Past Events

Archive 2002-2003

October 17

Charles Bernstein & Erica Hunt
Oppositionality as Social Value
Seminar: 5:30 pm, 462 InterCultural Center (ICC) • Reading: 8:00 pm, ICC Auditorium

Charles Bernstein covers a lot of exciting contemporary ground in his poetry, essays, teaching, interviews, and editorial work. One of the definitive, “mis-leading” writers of his generation, he co-founded the journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (with Bruce Andrews) in the late 70s, and has produced a body of work strongly marked by the impetus of critique. Of wide influence, his books include Contents Dream, A Poetics & My Way (collections of essays); With Strings, Republics of Reality: 1975-1995, and Dark City.

Erica Hunt reminds us that poetry “escapes forward” to make up a place for readers in need of another Arcade for serious play. There is evidence that intimate matters hold connections otherwise, and that a critic of force may come from an unlikely angle. She has placed the notion of an “oppositional poetics” at the forefront of critical thought. Arcade is a collaboration with visual artist Alison Saar. Her other writings include Local History, and numerous contributions to literary periodicals such as boundary 2 and Poetics Journal.

November 5, 2002

David Antin & John Yau
Talking Poetics, Naming Identities
Seminar: 5:30 pm, InterCultural Center (ICC) Galleria • Reading: 8:00 pm, ICC Auditorium

David Antin invented a genre: the talk poem. Combining lecture, story-telling, lyric intensity, improvisational reach, & memoir, his performances lead to unexpected avenues of social commentary even for the poet, since they do not rest upon any prior text. He has performed his pieces at the Whitney, Guggenheim, and the Museus of Modern Art, among other venues. Emerging in the decade of the New American Poetry, he was one of the earliest critics to write on postmodernism, and his work makes it meaningful to speak still of an American avant-garde. His published books include Talking at the Boundaries, After the War (A Long Novel with Few Words), and Tuning, and What It Means to Be Avant-Garde.

John Yau is a poet, fiction writer, art critic and curator with more than 30 books to his credit. His writing cuts across the lines of genre to see how “multiple identities are rooted in language.” He was recently made Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government for his service to the arts. His criticism includes United States of Jasper Johns and In the Realm of Appearances: the Art of Andy Warhol; his books of poetry; Borrowed Love Poems, Radiant Silhouette, and Edificio Sayonara.

February 20-22

Societies of American Poetry: Dissenting Practices
5:30 p.m. 450 ICC

Societies of American Poetry will combine seminars and poetry readings over three days, to examine the notion of a dissenting poetics with social and political bearing in this American age. Topics of the conversation will be drawn broadly from the following areas: the international character of American literary history; social lyric practice; border zones in these States; performance media; and field work studies. Symposia and poetry readings will be held at Georgetown University and at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

March 20

Will Alexander & Michael Palmer
Vanguards in American Letters
Seminar: 5:30 pm 462 InterCultural Center (ICC) 8 p.m. Bulldog Alley, in the Leavy Center • Reading: 8:00 pm, ICC Auditorium

Will Alexander is a poet and visual artist. Working from Los Angeles, he has updated the alchemy of surrealist vision (found in such poets as Aimé Césaire and Raymond Roussel) to write his own cosmic parables, in his own electric incandescent language. Prolific in poetry, fiction & criticism, Alexander crafts his book titles like small poems. The field of his explorations include: Vertical Rainbow Climber, Arcane Lavender Morals, Asia & Haiti, Towards the Primeval Lightning Field, only some of the more than 20 books to his oeuvre.

Michael Palmer’s precise poems are shapeshifters, textual and nimble and charged with the untold story of the mind’s many surprises. No one does more to make the word sing. He has translated books from French and Russian, and his own poems include Promises of Glass, The Lion Bridge (Selected Poems 1972-1995), At Passages, and Sun. Recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, he has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 1999.

April 15

Forrest Gander & Bin Ramke
Language Erotics
Seminar: 6:15 pm, 311 New North • Reading 8:00 pm, 311 New North

Forrest Gander—poet, publisher, translator—crafts his lyric observances from an erotic American speech that refreshes & changes the language. He is editor of Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women and translator of other texts from the Spanish. His own books include Torn Awake, Science & Steepleflower, and Deeds of Utmost Kindness. With C.D. Wright, he co-edits the literary book press Lost Roads Publishers.

Bin Ramke brings a deep interest in science to the question of poetic knowledge. How might poetry tell us about a space beyond our immediate perceptions? he asks. Ramke lyric probings return complex answers to this question in books such as The Erotic Light of Gardens, Massacre of the Innocents, and Airs, Waters, Places. He is editor of the Denver Quarterly.