The University of Arizona Poetry Center

Those who have enjoyed Poets House’s old venue on Spring Street (I have yet to make it to the new location down by Battery Park—but I’ll get there!) understand the overwhelming energy that comes from being surrounded by books and books of poetry. At any bookstore (except at Open Books, of course) poetry gets a slim reception, almost as an afterthought, with little attention to range, certainly none to content. Poetry is tucked away like the ugly cousin to the more glamorous Fiction category. At Poets House, poetry haters need not enter. This is our space, our comfort zone, where verse—from the weak to the brilliant, from the esoteric to the populist—can claim a slot on the bookcase without apology or explanation. It is poetry. I’m thrilled that such sites are also thriving elsewhere, as in outside of New York City, like the Poetry Center down in Tucson, Arizona.

The first time I visited the Center was shortly after the release of my first book of poetry in 1999. An early mentor, Gary Soto, had generously invited me to be his co-reader at a “New Millennium” reading series there. He brought in the audience of about 300 and I benefited from the exposure. Thanks, vato.
Anyway, back then the Center was a quaint little cottage with a squeaky floor and a facility for housing a visiting poet. Soto stayed in the guest room and commented later that the carpet looked like “The entrance to hell.” But one thing could not be denied: the heartbeat of the place was its living archive, the Center’s mission to safeguard anything and everything that was poetry. No published verse would ever be lost, obscured or forgotten again. I rattled off a few titles by Chicano authors I was sure would not be included in the collection, and I was humbled each time:
“Eagle-Visioned/ Feathered Adobes by Ricardo Sánchez?”
“It’s here.”
“Evangelina Vigil-Piñón’s The Computer is Down.”
“Got it.”
But the highlight of my visit was a car ride I took with the then-director of the Center, the poet Alison Hawthorne Deming, to the reading site (events back then were held on the University of Arizona campus). We talked about our projects, books that excited us, people and places we had in common. We talked about what had taken us to poetry, why we loved this world we inhabited and how we envisioned our futures as advocates of all things literary. It was such a heartwarming exchange I remember hugging Alison and feeling that I had made the right choice if I was going to cross paths with souls like hers.
Fast-forward to 2008: the Poetry Center turns forty-eight years old this year (it was inaugurated back in 1960 by none other than Robert Frost), it continues to hold seminars, writing classes, workshops, lectures, and of course poetry readings (the first readers back in 1962 were Stanley Kunitz and Kenneth Rexroth), but now these events are usually held at the new $6.8 million state-of-the-art 17,000 square foot Helen S. Schaefer Building. The Center continues to reach out to its community through various educational programs and poetry contests for young people (including a bilingual corrido contest—¡ajúa!), and Alison, well, she continues her tireless efforts as an active member of the development committee. The current executive director is Gail Browne.
I look forward to visiting the Center on my next trip to the Southwest. It’s a glorious space and now an essential artery for the arts, all thanks to the generosity of such philanthropists as its founder, Ruth Walgreen Stephan, and Helen S. Schaefer herself. And I will be remiss if I don’t return to celebrate also Alison Hawthorne Deming, whose positive energy continues to be the draw to Tucson for many of us poets living outside of Arizona.
Any other arts, and specifically poetry-championing, organizations outside of the obvious New York City ones we should all know about? Give a shout back.