2014/15

OBpoetry seriesHArDisoN

That’s how a faint star becomes visible—

just a glimpse at first, then the long adventure

of saying what exactly it is that shines

behind so much of its own smoke and gas.—Stephen Dunn

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Poetry as illumination —Audre Lorde

Cover poetry excerpt from “Turning Yourself Into A Work of Art” by Stephen Dunn, from Here and Now © 2011 W.W. Norton; Audre Lorde quotes from “Poetry is not a luxury,” first published in Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture no. 3 (1977). Poetry excerpt on mailer from 3 Sections © 2013 by Vijay Seshadri, published by Graywolf Press. Used with permission.

HoNorING o.B. HArDISoN (1928-1990)

Poet, teacher, author, and scholar, o. B. Hardison held wide-ranging interests and a passion for teaching. While at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (he also taught at Princeton and Georgetown), he was named one of the country’s great teachers by Time magazine. This same spirit led Hardison, while Director of the Folger from 1969 to 1984, to create public and outreach programs including the Folger Poetry Series, renamed in 2010 in his honor. Hardison was the editor or author of 16 books, including celebrated academic volumes, poetry, and a murder mystery. His awards included the Medieval Academy of America’s Gold Medal Award and the 1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest.

A recording of o.B. Hardison reading from his poetry is available on CD at www.folger.edu/shop.

2014/15

OBpoetry seriesHArDisoN

Celebrating 46 seasons of poetry at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series provides a stage for contemporary poetry’s most eloquent voices—from the lyrical to the experimental, the emergent to the long-cherished.

In addition to the reading series, o.B. Hardison Poetry engages students through a Poetry in Schools program and Shakespeare’s Sisters seminar on early modern women writers. The Lannan Fellows program connects selected students from area colleges and universities to attend the series readings. We collaborate with D.C. Poet Laureate Dolores Kendrick for her annual Poets in Progress reading, in addition to creating original events like the MLK Day at the Folger. This season we are proud to partner with these outstanding literary and cultural organizations: The Emily Dickinson International Society, Georgetown University, Graywolf Press, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, Library of Congress, University of Pennsylvania, The Phillips Collection, Poet Lore, The Poetry Society of America, Poets & Writers, and The Waywiser Press.

Join us also for Poets Respond, free poetry readings that respond to Folger Theatre productions. These begin on Friday, November 21 at 6pm when poets Joshua Weiner and Hayes Davis read poetry including original work in response to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Visit www.folger.edu/poetry for information.

The Folger Poetry Board provides significant support, sponsors fundraising salon evenings, and underwritesa named reading at the end of each season.

Ms. Gigi Bradford, ChairMr. Edwin P. Conquest, Jr. Ms. Christina Daub Ms. Harriet Patsy DavisMrs. Marifrancis Hardison Mr. Joseph HassettMs. Anita HerrickMr. Sherman E. KatzMr. robert C. LiottaMr. richard LyonMr. Greg McBrideMs. Mary P. McElveenMrs. Barbara MeadeMrs. Mary Muromcew

Ms. Jean NordhausMrs. Jacqueline L. QuillenMrs. Susan S. rappaport Ms. Heddy reidDr. Marianne SchueleinMrs. Joan Shorey Mr. Norman SinelMrs. Amy TercekMr. Nigel TwoseMr. David WeismanMs. Mary-Sherman Willis Ms. Anne Harding Woodworth

Teri Cross Davis, Poetry Coordinator

This is poeTry AS iLLuminATion, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are—until the poem—nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt. —Audre Lorde

September 29Monday at 7:30pmIntroduction and conversation moderated by poet Alan King

Stephen Dunn’s work is quiet and precise. His poems artfully remove the veil from the ordinary, casually displaying the striking world hidden beneath our gaze. He has written 17 collections of poetry, and his latest is Lines of Defense. Dunn received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2001 collection Different Hours and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Here and N

owDunnSTephen

“Stephen Dunn’s newest poems—retrospective, elegiac, comic, quotidian, tactful, and transcendent.... Lines of Defense reconfirms Dunn’s long-held place as one of our most necessary American poets.” —Jane Hirshfield

From Stephen Dunn’s Here and Now

Let night comewith its austere grandeur,ancient superstitions and fears.It can do us no harm.we’ll put some music on,open the curtains, let things darkenas they will.

