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Please join us for a poetry reading by Elizabeth Alexander and Matthea
Harvey on Wednesday, February 22th, at 4:00 pm at the Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall Street. A reception will follow; this
event is free and open to the public, as is the library's current
exhibition "100 Years of American Poetry Broadsides" (see
details below). For additional information about the Yale
Collection of American Literature Reading Series please contact Nancy
Kuhl nancy.kuhl@yale.edu.<br><br>
Elizabeth Alexander is the author of American Sublime, Antebellum Dream
Book, The Venus Hottentot, and Body of Life. Her play, "Diva
Studies," was produced at the Yale School of Drama in May
1996. She has taught at Haverford College, the University of
Chicago, and Smith College, where she was Grace Hazard Conkling
Poet-in-Residence and first director of the Poetry Center at Smith
College; is also on the faculty of the Cave Canem Poetry Workshop.
She presently teaches in the English and African American Studies
Departments at Yale University.<br><br>
Matthea Harvey is the author of Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of
the Human Form, winner of the Alice James Prize, and Sad Little Breathing
Machine. She is the poetry editor of American Letters & Commentary
and a poetry editor for Boston Review. <br><br>
For information about and examples of <b>Elizabeth Alexander</b>'s work
visit:<br>
<a href="http://www.aprweb.org/issues/nov04/alexander.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.aprweb.org/issues/nov04/alexander.html<br>
</a><a href="http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/245" eudora="autourl">
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/245<br>
</a>
<a href="http://www.cavecanempoets.org/pages/faculty.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.cavecanempoets.org/pages/faculty.html<br><br>
</a>For information about and examples of <b>Matthea Harvey</b>'s work
visit:<br>
<a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR23.3/harvey.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR23.3/harvey.html<br>
</a>
<a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.6/harvey.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.6/harvey.html<br>
</a><a href="http://www.pw.org/mag/pageone_harvey.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.pw.org/mag/pageone_harvey.htm<br><br>
</a><b>100 Years of American Poetry Broadsides<br>
</b>Beinecke Library, through March 28, 2006<br><br>
A selection of single-sheet poems from the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, including examples ranging from hand printed and illustrated
broadsides to commercially printed posters, mimeographed and photocopied
flyers, and postcards.<br><br>
Posted on a wall, hung framed like a piece of visual art, or passed hand
to hand like a flyer, a poetry broadside invites readers to interact with
its text in new ways. The poetry broadside is a relative not only of the
visual arts of painting, printmaking, and in some cases collage, but also
of the handbill, poster, and leaflet; it serves as a public broadcast of
the text it carries, often intended to reach a larger and more diverse
audience than book publication might allow. Small or large, finely
made or inexpensively produced, broadsides serve to bring American poetry
into public spaces beyond the pages of books. By their nature, broadsides
celebrate the power of poetry to move, excite, call to action, console,
and unite us. Because they are intended to be read in a public context,
and not in the intimate and private way one often reads bound pages,
broadsides create an immediate community of readers sharing a common
text.<br>
Beinecke Library Exhibition Area Hours<br>
Mondays - Thursdays, 8:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.<br>
Fridays 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.<br>
Saturdays 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.<br><br>
<br>
For additional information please contact Nancy Kuhl at
nancy.kuhl@yale.edu<br><br>
Please post this announcement to relevant e-mail lists.<br><br>
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Nancy Kuhl<br>
Assistant Curator, The Yale Collection of American Literature<br>
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library<br>
Yale University<br>
121 Wall Street<br>
P.O. Box 208240<br>
New Haven, CT 06520-8240<br>
Phone: 203.432.2966 <br>
Fax: 203.432.4047 </body>
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