How is everybody doing?
Great.
Happy Thursday.
Welcome to the Poetry Center.
Glad everybody's choosing to be here.
My name is Tyler.
I work here as the director at the Poetry Center,
and it's a thrill that you're choosing
poetry on a Thursday night in Tucson,
which you get to do a lot.
But I'm glad you're doing it tonight.
So thanks for coming.
We are thrilled to welcome back to Tucson,
a great friend of the Poetry Center, Mark Wunderlich.
So round of applause for Mark's return.
[APPLAUSE]
A prodigal feeling in this moment.
Mark was an interim director of the Poetry Center in the '90s--
'95 and '96-- and so knows Tucson very well from that time
and has a lot of memories.
Many people in the audience may know Mark from that time.
And so it's a true delight to have him back.
His poetry is wonderful, and it's a thrill
that the Poetry Center can bring Mark back in this moment.
So thanks for helping me welcome him here tonight.
I would like to tell you about a couple of upcoming events,
just to keep everybody in the loop.
Our next event as the Poetry Center will be next week,
and it's a collaboration with MOCA Tucson--
so our museum of contemporary art.
And it will feature an exhibit from the poet CAConrad, who's
traveling to Tucson, who I think is actually
arriving in Tucson now.
And so that event will be on Thursday of next week,
but it will be at MOCA Tucson.
And the start time will be one hour earlier at 6:00 PM.
So CA will read from their work.
There's an exhibit that's connected to this visit called
"500 Places at Once," and a new chapbook that's being launched
as part of that.
So that's all next week, starting
on Thursday, 6 o'clock, MOCA.
It's a free night for MOCA.
So they have an extended evening for folks that might want
to spend more time there, see the other exhibits that are
there as well, and a chance to see the exhibit that's connected
to that exhibit next Thursday, the 19th.
Then the following week on the 26,
we're back here at the Poetry Center at 7 o'clock.
And we're really excited to have a return
visit from the poet Mary Ruefle, who'll be visiting.
Her exhibit is here at the Poetry Center,
and we'll open up next week here at the Poetry Center.
It is incredible.
And it features her practice of creating erasures from
found texts that she collects, so books, ephemera,
other items, materials, detritus,
things that are amazing what she does with them.
She treats these texts that she collects, creates erasures
or other found texts from within them.
The exhibit will delight you.
It will stun you.
It will make you laugh.
It's beautiful.
And that will be open next week.
And her reading will be on the 26th.
And again, we're very excited about that.
That's 7 o'clock back here at the Poetry Center.
My notes say, "to be excited."
Please be excited.
We're excited.
There are ever so few spaces remaining in Poetry Center
classes and workshops this semester,
including a few seats in an upcoming class with the poet
Cynthia Hogue, who's a really terrific poet, critic, scholar,
translator, had a 30-year-long career at ASU as the Marshall
Chair there.
And she's teaching a class called "What is Mythopoesis?"
And that's a class if you're interested in learning
about how to handle material that is too close or even maybe
too hot.
How do you handle those materials in writing?
And this is a class that will help you think about that.
So if that's something you're interested in,
there's some spaces in that class and many others
that remain in the Poetry Center's calendar.
You can find out more about that on our website
or in our calendar of events, which looks attractively
like this square.
And there's lots of these that are up here over here
on my right.
Books are for sale tonight after the reading, as well as some
broadsides that Marcus brought with him.
So if you're interested in books,
it's a little bit farther.
If you're interested in broadsides,
it's a little bit closer.
Broadsides are 10.
There's one that's being held up that's delightful and shimmering
in the light.
And so there's limited numbers of those.
And books are for sale as well.
Please come bring all the dollars
you brought with you and avail yourselves of both
of those things.
If you happen to have extra dollars,
I will point out this feature that's
on the inside of the calendar, which is a donation envelope.
So the Poetry Center, of course, runs on the support
of the community.
So if you're interested in what's happening in the reading
series, if you enjoy the reading series,
if you enjoy what's happening in our K
through 12 programs, our classes,
if you enjoy the collection and the books
and the work that happens there, all of that is funded by donor
support, by support from people who
choose to make a gift to the Poetry Center.
So I hope if you're interested in that,
you'll take this envelope and consider what to put inside it
and send it back to us.
I do want to plug our Whitman Circle, which
is a giving level of support.
This is an important support level for the Poetry Center.
And if that's the right fit for you,
we'd love to tell you more about that.
Come speak with me after the reading.
You can learn more about it from the materials that are up here.
You get invited to receptions with poets and other perks that
come with that support.
So happy to talk more about that.
And thank you in advance for all that you
do for the Poetry Center.
This is enough for me.
So I'm going to welcome up my friend and colleague, Susan
Briante, a poet and essayist here
at the University of Arizona and Professor
of English and Creative Writing.
She's the author of the award-winning nonfiction book,
Defacing the Monument.
Terrific book.
Read that book.
And this next summer, in August, will be her Selected Poems
published by Noemi Press, which we're really excited about
and looking forward to.
So please help me welcome Susan Briante
to introduce Mark Wunderlich.
[APPLAUSE]