Thank you for that, Tyler.
That was a-- thank you.
That's all I can say, thank you.
Thank you to Tyler, thank you to Paola.
Thank you to Diana Delgado as well, who isn't here
and thank you all for all of you for being here.
It's a real pleasure.
I was born in Tucson roughly 43 years ago.
So it's a real pleasure not to be too specific.
But it's a real, real pleasure to be back here
at this place has always been such
a large part of my identity and a huge part of my poetics
as well when think about the idea
of the expansive landscapes and saguaros
and everything like that.
So it's a real delight to be here.
And I'm delighted.
As a poet, I'm already running out of my words.
So I'm going to read the first poem in the collection.
This is called "The Bell System."
And it refers to Mary, Jane and Pat,
who are the first names of the women who
lent their voices to the Bell system's automated telephone
system.
So if you, like me, remember a time before digital telephone
technology back when you would dial a number,
and a person wasn't there, you'd get that little dial tone
and go doo doo doo.
And then you'd have this lovely soothing female voice telling
you that the person you're looking for is no longer there,
but you should hang up and try again.
And what's more American than that?
The people you're looking for are now gone.
But you should keep looking for them nonetheless.
And they function somewhat as a Greek chorus
or like a spirit guide throughout the book.
"The Bell System."
Good night, Mary, Jane, Pat.
Sleep tight, you sweet operators of America.
Your voices strung like laundry across this nation,
drowsy with a full century's worth of light.
There's nothing you can't tell me
that I haven't already heard gift wrapped
in your general American grace.
But still, I wonder in what chamber of a horse's ant eaten
skull I'll recover my youth.
Our human garden grows rich in these green suburbs.
And what I feel is not so much loss as a lessening,
as if the self was nothing more than a late model
sedan crossing the city limit in search of a better resale
value.
It's funny this franchise of molecules
that fizzes up in each of us like motels,
viral along the interstate, some full,
while others flicker and die.
When will the stars rain down like cheap plaster?
When will language be little more than a dandruff shaken
from my head?
Ladies, you tell me the number I've been calling
has been disconnected.
But where did the person it belonged to go?
Alone on the line, I find only a prairie
alive with funneled wind, a nation
heavy with wheat and light, its chorus
of dim voices locked in a kind of pharmaceutical sleep.
I find a system unchanged, charged with electrical pulses
that send the receiver scurrying in their cradle, the long hand
breath of ghosts rising through switchboards to ask
who's there?
Will tell me who is there?
Who goes?
Ladies, please wake up.
I want to try again.