[Yale-readings] Elizabeth Alexander and Matthea Harvey Reading at Beinecke Library, 2-22 4pm

[Nancy Kuhl]

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 at yale.edu.

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.

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.

For information about and examples of Elizabeth Alexander's work visit:
http://www.aprweb.org/issues/nov04/alexander.html
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/245
http://www.cavecanempoets.org/pages/faculty.html

For information about and examples of Matthea Harvey's work visit:
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR23.3/harvey.html
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.6/harvey.html
http://www.pw.org/mag/pageone_harvey.htm

100 Years of American Poetry Broadsides
Beinecke Library, through March 28, 2006

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.

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.
Beinecke Library Exhibition Area Hours
Mondays - Thursdays, 8:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Fridays 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Saturdays 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.


For additional information please contact Nancy Kuhl at nancy.kuhl at yale.edu

Please post this announcement to relevant e-mail lists.


Nancy Kuhl
Assistant Curator, The Yale Collection of American Literature
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University
121 Wall Street
P.O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520-8240
Phone: 203.432.2966
Fax: 203.432.4047  
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