Arizona’s first poet laureate highlighted the importance of poetry and literature in people’s lives during a poetry reading at Burton Barr Central Library Tuesday night.
Alberto Rios, a Regents’ Professor of English at Arizona State University, read some of his published work as well as a few new poems to community members gathered in the library’s auditorium.
Rios began his talk by explaining the power of words and how they come alive in poetry and literature. He added that words put together in literature is what sets a library apart from a dictionary.
“A dictionary is efficient, a novel is effective,” he said.
The event, sponsored by the Phoenix Public Library Foundation, also included an opportunity for book signings, a question-and-answer session and offered books for sale through Friends of the Phoenix Public Library, a nonprofit organization. The reading followed two other poetry-related events previously hosted at Burton Barr in honor of National Poetry Month.
Rios was introduced by Burton Barr designer Will Bruder, who described Rios as “a person I respect profoundly and a true poet.”
He introduced each of the poems he read with background information about what inspired him to write the poem, or a short anecdote if he had read a particular piece to an audience before. He began the poetry reading with his poem “Giving,” which he dedicated to the Friends of the Phoenix Public Library, as they assist the library in organizing events and programs.
Rios also read some new personal poems, such as “Breathlessness,” a poem he wrote for his son and daughter-in-law for their wedding.
Bruder said that although many people read poems multiple times and analyze them, hearing a poet read their own work is very different from reading a poem several times.
“When you’re in the room with the author and he reads the poem once, it’s like you’ve never read it before,” Bruder said.
Rios spoke about how he began to dabble in writing as a child and explained how daydreaming in the second grade led him to find writing as his passion.
“I wasn’t (writing poetry) for my parents approval, I wasn’t doing it for a good grade in school … I was doing it because I needed to do it,” Rios said.
Audience member Tanisha Dees said she enjoyed event because Rios did not just read poetry, but he discussed the impact of poetry on people and spoke about his own past writing poetry as well.
“He read a couple of poems that I really liked, but I also really liked the question-and-answer time and hearing how he was looking back at his growth as a poet from as a child until now,” Dees said.
Rios also explained the different perspective he can offer as a bilingual poet and the benefits of experiencing literature in multiple languages.
“One language often just gives you one perspective. If you know there’s just one word for something, you have captured it, you own it,” Rios said. “But if you speak languages … there’s more than one way (for a word) to be conceptualized.”
Cia Ciarelli said she found Rios’ work interesting because she is from New York and had not experienced poetry like his before.
“I really just loved it as a whole,” Ciarelli said. “I loved his viewpoints and his sense of humor and the feeling of the poetry itself.”
Contact the reporter at kuntharasp@gmail.com
