Rock band U2 uses ASU professor's poem on tour

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - When ASU English professor Alberto Rios heard from his son that one of the biggest rock bands in history has picked up one of his poems and used it in a show, he didn't quite believe it until he got this call from his agent.

"We just signed a licensing agreement with U2 for your poem," Rios said. "They're going to use it on the whole tour."

Rios says the poem, a double sonnet titled "The Boarder" is meant to be picked apart, digested into pieces, and most importantly as impactful as many U2 songs.

"'The Boarder' in an imaginary dam," he said.

Letters, tweets, Facebook posts and other messages of appreciation started pouring in from all over the world, confirming something Rios always felt... that music and poetry are one-in-the-same.

"We want to think that Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for literature might have connected music with poetry, but it was a shock... it was a shock," Rios said.

Rios added that education and "The Boarder" touched something within his soul.

"It's literally seeing that everything in the world, every last thing can be looked at, can be spoken, can be understood in more than one way," he said.

Despite the unexpected brush with fame, don't expect Rios to quit his day job, but he could always make it as a comedian!

"Well, because they signed a licensing agreement, I'd probably get to see some money, he said about five bucks you know!" Rios said. "It's not very big... it's never very big in poetry. Well there goes my pro-bono joke."