[Wgcp-whc] David Lehman visit on Dec 6 3 PM- 5 PM

[Richard Deming]

Dear Poeticians, 

First, I want to mention that there are a couple of copies left of David Lehman's New and Selected Poems.  These can be found in room 116 of the Whitney Humanities Center (in the bookcase along the far wall and closest to the window). Lehman will be joining us on Dec 6th in room 116 of the Whitney Humanities center from 3 PM- 5 PM to discuss this book. All are welcome to attend, so please fee free to extend word to anyone who might be interested.  We hadn't scheduled a preliminary discussion of Lehman's work, but last academic year we had devoted two session sot his work after which is visit had to be rescheduled because of that Blizzard.  WIth that in mind, I will paste below the questions that we had put together for Lehman ahead of that visit.  Although these are specifically directed by his previous book, Yeshiva Boys, these can again serve to help guide our session next week since many do have general applicability to his poetics and his poetic practice.

Here is Lehman's official bio:

David Lehman graduated from Columbia College, attended Cambridge University as a Kellett Fellow, and received his doctorate from Columbia University. He is the author of seven books of poems, most recently YESHIVA BOYS, and WHEN A WOMAN LOVES A MAN, THE EVENING SUN, THE DAILY MIRROR, VALENTINE PLACE, OPERATION MEMORY, and AN ALTERNATIVE TO SPEECH. His other books include A FINE ROMANCE: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, which won an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award, THE LAST AVANT-GARDE: The Making of the New York School of Poets, which was named a "Book to Remember" by the New York Public Library, SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man, THE PERFECT MURDER: A Study in Detection, which was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, and two collections of essays, THE BIG QUESTION and THE LINE FORMS HERE. 

David Lehman is also series editor of the annual THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY, which he started in 1988, and is the former general editor of the University of Michigan Press's POETS ON POETRY series. Succeeding previous editors F. O. Matthiessen and Richard Ellman, he is the editor of a new edition of the OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN POETRY. He has edited a number of other anthologies and collections, such as GREAT AMERICAN PROSE POEMS: From Poe to the Present, ECSTATIC OCCASIONS, EXPEDIENT FORMS: 65 Leading Contemporary Poets Select and Comment on Their Poems, THE KGB BAR BOOK OF POEMS (with Star Black), BEYOND AMAZEMENT: New Essays on John Ashbery, and JAMES MERRILL: Essays in Criticism (with Charles Berger). His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award. He teaches at the New School and NYU and often is a visiting professor or guest lecturer at other universities and writing programs. 

In the introduction to Lehman's poems in TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY, the editors write: "Lehman creates verbal games, and by pushing his ingenious narrative or linguistic diversions to their furthest conclusions, he creates a curiously accessible and entertaining sort of experimental poetry.... [His style] can best be described as poised, electric, and provisional; each new poem seems determined to depart from its predecessors.... Worldly but never world-weary, he represents the contemporary New York sensibility at its most splendidly cosmopolitan."

+++

Here is an NPR interview with Lehman: http://www.npr.org/2013/11/02/242348033/i-feel-a-bit-like-a-spy-a-q-a-with-poet-david-lehman
Here is Lehman reading a poem on the PBS Newshour: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2013/11/weekly-poem-david-lehman-reads-radio.html

+++

Also, just a heads up:  the poet/critic (and once a visitor to the WGCP) will be reading on Weds Dec 4th at 4 PM at the Beinecke Library.  Additional information is here: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/programs-events/events/Susan_Stewart_|_Poetry_Reading


Have a terrific holiday.
Richard Deming, Group Coordinator 


	
+++++++++++++++++++
QUESTIONS:

There is often a characteristic wit and humor in Yeshiva Boys (and in the rest of your work as well). What do you see as the role of humor in your work, in this book specifically, and perhaps in poetry at large?

 

How do you determine the field where the public and the private meet?  In other words, given that there are some specifically personal references (names, etc) that are perhaps not general knowledge, how do you determine when and where the personal is represented in such way that it doesn’t exclude readers?

 

You have given a great deal of your critical and editorial attention to John Ashbery and the poets of the New York School.  How have the ideas offered (and enacted) by these poets been important to you?  Also, how would characterize the difference between your work (and aims) and these other writers? Where do you see the differences that characterize your own generation of writers?

 

Yeshiva Boys includes some poems that rhyme straightforwardly.  What is the impulse to employ rhyme in such a way?  Can it only be ironic at this point in time?

 

Your books of poems tend to move through a variety of styles and modes.  Clearly, this is reflects a kind of openness to form.  Could you say something about what this openness means in terms of your poetics?

 

How has your interest in the American songbook informed your poetics?

 

What did you see as being the stakes of Yeshiva Boys (not only the specific sequence but its relationship to the rest of the book)?   In the title sequence you allude to a general concern about making the Holocaust into a fetish.  What is the cultural context that defines the stakes of the book? How are such contexts shaping such discussions?  And what do you see as the relationship between poetry as an art form and such events?

 

If, as you indicate in “Change,” Gilligan’s Island has had more impact than Saul Bellow. Why persist?  In other words, how does our moment determine/define the stakes for poetry?

 

Given the editorial work that you have done in anthologizing, publishing, editing, curating, and so forth. How would you characterize the developments of American poetry over the last (let’s say) 20 years?  What has surprised you?  What have been the positive and negative developments and how has this work shaped your own poetics?

 

 

 

 

 

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/wgcp-whc/attachments/20131125/044a101c/attachment-0001.html