Friday, February 8, 7:00pm
String Talks: A Reading and Performance by Anne Carson

A multimedia performance piece involving a reading of short talks accompanied by red string, a dancer or two and audiovisual elements. With the collaboration of Robert Currie (randomizer) and Mark Bibbins (introduction and backup vocals). Co-sponsored by Poets House, the Academy of American Poets, the NYU Creative Writing Program and the Poetry Society of America.

Anne Carson is a poet, essayist and translator, as well as a professor of Classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. Her works include Autobiography of Red, Decreation and Glass, Irony and God.

@ Skirball Center for Performing Arts
New York University
566 LaGuardia Place (Washington Square South)
Free tickets are available at the Skirball Center box office beginning February 5. For information, call (212) 992-8484.

Thursday, February 21, 7:00pm
Alice Quinn: Twenty Years of Poetry at The New Yorker
Henri Cole, Deborah Garrison, Eamon Grennan, Yusef Komunyakaa, Vijay Sheshadri, Jean Valentine & Matthew Zapruder

A reading in honor of Alice Quinn's service to the poetry community, with readings and anecdotes by authors and friends. Co-sponsored by Poets House, the Academy of American Poets, the New School Graduate Writing Program and the Poetry Society of America.

Alice Quinn is the Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America and the editor of Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box, a volume of Elizabeth Bishop's uncollected poems, drafts and fragments. Last fall, she announced she would retire from her role at The New Yorker.

@ The Theresa Lang Center, Arnold Hall
New School University
55 West 13th Street, 2nd Floor
Admission free

Tuesday, March 4, 7:00pm
Harlem Renaissance Revisited
With John Keene, Mendi + Keith Obadike & Evie Shockley

Four poetic innovators explore representations of race, sexual identity and class in the revolutionary literature of the Harlem Renaissance poets—including Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, Anne Spencer and Richard Bruce Nugent—and later generations of writers inspired by their work. Co-sponsored by Poets House, Cave Canem and the Tribeca Performing Arts Center at BMCC. Funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

John Keene, who teaches at Northwestern University, is the author of the award-winning novel Annotations and the poetry collection Seismosis.

Mendi + Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists whose works include The Sour Thunder (an Internet Opera) and Armor and Flesh (poems). They are currently developing an opera entitled Four Electric Ghosts.

Evie Shockley, author of the poetry collections a half-red sea and The Gorgon Goddess, is currently at work on Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry.

@ Tribeca Performing Arts Center
Borough of Manhattan Community College
199 Chambers Street
$10/Free to Students and Poets House Members

First Fridays at the Children's Museum of the Arts

Beginning Friday, March 7, noon- 5:00pm
First Fridays at the Children's Museum of the Arts

Poets House and the CMA invite you and your children to wile away the first Friday afternoon of each month at CMA's open studios, featuring a veritable musical chairs of Arts & Crafts stations and a poet-in-residence to lead ekphrastic poetry exercises and other word excursions.

Join us on the first Friday of each month: March 7, April 4, May 2, June 6.

@ Children's Museum of the Arts
182 Lafayette Street (bet. Broome and Grand)
Admission free

Special Children's Events
at the NYPL Mulberry Street Branch

Saturday, March 8, 2:00pm
Pocket Poems with Bobbi Katz

Bobbi Katz (author of Trailblazers: Poems of Exploration and editor of the award-winning Pocket Poems) will show us how to fit elephants, ships and anything else that tickles our fancies into our pockets as she reads her favorite poems. She'll also prepare us for the city-wide initiative Poem in Your Pocket Day with an interactive poetry writing session.

@ NYPL Mulberry Street Branch
10 Jersey Street (bet. Lafayette and Mulberry Streets)
Admission free

Wednesday, March 19, 6:30pm
PASSWORDS: Robert and Jean Hollander on The Divine Comedy

The world-renowned translators act "as latter-day Virgils" guiding us through Dante's dark wood in this reading and discussion of their recent translations, which have been hailed as "a touchstone for generations to come." Co-sponsored by Poets House and the New York Public Library.

