Current Series Catalogue
The Modern Poet
A Reading
the Arts Series
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.
Contemporary American Poetry, 8th edition, Editors Al
Poulin and Michael Waters
Session 1: The African American Woman's Experience
Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marilyn Nelson
Session 2: The Confessional Poet
Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, W.D. Snodgrass
Session 3: The "Other" in America
Li-Young Lee, Ai, Louise Erdrich, Naomi Shihab Nye
Session 4: 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"
Session 5: 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"
 Request this series online.
 This series is made possible, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Delaware Division of the Arts, a
state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting arts in DelawareFor additional information on arts activities in Delaware, visit
the Delaware Division
of the Arts homepage.
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