This special 125th anniversary of Poet Lore, the nation’s oldest poetry magazine, is celebrated with four of the many acclaimed poets whose work has been featured in its pages. Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins, selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery, winner of the 2009 Crab orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Co-founder of Cave Canem, Cornelius Eady has published more than half a dozen volumes of poetry; his most recent work is Hardheaded weather: New and Selected Poems. Terrance Hayes’ Lighthead was the winner of the 2010 National Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Winner of the ruth Lilly Prize and former Poet Laureate of Maryland, Linda Pastan is the author of numerous volumes of poetry. Her latest book is Traveling Light.

September 15Monday at 7:30pmCo-sponsored with Poet Lore, a publication of The Writer’s Center, and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts

Introductions by Poet Lore editors Jody Bolz and E. Ethelbert Miller

From Linda Pastan’s Bronze Bells of Autumn

I love the dark (it moves so gradually)but love still more all it will erase:these swarming leaves, this pungent smoky air,the youth you were, your aging face.

Poet Lore Celebrates 125 Years of Literary D

iscovery

BrimhallTrAciEadycorneLiuS

HayesTerrAnce Pastan LinDA

202.544.7077 www.folger.edu/poetry From Here and Now © 2011 by Stephen Dunn, published by W.W. Norton. Used with permission.

From Traveling Light © 2011 by Linda Pastan, published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used with permission.

October 20Monday at 7:30pmCo-sponsored with Graywolf Press

From Vijay Seshadri’s New Media

why I wanted to escape experience is nobody’s business but my own,

but I always believed I could if I could

put experience into words.

Now I know better.

Now I know words are experience.

Writing from

the Edge: 40th Anniversary of G

raywolf

HarveymATTheARankine cLAuDiA

SeShadriVijAy Burtwith STephen

“Seshadri is a son of Frost by way of Ashbery: both the high-frequency channels of consciousness and the jazz of spoken language are audible in these poems.” —The New Yorker

Anthony H

echt Poetry Prize

From Geoffrey Brock’s

Confluence

upon these layered grounds, upon thisspeechless tongue, here upon land that was everyone else’s before and afterit was ours, the woman I loved and I came down to the waters edge at dusk,as thirsting animals will, a woman later looked for in other women, and in myself,and we were the latest triumphant army, we ruled the conquered dead awhile, voicesbright flags rippling from our throats, bodies twin rivers spilling together towardthe Gulf, rivers from whose brackish currents we may never stop drinking.

McHugH heATherBrockGeoffrey

November 17 Monday at 7:30pmCo-sponsored with The Waywiser Press

Introduced by Philip Hoy, editor-in-chief of The Waywiser Press

Heather McHugh’s poetry dismantles language to build within it a temple of praise. She has published eight books of poetry, one collection of critical essays, and four books of translation. Her Eyeshot was shortlisted for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize; Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968 -1993 was a finalist for the National Book Award and named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. She won the 1998 o.B. Hardison Poetry Prize, served from 1999 to 2006 as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and was awarded a MacArthur Grant in 2009. She is currently Milliman Writer-in-residence at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Geoffrey Brock is awarded the ninth Hecht Prize for his collection Voices Bright Flags. Brock’s first collection, weighing Light, won the New Criterion Poetry Prize in 2005. He is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Arkansas.

The Hecht Prize, created in honor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anthony Hecht, is awarded annually by The waywiser Press for a poetry collection by a poet who has published no more than one previous book of verse. It includes publication with a $3,000 prize.

From Voices Bright Flags © 2014 by Geoffrey Brock published by The Waywiser Press. Used with the permission.

