First, get rid of the jacket.
Well-- thank you.
It's wonderful to be back in Tucson.
I lived here for a little over a year researching
this new book I'm working on my great aunt, The Saint of Cabora.
Some of you may have heard me read about her here and there
or talk about her.
And I can tell you some Teresita gossip later to fill you in.
I thought I would give you a little bit
of a mixed bag of stuff, a little poetry and a little bit
maybe from Wandering Time.
And I wanted to end with a chapter from one of my Tijuana
books that I haven't read much in this area.
It's hard for me to read it, but I think--
I save it for special events and this
seems like a really special event for me.
So I will share it with you.
I just wanted to share one thing.
People talking the last couple of days--
I've been on tour, so I'm a little bit rocky at this point
because I've been doing city after city.
And it's been a really strange experience because last time I
came through, nobody cared at all.
And this time I've come through and there
are all kinds of people.
And I'm not sure what happened.
We were laughing in Oakland--
the last time I passed through this one bookstore,
there were two people in the audience
and one guy slept through my whole reading.
And this time, it was full.
So you know.
But anyway, a lot of people have been asking me about my writing
and it's strange to have people care suddenly.
People want to know.
And I've been trying to formulate a response.
And somehow, some of the best responses I can come up with
are what other writers have said that I try to take as a credo.
I was more than delighted to be upstairs hiding
in Jon Anderson's office, if you know him, one of my heroes,
whom I have never met by the way.
But when I was teaching at Harvard,
I found a booklet of his for a quarter,
Helpful Hints on Writing Poetry, if you know that book.
And he has one writing rule which is,
"remember the world of ghosts and small gestures."
And I think that's such a beautiful sentence.
And it sums up everything I would like to capture in my work
because I think that the small moments and the passing memories
are what is really richest.
And just one other little thing before I get into my reading,
a little quote from Erica Funkhouser which I think
is so beautiful that it's become one of my new writing works.
I'm starting to get this kind of Bible of writing rules.
But it's a little phrase from one of her poems
that says, to pay attention as lovers pay their debts, not
in currency but in kindness.
And that seems to me the ultimate writing rule right now.
And the last one I want to share with you is something
Etheridge Knight said which sticks in my heart
and actually informed my attempts
to wrestle with the border issues in my border books.
He said, you have to be telling people essentially I love you
or have no basis for your art.
So just so you know, that's where
I'm coming from-- or trying to.
I'm not always successful at it.
I thought I would read you some poetry
and I'm not sure which poems to read.
How about you guys-- what poem should I read?
Let's have some community feedback here.
Well, I'll just--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Really?
It will baffle the audience right off the bat.
You want me to read my most strange poem.
"A Boy's Life."
"Boy's Life?"
You guys are picking all the ones that put me on the spot.
To heck with you!
[LAUGHTER]
I'll work my way up to it.
This is a poem called "I Tried to Write a Poem About This Once
a Year for 13 Years," which turns out to be a more humorous
title than I had intended, I meant it seriously,
I kept trying to write a poem about this experience.
You mentioned the absurdities of manhood--
one of the rules in my family was to be macho,
so my dad took me a lot of places to be macho
and we experienced a lot of very strange and unpleasant things,
which apparently is what macho is.
[LAUGHTER]
And by the way--
I think I've said this before, but I just
have to tell the audience-- the thing about the border,
in my heart I've used this as a catch phrase
that there's a barbed wire fence dissecting
my heart because my parents, being American and Mexican,
my mother was all-American, my dad was all-Mexican
and they raised me both ways at once.
I had to be American and Mexican.
But apparently, the Mexican people
didn't quite understand the metaphor.
Because when I got to Mexico City and was interviewed,
what they published in the newspaper in Mexico City was,
if you cut open Luis Urrea's chest with a knife,
you'll find a border patrol truck idling in his ribs.
[LAUGHTER]
Which is one of the greatest things
I've ever had written about me, but I don't know what it means.
So anyway.
This is a poem about one of those macho experiences,
which was a marathon drive I went on with my dad in Mexico.
"I tried to enter the car, my father driving.
Interior dim in late desert night lit by the dash
by the pumping radio.
Rancheras beat across Chihuahua's haunted heat.
How my little cousin, Melba, smelled of hair and flesh.
How my aunt drowsed and my uncle and father
murmured in the front seat.
Manly mysteries I stayed awake for.
Cojones, cigarettes, bulls, and menudo.
How late it was.
How my father drove for 20 hours to show the dark of the dunes
before us vague and moonlight, how blue-red lightning flashed
in the distance.
So subtle at first you couldn't tell if they were there
or your eyes were throwing nerve sparks from no sleep.
It took a minute to see the bolts were on the ground, how
I said, look out, papa.
How he slowed down and how I felt so powerful
at that instant, the words I spoke
could pull the eternal machine of my father
back from his speed.
How slow we came around the bend and what we saw.
I always tried to show the glass, the liquids spread, that,
through back light, oil, glass, and blood.
Men ran the far side of the road.
Frantic flashlights probed among desert trees.
Mesquite, palo verde, ocotillo.
What is this, my father said.
And my uncle, muy mexicano, ordered my aunt
to hide Melba's head under her arm and turn away.
And the solid wall of metal and meat before us,
the split-level passenger bus welded head-on to the semi,
12-wheeled 18-wheel drive, dead still sticking,
the shoes of the bus driver hanging from the upraised tomb
of the dashboard.
The colorful, fleshy garlands looping
from the windows like the party was about to begin.
The engine of the bus knocked out the back,
lying silent behind smoke.
Odd mounds scattered indistinct and the flash, flash, flashing.
And the smaller details that never wanted to fit.
The one cop swinging a lantern alone,
how he begged us to get out of there.
How he said, they passed on the curve.
And, 70, 80 miles an hour.
And, they're searching the trees for a baby
that went out the window.
And how we drove on through the night,
there was nothing between us but the radio, the tally
as it was counted.
Bland voices bouncing across black lands,
100 miles from any city.
One ambulance at each end of the highway.
And how we'd hear it coming four miles away,
watch it hurtle, recede, return.
And I could never quite capture the schoolgirls.
On a trip into Mexico coming home,
15, 20 schoolgirls all my age.
And you could see them in their uniforms, holding hands.
They stood in rough circle out among the cactus, gray as ash
in the half light.
They were singing a hymn.
The National Anthem, the school song.
I don't know.
All these voices tiny as ghosts bounced off
the metal singing and singing.
Every voice as we left stolen by the wind."
That was one of those pleasant He-Man experiences.
[APPLAUSE]
No, no, no, no.
Thank you kindly.
Thank you.