Jean Hollander has been director of The Annual Writers' Conferences at The College of New Jersey since the fall of 1982. She is the author of the poetry collections Moondog and Crushed into Honey.

Robert Hollander is Professor Emeritus of European Literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Boccaccio's Dante: The Shaping Force of Satire and Dante: A Life in Works.

@ NYPL Mulberry Street Branch
10 Jersey Street (bet. Lafayette and Mulberry)
Admission free

Special Children's Events
at the NYPL Mulberry Street Branch

Saturday, April 5, 2:00pm
The Enchanted World of Nancy Willard

@ NYPL Mulberry Street Branch
10 Jersey Street (bet. Lafayette and Mulberry Streets)
Admission free

Tuesday, April 8, 3:00-9:00pm
The Shape of Disclosure: George Oppen Centennial Symposium

On the occasion of George Oppen's centennial and the publication of his Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers, poets and scholars gather to honor the life and work of this spare, powerful and original poet. Co-sponsored by Poets House, Tribeca Performing Arts Center at BMCC and University of California Press. Funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities.

3:00pm Panel: Biographical-Historical Continuum
Moderated by Michael Heller
Featuring Stephen Cope on Oppen's diaries and journals, Norman Finkelstein on the late poems, Eric Hoffman on Oppen’s political identity and Kristin Prevallet on Oppen's response to World War II.

5:00pm Panel: Literary-Philosophical Spectrum
Moderated by Thom Donovan
Featuring Romana Huk on Oppen's relationship to metaphysics and Judeo-Christian philosophy, Burt Kimmelman on Oppen and Heidegger, Peter O'Leary on Whitman's influence on Oppen and John Taggart on Oppen's poetry as "a process of thought."

7:30pm George Oppen Centennial Reading
Stephen Cope, Thom Donovan, Norman Finkelstein, Peter Gizzi, E. Tracy Grinnell, Michael Heller, Erica Hunt, Burt Kimmelman, Geoffrey O’Brien, Peter O’Leary, Kristin Prevallet, Anthony Rudolf, Hugh Seidman, Harvey Shapiro, Lee Spinks, Stacy Szymaszek & John Taggart

George Oppen was born April 24, 1908 in New Rochelle, New York, and died in San Francisco in 1984. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Of Being Numerous (1968), Oppen was also the author of Discrete Series (1934), The Materials (1962), This in Which (1965) and Primitive (1978).

@ Tribeca Performing Arts Center
Borough of Manhattan Community College
199 Chambers Street
$10/Free to Students and Poets House Members
Audiences may attend individual events or the entire symposium

Saturday, April 12-19, during regular library hours
The 16th Annual Poets House Showcase
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 12, 1:00-4:00pm

The only event of its kind, the annual Poets House Showcase is a free exhibit featuring all of the new poetry books and poetry-related texts published in the United States in a single year—with more than 2,000 titles on view from over 500 commercial, university and independent presses. Thanks to the generosity of the New York Public Library, this year’s Showcase will take place at the historic Jefferson Market Library, a nineteenth-century landmark that has played host to Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings and Marianne Moore.

@ NYPL Jefferson Market Branch
425 Sixth Avenue (at West 10th Street)
For library hours, call (212) 243-4334
Admission free

Wednesday, April 16, 6:30pm
Correspondences: Reading and Conversation
with Edward Hirsch, Marie Howe & Eugene Schlanger

Edward Hirsch and Marie Howe read from and discuss their highly-anticipated new collections. Joining them at the podium will be Eugene Schlanger, author of September 11: Wall Street Sonnets and Other New York City Poems. Co-sponsored by Poets House and Wall Street Rising.

Edward Hirsch is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Wild Gratitude, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the recently published Special Orders. His prose works include How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestseller.

