A workshop celebrating the magic and beauty that is snow. We’ll create small paper scrolls to hold our snow-laden poems, quickened and weathered into life. Richard will bring mythical stories, unique trinkets, and exotic instruments to inspire us.

This event marks Paul Laraques 85th birthday. It offers a rare opportunity to hear him read and, in conversation with Jack Hirschman, recount the amazing details of his life in politics and poetry.

Paul Delvaux’s nudes and skeletons are well known and much discussed; but trains, rail stations, and switching yards also figure in his paintings. C. S. Giscombe—poet, essayist, railroad engineer—talks about Delvaux’s trains and their relation to issues of race, representation, eros, and public transportation in poetry.

Beginning in February 2005, Staten Island teens and adults will be doing what Poetry in The Branches was designed for: bumping into poetry and discovering its delights. The pilot year of this program will see Staten Island branches of The New York Public Library hosting six poetry-writing workshops for teens, and, for adults, a series of readings by stellar poets of their own and their favorite poets’ work. On a Spring afternoon or evening, when a trip on the ferry adds an extra note of pleasure to your day, come hear these readings.

This class focuses on innovation, invention, and improvisation in the production of long and/or connected poems.

Alexander Zane will read from his new book, The Wheels on the Race Car, and lead us as we read and write about all our favorite speedy animals.

Beginning in February 2005, Staten Island teens and adults will be doing what Poetry in The Branches was designed for: bumping into poetry and discovering its delights. The pilot year of this program will see Staten Island branches of The New York Public Library hosting six poetry-writing workshops for teens, and, for adults, a series of readings by stellar poets of their own and their favorite poets’ work. On a Spring afternoon or evening, when a trip on the ferry adds an extra note of pleasure to your day, come hear these readings.

What are Langston's lessons? An examination of the work of Langston Hughes will help you learn more about America. It will help you explore the tough tapestry of race. His work will make you look into the mirror and see yourself. Are you ready? Who was this man who taught us how to dream? The life and work of Langston Hughes echoes the social transformation of America from the 1920s to the early 1960s. How did he put blues and jazz into his words? What was his secret? Come dance with the dreamer and discover how he changed literature.

Featuring music by a jazz ensemble

At each stage of his tumultuous life, Neruda wrote poems as chronicles, explaining his poetry and politics. He also wrote poems about the mysterious power of poetry itself, a power fully embraced in Chilean culture. In his talk Martín Espada will focus on the evolution of Neruda as a political poet, his struggle and exile at the hands of his own government, his triumphant return, his death in the wake of the military coup, and his redemption after democracy returned to Chile.

Saturday October 29, 10:00am-1:00pm
Sunday October 30, 10:00am-3:00pm

This course focuses on substitution and the art of revision: how the use of space and line can affect meaning and sound, the impact of sentences and paragraphs on an otherwise linear poetic text, the role of disappearing words, and the legal issues of using found material.