Discover the poetry “under your boot-soles” and join us in celebrating the confluence of poetry, water and the magnificent New York City skyline. Hear the words of Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Marianne Moore and Walt Whitman brought to life by Bob Holman, Galway Kinnell, Yusef Komunyakaa and others who will join us for this year’s annual bridge crossing which honors Stanley Kunitz, our co-founder. The walk includes a Buffet Supper and poetry readings on the Bridge and at the Fulton Ferry Landing.

Poems By Heart brings people together to recite from memory the poems they love. Participants are asked to memorize a new poem each month that someone else has written.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984) is considered the greatest Urdu poet of the second half of this century. A two-time Nobel nominee, he was an outspoken public figure whose readings drew thousands of listeners. Agha Shahid Ali will read Faiz’s poems, examine his use of classical forms such as the ghazal, and discuss the difficulties of translation.

A controversial American writer, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was a noted patron of the arts, host of a famous Paris salon and leader of the Modernist movement. What is the challenge Stein makes with her remarkably provocative, vital and radical oeuvre? She seems to ask us nothing less than to reconsider everything. Carole Maso reads and discusses Stein’s poetry, exploring her use of language and narrative.

Primarily through four books––The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, New Poems, Duino Elegies, and The Sonnets to Orpheus––Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) has become one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. This seminar will identify Rilke as a poet who gives us a kind of knowledge that science omits and will contrast his methods with those of artificial intelligence and brain theory.

This bilingual reading and panel discussion on poetry in a time of war features contributors to Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry From Bosnia. Published by Bloodaxe Books in England, it is the first anthology to appear in a foreign language since the outbreak of war and genocide following the independence of Bosnia- Herzegovina in 1992. It brings together the country’s most distinguished poets and––spanning a period of fifty years––evokes a land ravaged by the worst war crimes on European soil since the Second World War.

Most successful contemporary poems are like tops wobbling near the end of their rotation. They spin their tales smoothly at times but there are interruptions that disturb or surprise that seemingly neat and effortless movement. Through readings and a brief writing exercise, this seminar will examine ways in which controlled order and disruptive energy are combined.