If you are in NYC on May 6...

If you are in NYC on May 6, you will not want to miss the special tribute to Daniel Halpern, with poetry readings by John Ashbery, Russell Banks, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others. 7 pm, Rosenthal Pavillion, Kimmel Center, NYU.

"A Tribute to Daniel Halpern" (www.poets.org).

Jorie Graham at "Poetries of the Stranger"

Jorie Graham read at the international poetry festival "Poetries of the Stranger" during the evening devoted to "Strange Image," along with Henri Cole and Mark Strand (April 18, 2009).   The festival, created by Richard Kearney and held at Boston College, treats the theme of hospitality to the stranger.  

This has been quite an eventful month for Graham.  On April 13, 2009 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The induction and award ceremony will take place on May 20, 2009.

Links:

Jorie Graham's website (www.joriegraham.com).

Poetries of the Stranger (www.bc.edu).

Jorie Graham reading at Penn, and introduced by Bob Perleman (BLIP.fm).

American Academy of Arts and Letters (www.artsandletters.org).

"Arts Academy Welcomes 2 UI Graduates," University of Iowa (www.iowa.com).

Poetry & the Creative Mind

April is coming, and National Poetry Month in the U.S.A will begin as it has for the past six years, with a gala benefit called "Poetry & the Creative Mind" on April first.  This year at Alice Tully Hall in the Lincoln Center there will be readings from Jorie Graham, Wynton Marsalis, Zadie Smith, Mark Strand, and others.  

The Academy of American Poets is also sponsering a photo contest with photos of verse to be posted to the Flickr group "Free Verse" (created March 13, 2009).

Links:

"Poetry & The Creative Mind Gala" (www.poets.org).

Peter Sacks and Jorie Graham to speak in Caen on Thursday

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).

Robert von Hallberg on poetry during wartime

Worth a read:  Robert von Hallberg, "Poets and the People: Reflections on solidarity during wartime," Boston Review (September/October 2008).  

In the essay, von Hallberg notes that Jorie Graham's Overlord suggests that soldiers in Normandy died, not for the Nation or the just cause, but simply for each other.  Soldiers die "...for no government, no ideology, only for paratroopers.  They die willingly because of the immediate conditions of military engagement.  Theirs is a morbid fraternity."

Jorie Graham reads from "Sea Change" at the Village Voice Bookshop

If you don't know how to recover from the American Presidential Election campaign, listening to Jorie Graham read from her latest collection Sea Change (2008) may come as a welcome opportunity on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 7 p.m. at The Village Voice Bookshop, rue Princesse, in Paris.

Reviews of Sea Change:

James Longenbach, "The Wasted Land," New York Times (April 6, 2008)

Alexandra Yurkovsky in San Francisco Chronicle (April 25, 2008)

M. Wynn Thomas, "Full Fathom Five," Guardian (May 3, 2008)

"The Modern Element" by Adam Kirsch

Adam Kirsch, regular reviewer in the New Republic has collected his pieces into a book:  The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (Norton, 2008) where he writes of (and off) Geoffrey Hill, James Merrill, Yvor Winters, Louise Glück, and Jorie Graham.  

Langdon Hammer reviews the essays as well as Kirsch's recent poems in Invasions (2008) in the New York Times (August 29, 2008).

Jorie Graham, Virtual Reality & War

Jorie Graham spoke about the world being unbearable on WBUR's "The Connection" with Dick Gordon (May 31, 2002), noting how the virtual world takes us away from our bodies, and often causes oversimplifications. Poetry helps us to recomplicate our thoughts. Poetry can allow us to feel contradictions, something we need to allow ourselves.  She read from Never (2002).
http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2002/05/20020531_b_main.asp

Again guest on "The Connection" (March 23, 2005) Graham commented on her newer poetry of war and read from Overlord (2005).
http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2005/03/20050323_b_main.asp