Monday, April 14, 2014

Monday Muse: 'Life of a Poet' Series

On Wednesday, April 23, the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress will hold the second conversation in its 2014 series "The Life of a Poet". The event will be a discussion between The Washington Post's Ron Charles and Edward Hirsch. The interview will take place at 7:00 p.m. at Hill Center, at the Old Naval Hospital, 921 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E., Washington, D.C. Hill Center co-sponsors the series with the LOC. Reservations are required for the talk (seating is limited to 100), which is free and open to anyone.

Edward Hirsch is the author, most recently, of The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (Knopf, reprint, 2011), Special Orders: Poems (Knopf, 2009), and On Love: Poems (Knopf, 2008). In addition to other published volumes of poetry, Hirsch has written How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry (Mariner Books, 2000) and Poet's Choice (Mariner Books, 2007), a collection gathered from his Washington Post Book World columns of the same title. Charles once edited the column.

The remainder of "The Life of a Poet" series, scheduled this fall and also moderated by Charles, will present:

Mary Szybist, Wednesday, September 17. Szybist, associate professor of English at Lewis & Clark College, is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry, for Incarnadine (Graywolf Press). Read an interview with Szybist at National Book Foundation; see a Webcast of Szybist's 2009 Witter Bynner Fellowship reading.

August Kleinzahler, Tuesday, November 4. A 2008 National Books Critics Circle Award winner, for Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), Kleinzahler has published 11 poetry collections, including, most recently, The Hotel Oneira: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

The first event in the program, held February 6, was a conversation with Carl Phillips, who has written a dozen poetry collections, among them, Silverchest (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013) and Double Shadow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), awarded  a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His The Rest of Love (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was a 2004 National Book Award finalist. The talk was videotaped and is available on YouTube: "Hill Center Poetry Series: The Life of a Poet - A Conversation with Carl Phillips" (1:00:27 minutes).

Some other noteworthy resources are:

✭ The Poetry of America Website, where you'll find two features: "Poetry of American Identity", a collection of recordings in which poets read and talk about a poem of choice; and "Poetry of American History", comprising essays and interviews. 

Participating in the former are poets Fanny Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Hoagland, J.D. McClatchy, Nikky Finney, Amy Gerstler, Gerald Stern, Marilyn Chin, Laura Kasischke, Arthur Sze, Sharon Olds, Rhina P. Espaillat, Dana Gioia, Alicia Ostriker, Charles Harper Webb, Edward Hirsch, Rae Armantrout, Charles Bernstein, and Marilyn Nelson.

The latter features the late Maxine Kumin, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, and David Lehman.

Interview Series, featuring conversations with contemporary writers and poets Cynthia Y. Levinson, Paisley Rekdal, Karen Russell, Aracellis Girmay, Justin Torres, and Joshua Beckman.

Library of Congress on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Hill Center on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

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