Marie Howe’s third book of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, has just been published. She is also the author of the award-winning collection The Good Thief and What the Living Do.

Eugene Schlanger ("The Wall Street Poet") practices law on Wall Street. His poems have appeared in numerous journals including The American Scholar and Western Humanities Review.

@ Wall Street Rising
55 Exchange Place, Suite 401
(bet. Broad and William Streets)
Admission free

Thursday, May 8, 6:30pm
"We're All So Damned Happy It Stinks!"
Readings and Responses by John Godfrey, Lisa Jarnot, Aaron Smith & others

In the spirit of Norman Bluhm and Frank O'Hara's collaborative poem-paintings, currently on view in "New York Cool," participants representing several generations of New York City poetry respond to the atmosphere of camaraderie among downtown artists and poets from 1955 to the present. Co-sponsored by Poets House, NYU's Fales Library, and the Grey Art Gallery.

@ The Fales Library
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South, Third Floor
Information: (212) 998-2596
Admission free

Special Children's Events
at the NYPL Mulberry Street Branch

Saturday, May 10, 2:00pm
Wondrous Light, Wondrous Air with Richard Lewis

Join Richard Lewis (the founding director of the Touchstone Center) in a poetry and art-making workshop as he explores the magical elements of light and air, accompanied by a performance of Play, Said the Air to the Earth by dancer Clea Rivera and musician Harry Mann.

@ NYPL Mulberry Street Branch
10 Jersey Street (bet. Lafayette and Mulberry Streets)
Admission free

Wednesday, May 14, 6:30pm
PASSWORDS: Raymond P. Scheindlin on Judah Halevi

Raymond P. Scheindlin draws upon the letters and poems of Judah Halevi (1085-1141), the pre-Modern Hebrew poet and philosopher, to recreate the last year of Halevi’s life during which he abandoned his Spanish homeland to journey to the land of Israel. Though Halevi is generally considered the precursor of Zionism, this new reading of his poetry locates his pilgrimage in the sphere of personal piety and calls attention to the influence of Halevi on Islamic religious ideas. Co-sponsored by Poets House and the New York Public Library.

Raymond Scheindlin is Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature and director of the Shalom Spiegel Institute of Medieval Hebrew Poetry at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is the author, most recently, of The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi's Pilgrimage.

@ NYPL Mulberry Street Branch
10 Jersey Street (bet. Lafayette and Mulberry, one block south of Houston Street)
Admission free

Special Children's Events
at the NYPL Mulberry Street Branch

Saturday, June 7, 2:00pm
Creatures of Collage with Carin Berger

Carin Berger (author of the bestseller All Mixed Up and illustrator of Jack Prelutsky's Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant) reads from her work and offers children a crash course in collage-making using ticket stubs, newspapers and other unsung paraphernalia to create lively, cut-and-paste characters.

@ NYPL Mulberry Street Branch
10 Jersey Street (bet. Lafayette and Mulberry Streets)
Admission free

from top to bottom: Martín Espada, Galway Kinnell, Thomas Lux & Marilyn Nelson

Wednesday, June 18, 7:00pm
POETIC CITY: A Poets House Celebration
with Cornelius Eady, Matthea Harvey, Hettie Jones, Li-Young Lee, & Kay Ryan, featuring musical performances by Jill Sobule

Bring your picnic baskets to the "front lawn" of our future home in Battery Park City for this unforgettable evening of outdoor readings and musical performances overlooking the Hudson River. Audience members are invited to join us for a pre-reading walking tour of Battery Park City, featuring an introduction to some of its literary and artistic niches. The free tour will begin at 6:00pm at the Poets House booth, near the bandshell in Rockefeller Park.

Nelson A. Rockefeller Park
Battery Park City
(1, 2, 3, A, C, E to Chambers St., walk west to River Terrace
and cross the street to enter the park, head south to the bandshell)
Admission free

from top to bottom: Cornelius Eady, Li-Young Lee, Kay Ryan