[Yale-readings] Tues. 5/19: Major Jackson and Lynne Sharon Schwarz read, at The Anchor Bar, New Haven

[Kuhl, Nancy]

Ordinary Evening Reading Series Presents
Major Jackson and Lynne Sharon Schwartz
at the Anchor Bar, New Haven
Tuesday, May 19th, 7 PM

Revel in late spring with us as we enjoy the final reading of our Spring 2009 season with Major Jackson and Lynne Sharon Schwartz, at 7PM on Tuesday May 19th in the Anchor Bar's Mermaid Room, 272 College Street in New Haven.

"Seeing me chatter
with history's tinted saints, you moaned a language
of rivers, of cathedrals, boxelders and pines, the skin
we pressed our bodies into when hounds trailed close as sin,
when hummingbirds entered the heart as if caged
by their own sweet will, and I listened to the birth
of a forest that grew deep in my ribs, the wet thickets
of blackberry tangle, bracken and motes of gnats,
bramble snapped and mossed over like some tattered
blanket of a lesser god."

--Major Jackson, "Urban Renewal: vi. To Sonia Sanchez II and Chinua Achebe"

"I grasped that the presence of any living creature would be a burden to me, except maybe a plant.  The least burdened state would be solitude, where I could indulge every arbitrary mood without the slightest thought for its effect on others.  But solitude too has its burdens and demands.  There is really no easy way to be conscious;
that must be why I revere sleep."

--Lynne Sharon Schwartz, "Face to Face"

Major Jackson's books of poems are Hoops (2006, Norton) and Leaving Saturn (2002, University of Georgia Press). He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Poetry, and other literary magazines. Hoops was selected as a finalist for a NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, and Leaving Saturn was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. His third volume of poetry Holding Company is forthcoming from W.W. Norton. He has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He served as a creative arts fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. He took a B.A. from Temple University and an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon. Mr. Jackson has worked as the curator of literary arts at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia and the Mountain Writers' Center in Portland, and has taught at Columbia University, Xavier University of Louisiana, New York University, and University of Massachusetts - Lowell as the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence. He lives in Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at University of Vermont. He serves as the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz's most recent book is the memoir, Not Now, Voyager, just out from Counterpoint. Among her 21 books are the novels The Writing on the Wall; In the Family Way, Disturbances in the Field; Leaving Brooklyn (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award) and Rough Strife (nominated for a National Book Award). She is also the author of the poetry collection, In Solitary; the memoir, Ruined by Reading, and, most recently, she edited The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald, a collection of essays and interviews. Her work has been reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Essays, and many other anthologies, and her reviews have appeared in leading magazines and newspapers. She teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Mark your calendars! We'll be back in swing Tuesday, September 15. The Ordinary Evening Reading Series features readings by poets, novelists, and non-fiction writers. We welcome drinkers and teetotalers alike and hope you can join us for what the New Haven Independent called "one of those unofficial civic ventures that make New Haven such a vibrant place."

Read writers' biographies, find links, send us an email, and more at http://www.ordinaryevening.blogspot.com.

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