Graywolf Press is an acclaimed independent publisher that champions writers at all stages of their careers. Three poets with books published by Graywolf read in honor of its 40th anniversary. Matthea Harvey is the author of five books of poetry, including If the Tabloids Are True what Are You? and Modern Life, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and a New York Times Notable Book. Claudia Rankine’s volumes of poetry include her most recent Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Vijay Seshadri is the author of 3 Sections, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and The Long Meadow, winner of the James Laughlin Award. Moderator Stephen Burt is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Belmont, and several critical books, including Close Calls with Nonsense.

From 3 Sections © 2013 by Vijay Seshadri, published by Graywolf Press. Used with the permission of the publishers, www.graywolfpress.org. 202.544.7077 www.folger.edu/poetry

Emily D

ickinson Birthday Tribute

“Campo’s rhymes and iambs construct their music against the edgy, recognizable world his poems inhabit: the landscape of birth and of dying, sorrow and sex, shame and brave human persistence—first and last things, center stage in these large-hearted, open, deeply felt poems.” —Mark Doty

December 8 Monday at 7:30pmCo-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America In association with the Emily Dickinson Museum

Rafael Campo bridges the worlds of arts and science and here brings his unique voice to this annual poetry reading in honor of Emily Dickinson. Campo has published six collections of poetry, the most recent being Alternative Medicine. His collection The Other Man was Me won the 1993 National Poetry Series Award; what the Body Told won a Lambda Literary Award for Poetry; and The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor’s Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire (a collection of essays now under the title The Desire to Heal) won a Lambda Literary Award for memoir. He teaches general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and practices at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, while also teaching creative writing on the faculty of the Lesley University MFA program.

CamporAfAeL

From rafael Campo’s

V. Elegy for the AIDS Virus

How difficult it is to claim one’s rightto living honestly. The honestyyou taught was nothing quite as trueas death, but neither was it final.

Dram

a & Verse

From Diva © 1999 by rafael Campo, published by Duke University Press. Used with permission.

From Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid © 2013 by Simon Armitage, published by random House. Used with permission.

From Simon Armitage’s

You’re Beautiful

because you’re classically trained.I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation.

You’re beautiful because you stop to read the cards in newsagents’ windows about lost cats and missing dogs. I’m ugly because of what I did to that jellyfish with a lolly stick and a big stone. You’re beautiful because for you, politeness is instinctive, not a marketing campaign. I’m ugly because desperation is impossible to hide.

Simon Armitage is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Seeing Stars; Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid; and The Shout: Selected Poems, which was short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also published fiction and written extensively for television, film, and theater, including the libretto for the opera The Assassin Tree and the 1992 film Xanadu. His translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Night was selected as a Book of the Year by both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Peter Oswald is a poet, playwright, and actor. His most recent poetry collection is The Reply to the Light, and his poems have been performed in venues including The rose Theatre, South West Storytelling Festival, and the Globe Theatre. oswald has been Playwright-in-residence at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, Dartington, Devon, and at the Finborough Theatre, London. His Mary Stuart, produced by the Donmar Warehouse, transferred to Broadway in 2009 for an award-winning run.

February 3Tuesday at 7:30pmConversation moderated by Paul Smith, Director of British Council USA

OswaldpeTerArmitAge Simon

“Armitage’s poems, funny and savage, reveal unlovely aspects of modern life, but they also glitter with comedy.” —The New Republic

At the reception following the reading, Emily Dickinson’s black cake is provided by The Suga Chef.

Oswald’s translation of Schiller’s Mary Stuart is on stage at Folger Theatre, January 27-March 8.

“Oswald has the priceless gift of dramatic speech.” —The Times The Dickinson evening

is part of a day-long reading of her work, held at the Library of Congress. Visit www.loc.gov/poetry for information.

202.544.7077 www.folger.edu/poetry

February 19Thursday at 6:30pmCo-sponsored with and held at The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC

Conversation moderated by Guy raz, host of NPr’s TED radio Hour

ArmAntrout rAe

“Always smart, given to sardonic humor, and surprisingly down-to-earth.” —Publishers weekly

From Rae Armantrout’s

Parting Shots

Long, confident sentencesof the early visitors,

so unlike ours,so much like one another,

remark on the sculpted “grandeur”

of the walls,and then, with one light touch,

on the bracing senseof insignificance

that they impart.

