addition to Friends
of the Poetry Center,

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we are grateful to
and I'd like to thank

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the College of Humanities,
the University of Arizona

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Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Arts,

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and the Arizona
Commission on the Arts.

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Tonight, I especially
would like to welcome

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undergraduate poets
from English 209

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or anyone for whom this might
be a first poetry reading.

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You're about to be thrown
into the deep end of the pool.

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Tonight, in fact,
we'll all be thrown

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into the deep end of the pool.

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Cal Bedient is a poet's poet.

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His dexterity with
language allows

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him to play it
quickly to make song

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of its fluencies and its flaws
to find something akin to truth

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in the place where
language stops saying

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but continues to mean.

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Such skill is
exciting to behold.

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Cal Bedient is the author of
two collections of poetry,

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The Violence of Mourning
and Candy Necklace,

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as well as four books
of literary criticism,

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including He Do the Police
in Different Voices:

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The Waste Land and
Its Protagonist.

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Bedient is also one of
our most astute readers

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of contemporary poetry, and
his critical essays and reviews

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have appeared in Parnassus,
The Nation, The New Republic

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and The New York
Times Review of Books.

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He is a co-editor of the
New California Poetry Series

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and of VOLT Magazine.

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And he is a professor
of English at UCLA.

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Poetry is the
eroticisation of thought,

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Bedient says in an interview.

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And his poems embody this
passion for thinking.

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The idea in Bedient's work is
a beautiful, a moving thing.

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He also has fun in poems
with jaunty rhythms in No.

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2 Pencil Quaquaversal Shout,
and typographical play

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in The Violin of
a Little Monday,

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a concrete poem in the
broken shape of a violin.

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He juxtaposes humor against the
slap of ontological limitation,

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the bliss of ignorance against
the blight of agnosis, the sign

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at the exist says exit.

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Life, you say, is the greatest
nothing, exactly imagined,

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he writes.

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And encoding, his skill is
reminiscent of Gertrude Stein

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in the breakdown and
recasting of parts of speech

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and linguistic phones.

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He writes, "A come
to tears face down,

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wet woods leaves against the
mouth," in which nearly all

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of the words could
function as noun or verb,

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if not as written in
their homonymic form.

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He continues, "and averaging,
leaves and averaging,

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a due distress is my mind.

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A noun is an offering.

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A verb-- a verb is a hard rain."

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Here, if we break averaging
apart from meaning,

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it morphs into ave and
raging or hail raging,

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thus hail, and offering,
and hail, hard rain

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in nominal and
verbal somersaults

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enacts the speaker's
rage and grief.

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All hail, please welcome, a poet
breaking ground, Cal Bedient.

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[APPLAUSE]

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