[Wgcp-whc] WG/CP--next session, Michael Palmer on 10/10

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

Dear All--

Last Friday, we had our first session of the WG/CP on the work of Frank
O?Hara.  I?ll be circulating minutes from that session next week.  In the
meantime I wanted to send a reminder that our next session is next Friday,
October 10 (from 3-5 in Rm 116 of the Whitney Humanities Center).  This will be
the first of two sessions devoted to the poetry and poetics of Michael Palmer.
Our focus will be Palmer?s new book of essays _Active Boundaries_ as well as
his most recent book of poems, Company of Moths.  All the copies of _Active
Boundaries_ have been claimed; however, photocopies of _Company of Moths_ are
available for anyone interested.  Please email me directly and I can make
arrangements.


Palmer is one of the foremost poets of his generation and is recent winner of
the prestigious Wallace Stevens Award and was recently shortlisted for the
Griffin prize.  I quote from the judges' citation for the Wallace Stevens
Award: ?Michael Palmer is the foremost experimental poet of his generation
and perhaps of the last several generations. A gorgeous writer who has taken
cues from Wallace Stevens, the Black Mountain poets, John Ashbery, contemporary
French poets, the poetics of Octavio Paz, and from language poetries. He is one
of the most original craftsmen at work in English at the present time. His
poetry is at once a dark and comic interrogation of the possibilities of
representation in language, but its continuing surprise is its resourcefulness
and its sheer beauty.?

Palmer will join us for the second session on his work, to be held on Oct 17th.
This is a tremendous opportunity to talk about this very challenging work with
the poet himself, whose work has been described as being ?the analytic
lyric.?  Two sources for examples can be found at these sites.  These are
soundfiles and video of Palmer reading his work.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Palmer.html

http://fora.tv/2007/02/23/Michael_Palmer
I?ll also attach an interview from the mid/late 1980s with Palmer that still
has relevance for how one might approach his work.


I also wanted to send word of a talk on campus that is happening early next week
by Adina Hoffman.  As many will remember, Adina and Peter Cole led a session two
years ago on the acclaimed Palestinian poet, Taha Muhammad Ali.  Adina is
Ali?s biographer, and her book is forthcoming from Yale University Press.  I
post the specifics below.  As I say, I'll send a report of our last session
some time in the coming week.

Until then,
Richard Deming, WG/CP Co-coordinator.

+++++++++++++


The Franke Visiting Fellow Lecture

MAP OF A VANISHED TOWN

Recollecting the Palestinian Past through Biography


Adina Hoffman


October 7, 2008, 5 pm
The Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street. New Haven
Room 208




Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem
Neighborhood and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet?s Life
in the Palestinian Century, a biography of Taha Muhammad Ali, forthcoming from
Yale University Press. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Nation,
the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe, Raritan,
and on the World Service of the BBC. Formerly a film critic for the American
Prospect and the Jerusalem Post, she is one of the founders and editors of Ibis
Editions, a small press that publishes the literature of the Levant. She lives
in Jerusalem.

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