From Just Saying © 2013 by rae Armantrout, published by Wesleyan University Press. Used with permission.

From Eternal Enemies © 2008 by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Used with permission.

Hum

an Equations at The Phillips C

ollection

Mother Tongue: Poetry in Translation

March 16 Monday at 7:30pmCo-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America

In this bilingual reading, Polish poet Adam Zagajewski will read alongside his translator, Clare Cavanagh, followed by a conversation moderated by Edward Hirsch. Adam Zagajewski is a poet, novelist, and essayist. His books of poetry include Tremor, Canvas, Mysticism for Beginners, without End, Two Cities, Another Beauty, and A Defense of Ardor. Zagajewski divides his time between Chicago, Paris, and Kraków. Clare Cavanagh has translated numerous volumes of Polish poetry and prose, particularly the work of Wisława Szymborska. She is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Northwestern University. Moderator Edward Hirsch is a celebrated poet, advocate for poetry, and served as the 2008 Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His latest book is The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems.

“Not so long ago we had two incredible voices—Neruda and Miłosz. Now we have Adam Zagajewski, who also speaks passionately from both the historical and personal perspective, in poems reduced to a clean lyrical clarity. In one poet’s opinion (mine), he is now our greatest and truest representative, the most pertinent, impressive, meaningful poet of our time.” —Mary Oliver

CavanaghcLAreZagajewski ADAm

HirscHwith eDwArD

From Adam Zagajewski’s Wait For An Autumn Day

Wait for an autumn day, for a slightlyweary sun, for dusty air,a pale day’s weather.

Wait for the maple’s rough, brown leaves,etched like an old man’s hands,for chestnuts and acorns,

for an evening when you sit in the gardenwith a notebook and the bonfire’s smoke containsthe heady taste of ungettable wisdom

Rae Armantrout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a dozen books of poetry, including Itself, Money Shot, Versed, Next Life, and Veil: New and Selected Poems. In 2009 she received the National Books Critics Circle Award. Armantrout has also published a short memoir, True, and her Collected Prose was published in 2007. She is a professor and director of the New Writing Series at University of California, San Diego.

In the late 1940s, Man ray created Shakespearean Equations, a series of paintings inspired by photographs of mathematical models he made in Paris in the 1930s. This exhibition displays side-by-side the original models, his photographs of the objects, and the surrealist-inflected Shakespearean Equations, connecting his approach to the geometric forms with his other works.

Ticketholders may view the exhibition prior to the reading.

Man ray, Twelfth Night, 1948, oil on canvas, © Man ray Trust/Artists rights Society, NY/ADAGP, Paris 2014

Man Ray—Human Equations is on view at The Phillips CollectionFebruary 7–May 10

202.544.7077 www.folger.edu/poetry

Folger Poetry Board reading

“whether written in free verse or according to a formal pattern, Dove’s poetry is highly musical, often reveling in sensual yet sense-appropriate rhymes.” —San Franciso Chronicle

May 19Tuesday at 7:30pmIntroduction and conversation moderated by Guy raz, host of NPr’s TED radio Hour

The work of Rita Dove exhibits a formal grace with elegant phrasing that glides and dips, displaying an excitement and mastery of the language. Dove is a former U.S. Poet Laureate (1993-1995) and recipient of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Thomas and Beulah. Her most recent poetry collections are Sonata Mulattica and American Smooth, and she is sole editor of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

DoveriTA

rita Dove’s

To The Continent 1803

when I was a child, I was contentto fit the notes to the joy I felt.Chords unfurled shimmering ribbonsI twirled myself in, as if into a chrysalis.

Then I wanted love, whole sheets of itto wrap myself warm for sleeping.Less spontaneous, I performed vigorously;the world was not as large as the sound

I sent to it. More admiration, fetes.women began sampling, nibbles & slurps;I played to keep the noise going,to fill me up. But now I want only

to find love that resists, notes that will not fit;I want to be appalled & staggeredin equal measures, I want blood& blood’s aftermath—

weariness & affliction, sans mercy.

