Richard Shelton's Memorial Service
Saturday, March 4, 2023 at 6pm
UA Poetry Center
1508 E Helen St, Tucson, AZ
"As a poet I am not primarily concerned with intellect. I'm not that smart. I want to make people laugh and cry."
Richard Shelton
NOBODY RICH OR FAMOUS
A Family Memoir
Nobody Rich or Famous is a beautiful testament to the power of Richard Shelton's gifts as a writer and human being. Part memoir, part social history, part prose poem, he has made a wise and astute portrait of his family growing up in the hard-rock seams of Idaho. Pampered was not a word known to the Sheltons; ingenuity was. Through his brutal and at times sideways insights, we see the human family more fully.
—Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks
An excerpt from "Desert"
Blue Ridge Journal, 1933
Those who have lived here longest
and know best
are least conspicuous.
The oldest mountains are lowest
and the scorpion sleeps all day
beneath a broken stone.
​
If I stay here long enough
I will learn the art of silence.
When I have given up words
I will become what I have to say.
