<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Dear Poeticians,<div><br></div><div>It must be that April is indeed poetry month. Some news and some reminders:</div><div><br></div><div>1) On April 30th we will discuss <i>Meteoric Flowers</i>, a collection of poems written by Elizabeth Willis, one of the most significant poets of her generation. Willis will join us for a discussion of her work on May 7th. Copies of the book are now available at our mailbox in the main office of the Whitney Humanities Center. These books are available to people who are interested, but only take one if you feel you can make at least one--if not both--of the sessions devoted to this work. I'll post more information about Willis in a subsequent email.</div><div><br></div><div>2) Today at 4 PM is a student reading at the Beinecke Library. Among the readers will be such WGCP luminaries as Sarah Stone, Edgar Garcia, Justin Sider, and Caitlin Mitchell.<br><div><br></div><div>3) a reminder that next week, Tuesday the 13th Lyn Hejinian will be reading at the Beinecke Library at 4 PM. I'll paste the info below. She'll then be meeting the next day, Weds the 14th, with the Poetics Group for a special session. This will also be at the Beinecke and will be held from 3-5. As ever, our sessions are open to any interested parties, so do feel free to spread the news. </div><div><br></div><div>Here are the series of questions drawn from our discussion of her work held on March 26th. These have been sent to Hejinian. As is our usual practice, the questions are more like prompts for dialogue and conversation, not a blueprint for the session.</div><div><br></div><div><!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Questions for Hejinian from Yale
Seminar in Poetics<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">We are interested in the ways that you see your development
as a poet and in terms of your poetics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>One way of approaching this question would be to ask: what was your
relationship to the language �movement� (that is, how did you think of it as a
movement and your connection or investment in it as such) in the 1970s and
1980s. How did you see your relationship to it and to your peers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And what is your relationship to it
now, years later?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How would you
characterize the ways that you have developed your thinking and writing since
then?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The Saga of Saga/Circus comes at an interesting time in
terms of your connection to the �experiment<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>in collective autobiography� that is Grand Piano. In what
ways have these engagements with narrative shaped your vision/revision of the
possibilities of prose as a space of blurring discourses?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We might ask what your understanding of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Saga</i> is�is it a form of epic?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is it a genre unto itself?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">There is a way of reading Circus as a roman a clef.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Was this something that you had
explicitly in mind?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Given the trope of the circus (and as some members noticed
the crime novel) in the first part of your latest collection, are you thinking
in terms of Fellini�s circuses?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>The circus of the Weimar Republic/Todd Browning�s early films?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Or is Bakhtin�s carnivalesque something
that you have in mind?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Could you say what the process of translation has done for
you in terms of your poetics?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And
has it impacted your poetic practice? What complications do you face in
thinking about the problematic text that is a translation?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">What was the thinking that led to the bringing together of
the two parts of Saga/Circus?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How
do you see their interrelations? Is it their proximity or their distance that
interests you?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Now that you teach, how has teaching shaped or changed your
thinking? In what ways has the impact of avant-garde poetry reformed
institutions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Or what<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>questions does the presence of a
critical poetic practice occurring within the institution open up for you?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">Onward,</p><p class="MsoNormal">Richard Deming, WGCP Co-coordinator</p>
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</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Lyn Hejinian, Poetry Reading</strong><br>
Tuesday, April 13, 4:00 pm<br>
Beinecke Library, 121 Wall Street<br>
<em>Yale Collection of American Literature Reading Series</em><br>
Contact: <a href="mailto:nancy.kuhl@yale.edu">nancy.kuhl@yale.edu</a></p><p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter" src="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/hejinian/LHportrait.jpg" alt="" height="257" width="334"></p><p>Poet, essayist, and translator, Lyn Hejinian is the author or
co-author of numerous books of poetry, including <em>The Fatalist </em>(2003),
<em>The Beginner</em> (2000), <em>Happily</em> (2000), <em>Sight </em>(with
Leslie Scalapino, 1999), <em>The Cold of Poetry</em> (1994), <em>The
Cell</em> (1992), <em>My Life</em> (1980), <em>Writing Is an Aid to
Memory </em>(1978), and <em>A Thought Is the Bride of What Thinking </em>(1976).
She is the author of a collection of essays, <em>The Language of
Inquiry</em> (2000). She has been awarded grants and fellowships from
the California Arts Council, the Poetry Fund, the Academy of American
Poets, and the National Endowment of the Arts.</p><p>For more information about and examples of Lyn Hejinian�s work, visit
the following sites:</p><p>Lyn Hejinian at the Electronic Poetry Center (EPC): <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/hejinian/">http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/hejinian/</a></p><p>Lyn Hejinian at the Academy of American Poets : <a href="http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/396">http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/396</a></p><p>Lyn Hejinian on PennSound: <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hejinian.php">http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hejinian.php</a></p></div></div></body></html>