A.H.: October 2008 Archives

Mark Doty is the author of eight books of poems and four volumes of nonfiction prose. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and his Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems is nominated for the 2008 National Book Award in poetry. In this recording from our 2008 Seminar, Doty reads a selection of work inspired by a visit to Key West in 1997, including a section from his 2007 memoir Dog Years, and the poems "Sea Grape Valentine," "Watermelon Soda," and "Catalina Macaw."

       from "Watermelon Soda"

       Strange island,
       to yield a walking
       hot-pink soda can
       inhabited by a lucky
       Modernist crab,
       carrying on his back
       a tropic shelter
       by Barragan
       or Corbusier,
       perennially modish
       if not quite practical...

From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (11:19) / 5.2 MB

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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Mark Doty. Used with generous permission from Mark Doty.

Forrest Gander is the author of several collections of poetry, essays, and the novel As a Friend, published by New Directions in 2008. He has translated the works of several Latin American poets including Coral Bracho and Pura Lopez-Colome, and is the editor and co-translator with Kent Johnson of two books by Bolivian poet Jaime Sáenz. In this recording from 2003, Gander reads a selection from his body of work, including an early version of "Present Tense" (its first public reading); a translation of Sáenz's "Someone Must Be Called Twilight"; and, from the collections Science & Steepleflower and Torn Awake, "To Live Without Solace" and "To The Reader."

From KWLS 2003: The Beautiful Changes. (19:59) / 9.2 MB

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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2003, 2008 Forrest Gander. Used with generous permission from Forrest Gander.

"Hustleman," Transylvania, Lousiana, 1999. Photo by Deborah Luster from One Big Self.

C.D. Wright is the author of numerous collections of poetry and prose, including Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil (2005). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (twice), the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Bunting Institute, as well as Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In this audio recording from 2003, Wright reads from One Big Self (2003), her collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster, which portrayed inmates at three Louisiana prisons.

In the old days they would have sent you to America
The one called Grasshopper raises wild things
sparrows     hares     you name it
They've got a muleskinner here that can make one sit down and talk
Then there's the wren nesting in the razor wire

From KWLS 2003: The Beautiful Changes. (15:54) / 7.3 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. © 2003, 2008 C.D. Wright. Used with generous permission from C.D. Wright.