“To The Continent” from Sonata Mulattica, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY © 2009 by rita Dove. reprinted by permission.

In this annual reading, a distinguished poet shares favorite poems by other poets in addition to reading from her own work.

2014/15 Lannan Readings

Georgetown Lannan Poetry events are free and open to the public.

All readings are on Tuesdays at 8pm in Copley Formal Lounge, on campus, 37th and o Streets, NW Washington, DC.

For details and information, call 202.687.6294 or visit lannan.georgetown.edu

Lannan Center for Poetics & Social Practice

ROwAN RiCARDO PHiLLiPSSeptember 30Phillips’s The Ground: Poems won the 2013 Whiting Writers’ Award as well as the PEN/Joyce osterweil Award. A poet, novelist, and critic, he has been published in The Paris Review, Granta, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.

JO SHAPCOTTOctober 14Shapcott has published three poetry collections and has won a number of literary prizes, including the Forward Prize and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Her most recent Of Mutability won the Costa Book Award. In 2011 she was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

EiLEEN MyLESOctober 28Myles has produced more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. The Poetry Society of America awarded her the Shelley Prize in 2010.

NATALiE DiAZ & RiGOBERTO GONZáLEZNovember 11Diaz, a member of the Mojave and Pima Indian tribes, has been published in Prairie Schooner, Iowa Review, Crab Orchard Review, among others. Her work was selected by Natasha Trethewey for Best New Poets, and she has received the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.

González has written four books of poetry and nine books of prose, including two bilingual children’s books. His writing has garnered him the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts.

Presented with the generous support of the Lannan Foundation

at georgetown University

TickeTSFolger poetry readings include moderated conversations and are followed by complimentary wine receptions and book signings, with books for sale at the Folger shop.

Tickets are $15 with discounts for students and others available.

Online: www.folger.edu/poetry

By Phone: 202.544.7077

in Person: Visit the Box Office,Open Monday-Saturday, Noon-5pm

STAY CoNNECTEDSign up for Folger E-news at folger.edu/enews.Programs and dates subject to change.

foLGer ShAkeSpeAre LibrAryHome to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the Folger Shakespeare Library is a renowned center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts.

become A memberPlease consider supporting the o.B. Hardison Poetry Series by becoming a Friend of the Folger. our members provide fundamental support and enjoy an insider’s view of all that the Folger Shakespeare Library has to offer through special receptions, talks, and gatherings, as well as discounts on tickets and merchandise.

join uS!

Folger Shakespeare Library 202.544.7077 www.folger.edu/poetry

SubScribe & SAVe!Secure your seats to all nine readings for $90 by subscribing. Save 33% while enjoying other benefits, such as the Hill & Will discount card for area restaurants and other business.

OkwiRi ODuORFebruary 10Born in Nairobi, Kenya, okwiri oduor, winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “My Father’s Head,” reads from her work. She teaches creative writing to young girls at her alma mater in Nairobi and is currently working on her first full-length novel.

AMMiEL ALCALAy & FANNy HOwEFebruary 24Alcalay has published extensively as a poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar. His books include a little history, Scrapmetal, and After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture.

The author of more than 20 books of poetry and prose, Howe has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Village Voice, in addition to fellowships from the Bunting Institute and MacDowell Colony. In 2009 she received the ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

PETER GiZZi & MiCHAEL PALMERMarch 17Gizzi is the author of several books of poetry, with works that have been translated and anthologized. His honors include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets. In 2011 he was the Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellow in Poetry at Cambridge University.

Palmer penned his first collection of poetry, Blake’s Newton, in 1974, and has since frequently collaborated with visual artists and composers. He has received recognition from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, among others.

DiNAw MENGESTuApril 21Mengestu is the author of three novels, most recently All Our Names. He is the recipient of a fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation, and a MacArthur Genius Grant.

2014/15

OBpoetry seriesHArDisoN

The Folger is located at corner of East Capitol and Third Street, SE.

Capitol South (blue/orange line), 4 blocks away, or Union Station (red line), 7 blocks away

Georgetown University 202.687.6294 lannan.georgetown.edu