Current Series
The Modern Poet
Hockessin Public Library in Hockessin, DE
Whatever it is, it must have
A stomach that can digest
Rubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems.
Like the shark, it contains a shoe.
It must swim for miles through the desert
Uttering cries that are almost human.
-- Louis Simpson
Rejoice in the intellectual, emotional, and sensory pleasures offered by some of the most vital and resonant voices in contemporary American poetry. Join them in their personal or collective searches for a language and form that capture most aptly and memorably the joys and riches of our interior lives, our private despairs, and our larger - and often haunting - histories.
The poets and poems selected for the series convey the ongoing struggle to create a poetic landscape that is uniquely and peculiarly American. Each session will focus either on a group of poets connected through similar life experiences or/and aesthetics, or on a particular theme as reflected in a number of poems by writers included in the anthology. Discussions will engage matters of content and form, and will provide tips and strategies for those interested in writing poetry.
Sessions will include writing exercises.
Please join us on these Mondays from 6:30 to 8:30pm!
Contemporary American Poetry, 8th edition, Editors Al Poulin and Michael Waters
April 5 - The Confessional Poet
Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, W.D. Snodgrass
April 19 - Coming of Age
Elizabeth Bishop, "In the Waiting Room"
Stephen Dunn, "The Routine Things around the House"
William Heyen, "Witness"
Andrew Hudgins, "Grandmother's Spit"
Donald Justice, "First Death"
Gary Soto, "Oranges"
William Stafford, "At Fourth and Main," "Fifteen"
C.D. Wright, "Girl Friend Poem # 3"
James Wright, "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio"
C.K. Williams, "Blades"
Elizabeth Spires, "The First Day"
Stanley Kunitz, "The Portrait"
May 3 - Filial and other family relationships
Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays"
Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz"
Stephen Dobyns, "Tomatoes"
William Mathews, "Men at my Father's Funeral"
Denise Levertov, "Wedding-Ring"
Galway Kinnell, "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps"
Donald Justice, "First Death"
Marvin Bell, "To Dorothy"
Sharon Olds, "The Elder Sister," "The Lifting"
Louis Simpson, "Working Late"
William Stafford, "With Kit, Age 7"
Gerald Stern, "The Bull-Roarer"
Richard Wilbur, "The Writer"
Robert Bly, "The Russian"
Michael Harper, "We Assume: On the Death of Our Son"
Philip Levine, "You Can Have It"
Mary Oliver, "University Hospital"
Meetings are free and open to the public. Sign-up
is requested. Books may be picked up at the site at least two weeks before
each session; participants should read the books in advance of the
sessions.
  This program is made possible, in part, by the Delaware Division of the Arts, a
state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting arts in Delaware; and by the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state agency of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For additional information on activities in Delaware, visit
the Delaware Division
of the Arts and the Delaware Humanities Forum online.
|
