Now that the reading tonight is sponsored
by the Academy of American Poets,
were most grateful to them because they've
made possible, a week-long visit for this author
to tour throughout Arizona giving readings,
not only here, but also in Flagstaff, Tempe, and Prescott.
So our distant thank you to the Academy.
Al young was born in Mississippi, grew up
in the south and in Detroit.
In 1966, he was awarded a Wallace Stegner fellowship
at Stanford after finishing his education at the University
of Michigan and UC Berkeley.
With Ishmael Reed, he co-founded the influential Yardbird
Reader.
He recently edited the anthology African-American Literature
for HarperCollins.
Young is the author of five books of poetry,
beginning with Dancing in 1969, followed by the song,
Turning Back Into Itself, Geography of the Near Past,
The Blues Don't Change: New and Selected
Poems that came out in 1982, and Heaven:
Collected Poems that came out in 1992.
Two chat books of poetry recently published
by Creative Arts Books in Berkeley--
Straight No Chaser and Conjugal Visits.
In addition, he's published five novels and four books
of musical memoirs including, Drowning in the Sea of Love
from Echo press and Mingus/Mingus,
a collaborative memoir of the Jazz great,
written with Janet Coleman.
As if that hadn't kept him busy in all these years,
he's also worked as a screen writer on such films
as A Piece of the Action and Bustin' Loose.
His work has been translated into a dozen languages,
including German, Norwegian, Swedish, Serbo-Croatian,
Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish.
Al Young, to borrow a line of his,
operates under the influence of music.
While there are many influences on his writing,
including African-American culture,
a childhood spent listening to long, slow storytelling,
American Indian song, Hindu philosophy, his extensive world
travels, the poetry of Li Po, Mayakovsky, Larika, Elliott,
Rex Roth, LeRoi Jones, to name a few forebearers,
he claims there is no influence as powerful in his work
as that of music.
Music for Young is the joy of existence, even the blues,
for he has the wisdom to know that happiness
is the secret teachings of sorrow turned inside out.
Music has given him an astonishing range of voices
from which to speak, and a range of subjects and characters
through which to see and light up the world.
He once asked in the poem, Moon Watching at Lake Chapala,
"Who will live to write the role of moonlight in the evolution
of consciousness. " He later answered that question himself.
In a beautiful series of 22 poems about the moon
that unabashedly sang of his being in love with everything.
Last week, CK Williams told us that since Baudelaire, poetry
has had to struggle with finding beauty
in the midst of this century's horror.
It is fitting that this week Al Young is here to remind us
that in spite of the terrible waste
and injustices of American culture, in the end,
there are only beautiful things to say, never
mind how dirty the floor was.
Please welcome Al Young.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]