Peter Sacks will be speaking on "The Quest of Poetry" at the University of Caen on Thursday, December 4th at 2 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. Please feel welcome to join the English Department in the Letters Building in the "salle du conseil."
Peter Sacks is a poet, painter, and literary critic as well as John P. Marquand Professor of Literature at Harvard. He has published five books of poetry: In These Mountains (MacMillan, 1986), Promised Lands (Penguin, 1990), Natal Command (University of Chicago Press, 1997), O Wheel (University of Georgia, 2000), and Necessity: Poems (W.W. Norton, 2002). His critical works include The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats (John Hopkins University Press, 1985) which won the Christian Gauss Award in 1985, and Woody Gwynn: An Approach to the Landscape (Texas Tech University Press, 1993). Born in 1950, Sacks left his native South Africa to avoid fighting to support Apartheid.
His talk will be followed by a few words and a poetry reading from his wife, Jorie Graham, poet and Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.
This event is sponsored by ERIBIA and the English Department Master's program of the University of Caen.
Suggested reading:
Yeats, "Cuchulain Comforted," "The Song of the Wandering Aengus," "The Black Tower."
Elizabeth Bishop, "The Riverman," "The Moose."
Poetry by Peter Sacks:
"Bluestar" (1997).
"Natal Command" (1997).
"Night Ferry" (1997).
"Above the Fire" from Necessity (2002).
Poetry by Jorie Graham:
"Spoken from the Hedgerows" from Overlord (2005).
Other Links:
Entry for Peter Sacks from the Poetry Foundation of Chicago (circa 2007).
Entry for Jorie Graham from the Poetry Foundation of Chicago (circa 2007).
Alexander J. Blenkinsopp, "In About-Face, English Dept. Re-Invites Anti-Israeli Poet," The Harvard Crimson (November 20, 2002).
"J.M. Coetzee with Peter Sacks," Lannan Readings & Conversations (November 8, 2001).
Alvin Powell, "Swimming in Words: From verse to criticism, poet Peter Sacks conjures the world with language," Harvard University Gazette (April 15, 1999).
