 September 18, 2007 Media Contact: Anne Halsey (312) 799.8016; ahalsey@poetryfoundation.org Poetry Foundation Announces Fall 2007 Literary Series Friday, October 12, 8:15 p.m. Poetry Off the Shelf: Reginald Gibbons, Mary Kinzie, and Adam Zagajewski Hotel Allegro 171 West Randolph Street Three eminent poets read and discuss their work. Admission is free, but reservations are required. Call (617) 358-1990 by October 9th. Presented by The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics Sunday, October 14, 3:00 p.m. Poetry Off the Shelf: A.E. Stallings Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center 801 West Adams Street, Suite 400 At her young age, A.E. Stallings has already proven to be a prominent voice of next-generation New Formalist poets. A classics scholar, Stallings won the Richard Wilbur Award for her first collection, Archaic Smile, and her second, Hapax, was published by Northwestern/TriQuarterly in 2006. She recently completed a verse translation of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura for Penguin Classics. Stallings currently lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband and son. Free admission. Call (312) 655-1234 for reservations. Co-sponsored with the Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center Thursday, October 18, 6:00 p.m. American Perspectives: Helen Vendler “Wallace Stevens: The Poet as Painter” Art Institute of Chicago 111 South Michigan Avenue Literary icon Helen Vendler draws on her two books about poet Wallace Stevens as source references while she focuses on the contemporary work of Jasper Johns. A gallery walk is suggested following her presentation. A book signing follows the event. Free admission. Wednesday, October 24, 6:00 p.m. American Perspectives: A Cave Canem Reading Featuring Frank Walker, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Parneshia Jones, and Kelly Norman Ellis Art Institute of Chicago 111 South Michigan Avenue Cave Canem poets introduce their new anthology, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. Free admission. Co-sponsored with the Gwendolyn Brooks Center Saturday, November 3, 10:00 a.m. Poetry Off the Shelf: Diane Ackerman First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple 77 West Washington Street The celebrated poet (most recently I Praise My Destroyer) and nonfiction author (the bestselling A Natural History of the Senses) will read from a selection of her poems and also from her new narrative The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story. The book chronicles a true story of WWII, in which Christian zookeepers at the Warsaw Zoo saved 300 Jews by capitalizing on the Nazi obsession with the environment, eugenics, and pureblood animals. $5 tickets go on sale Monday, September 24, and are available through the Chicago Humanities Festival ticket office at (312) 494-9509 or www.chfestival.org. Presented as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival: The Climate of Concern Saturday, November 3, 2:00 p.m. Poetry Off the Shelf: W.S. Merwin “A Poetic Nature” St. James Cathedral 65 East Huron Street One of the most influential and acclaimed writers of his generation will read from his work and discuss the artist’s duty to engage in environmental activism. Merwin, who cultivates rare plants near his home in a Hawaiian sanctuary, is the author of dozens of books of poetry, including Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001, winner of the 2005 National Book Award. $5 tickets go on sale Monday, September 24, and are available through the Chicago Humanities Festival ticket office at (312) 494-9509 or www.chfestival.org. Presented as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival: The Climate of Concern Saturday, November 3, 4:30 p.m. Poetry Off the Shelf: Writing Nature Panel First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple 77 West Washington Street Distinguished writers will describe how their relationship with the natural world informs their work in myriad ways. The discussion, led by book critic and author Donna Seaman (In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness), will include author readings. Featuring National Book Award-winning poet W.S Merwin; poet and author Diane Ackerman; nature and travel writer Gretel Ehrlich. $5 tickets go on sale Monday, September 24, and are available through the Chicago Humanities Festival ticket office at (312) 494-9509 or www.chfestival.org. Presented as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival: The Climate of Concern Sunday, November 4, 2:00 p.m. & 7:00 p.m. Poetry On Stage: The Waste Land Two Performances A staged reading produced by Bernard Sahlins The Museum of Contemporary Art 220 East Chicago Avenue T.S. Eliot’s poem marked so radical a break between the Romantic verse of the nineteenth century and twentieth century modernism that poet William Carlos Williams said of the poem, “It wiped out our world as if an atom bomb had dropped on it.” $10 tickets go on sale Monday, September 24, and are available through the Chicago Humanities Festival ticket office at (312) 494-9509 or www.chfestival.org. Presented as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival: The Climate of Concern Friday, November 9, 6:00 p.m. American Perspectives: Marjorie Perloff “Avoid a Polar Situation: Johns, Cage, and O’Hara in the Sixties” Art Institute of Chicago 111 South Michigan Avenue The renowned literary critic and professor of humanities at Stanford University examines the interrelationship among the works of three modern masters. Free admission. Wednesday, November 14, 6:00 p.m. 53rd Annual Poetry Day: Eavan Boland Art Institute of Chicago 111 South Michigan Avenue Questions of identity—as an Irish woman, mother, poet, and exile—animate much of Eavan Boland’s poetry. She was born in Dublin, but grew up in London, where anti-Irish racism gave her a strong sense of her heritage. Irish history and myth also figure prominently in her work, along with the elements of ordinary life. The author of eight collections of poetry, most lately An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems, 1967-1987 and Against Love Poems, she has also written Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time and co-edited with Mark Strand The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. She is a professor of English at Stanford. Admission is free. Call (312) 787-7070 for reservations. Thursday, December 13, 6:00 p.m. American Perspectives: Langdon Hammer “On Poet Hart Crane” Art Institute of Chicago 111 South Michigan Avenue Yale University professor Langdon Hammer uses his recent book Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters to highlight aspects of Crane’s life and work that have served as inspiration for artist Jasper Johns. A book signing follows. Admission is free. About the Poetry Foundation The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine and one of the largest literary organizations in the world, exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs. American Perspectives is a yearlong alliance among the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Poetry Foundation designed to explore how artists, composers and writers influenced one another to an unprecedented degree in 19th- and 20th-century America. For more information, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org. Download PDF >> |
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