March 2010 Archives
Photo by Sharon McGauley Robert Pinsky is an acclaimed poet, translator, and essayist whom The New York Times has called "our finest living specimen of this sadly rare breed." He has spoken of poetry as "one of the most fundamental pleasures a person can experience," and as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1997-2000, he established the hugely successful Favorite Poem Project, in which Americans from a wide range of backgrounds shared their favorite poems, asserting the role of poetry in the lives of Americans.
In this recording of the John Hersey Memorial Address from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Pinsky reads some of his own favorite poems while musing about the process of remembering and forgetting in the context of modernist poetry. Pinsky discusses work by well-known poets including John Keats, Walter Savage Landor, Dante, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Richard Wilbur. He also discusses an anonymous poem from the 18th century that was left with an infant at England's Foundling Hospital; a visit he made to a Zulu Sangomo on a trip to Africa; and the work of psychoanalytic writer Hans Loewald. Pinsky's opening remarks on Cuban patriot José Martí refer to the history of the San Carlos Institute, the venue where the lecture was given, and where Martí campaigned for Cuba's independence from Spain.
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(49:48) / 30.4 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Robert Pinsky. Used with generous permission from Robert Pinsky.
Photo by Sharon McGauley Natasha Trethewey is the author of three collections of poetry, including Native Guard, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq's Ophelia, and Domestic Work, which won the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize. A native of Mississippi, a member of the Dark Room Collective, and the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University, Trethewey's work often shifts from the personal to the historical, confronting subjects that include the legacies of racism in America and her own experiences as a person of mixed race growing up in the deep South.
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Trethewey reads a selection of poems including "Limen," "Genus Narcissus," "Myth," "Miscegenation," "Taxonomy," and "Knowledge: After a Chalk Drawing by J.H. Hasselhorst, 1864."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(17:57) / 10.3 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Natasha Trethewey. Used with generous permission from Natasha Trethewey.
Photo by Christina Koci Hernandez Kay Ryan is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. Her work has drawn comparisons to Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop, and like these poets, Ryan's masterfully concise poems fuse acute observation of the physical world with equally sharp introspection; they are both funny and dark, playful and ready to strike. She has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is one of the fourteen Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. Ryan's The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, is being published by Grove Press this month.
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Ryan reads 23 poems, all but one of which are included in her forthcoming Selected Poems. Beginning with the unpublished "A Cat," Ryan goes on to read "Her Politeness," and several poems from the 1994 Copper Beech Press collection Flamingo Watching, including the title poem, "This Life," "Apology," "Vacation," "A Certain Kind of Eden," "No Rest for the Idle," "The Narrow Path," "Spring," "Impersonal," "The Working Kabbalist," "The Test We Set Ourself," "The Hinge of Spring," "Deer," "Poetry Is a Kind of Money," "Masterworks of Ming," and "The Great-Taloned Osprey Nests in Scotland." Ryan concludes the reading with the newer poems "Bait Goat," "Dogleg," "Easter Island," and "Spiderweb."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(29:52) / 21.1 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Kay Ryan. Used with generous permission from Kay Ryan.
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Each January, we explore a different literary theme through lectures, panel presentations, readings, informal gatherings, and discussions. In January 2011, we explore food in literature with our 29th annual Seminar, THE HUNGRY MUSE
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