--For us.
So this is your chance to welcome him back.
And on February 9th, there will be a concert sponsored
by the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts
School of Music and Dance, that is
a collaboration between composer Dan Asia and the poet
Paul Pines, works that will be performed by tenor Paul Sperry,
accompanied by a violin and piano.
And that's at 3 o'clock February 9th at Crowder Hall.
And at 2, before that event, there
will be a panel discussion by all three artists talking
about the nature of a words and music project.
So I think that will be interesting.
And you'll see other publicity about that in the usual places
if you want to take advantage of it.
The University of Arizona bookstore
is here tonight selling Bob Perelman's books,
as is Charles Alexander from CHAX Press.
Charles has produced a really beautiful small chapbook of one
of Bob Perelman's poems, which is for sale for a mere $5,
a collector's item at a bargain price for you tonight.
And the UA bookstore has a number
of Perelman's other works, and those will be for sale
after the reading.
I'd like to thank those who made the reading possible tonight,
some of our usual funders--
the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the University of Arizona
Foundation, and in particular, the Arizona Quarterly,
who made a special gift to help sponsor the reading tonight.
Bob Perelman has been a shaper, practitioner, and historian
of the language writing movement.
Much of the charm and intelligence of his work
comes from the fact that he is keenly aware
that when one declares a literary movement,
one draws a border.
I can't resist that overused regional metaphor which others
may fear or dread to cross.
But even as he draws that border,
Perelman then applies his intelligence and good humor
to erasing it.
He may want writing to be an engine of social change.
But he is the first to acknowledge
that aesthetically radical work may appear
so incomprehensible to its audience
that there is no one there to be changed.
His work is out to change that by honoring
how the writer's need for innovation
can meet his need for an audience.
When Perelman lived in San Francisco,
he edited Hills magazine and coordinated
the San Francisco Talks series, that were later
edited and gathered into the influential series,
Writing Talks, published in 1985.
His books of poetry include Captive Audience, Braille
and the two latest--
Face Value and Virtual Reality, both from Roof Books.
He's also published two important books of criticism
that helped to place the language writing
movement within the context of other 20th century Avant
Garde movements.
These books are The Trouble with Genius:
Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky, published
by the University of California in 1994,
and The Marginalization of Poetry, published by Princeton
last year.
Tony Hoagland has said about his work,
that it has an antagonistic relationship with authority,
even its own authority.
And I think that's right.
He does not want to be master of anything,
even his own imagination and poetic forms.
The fact that I'm president of this sentence
should just be an anecdote among friends.
Always questioning, poking, and poking fun
at the relationship between reality and language,
always de-mastering the master, his work
is about the love of language and the distrust of language
that make poetry necessary.
Please welcome Bob Perelman.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]