APRIL LITERARY EVENTS AT 92Y
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LITERARY EVENTS
— April 2014 —
Thursday, April 3, 8 pm, from $27 ($15 for ages 35 and under)
Poetry: John Ashbery and Mark Ford
The Poetry Center jumpstarts National Poetry Month with a pairing of two poets, John Ashbery and Mark Ford, who continue to delight in and explore the boundaries and function of modern verse. John Ashbery, who began his career as a young winner of our Discovery Poetry Contest, returns to read from Quick Question, his latest collection of shrewd and playful poems. A book of translations of French writers including Mallarmé, Rimbaud and Roussel is forthcoming. Acclaimed English poet Mark Ford (whom critic Helen Vendler once compared to Ashbery), reads from his Selected Poems, a diverse compilation that celebrates the mythic in the everyday.
Wednesday, April 9, 8 pm, from $27($15 for ages 35 and under)
Poetry: Derek Walcott
Nobel Prize-winner Derek Walcott continues our celebration of National Poetry Month with a reading from his newly-published The Poetry of Derek Walcott, 1948-2013, which draws from every stage of the poet’s storied career. Across sixty-five years, Walcott has grappled with the themes that have defined his work as they have defined his life: the riddle of identity; the legacy of colonialism on his native Caribbean island of St. Lucia; the mysteries of faith and love and the natural world; the Western canon; and the trauma of aging.
Thursday, April 10, 8:15 pm, from $22 ($15 for ages 35 and under)
Edward P. Jones and Yiyun Li
Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for The Known World. “It’s difficult to think of a contemporary novel that rivals its sweep, its humanity, the unvarnished perfection of its prose and its ultimately crushing power,” wrote Dave Eggers. “It reads as though it was not so much written as engraved in stone and became a classic the moment it was finished.” Yiyun Li’s new novel is Kinder Than Solitude. “Li is extraordinary—a storyteller of the first order,” wrote Junot Díaz. She “inhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion that one cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents.”
Thursday, April 17, 8:15 pm, from $22 ($15 for ages 35 and under)
Lydia Davis and Jean Echenoz
Lydia Davis won the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Her new collection of stories is Can’t and Won’t. “Few writers now working make the words on the page matter more,” wrote Jonathan Franzen. Jean Echenoz won France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt for I’m Gone. His new novel is 1914. “Again and again we pause to savor the richness of Echenoz’s startling, crystalline observations,” wrote Lydia Davis. “Never a dull moment!”
Thursday, April 24, 8:15 pm, from $22 ($15 for ages 35 and under)
Shakespeare in America with James Shapiro
To mark the occasion of Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, scholar James Shapiro discusses his new anthology, Shakespeare in America, which, as he writes in the introduction, is also “a history of America itself, not the straightforward narrative found in textbooks, but rather one that runs parallel to the conventional story of the nation, a more sharp-edged one expressed through two-and-a-half centuries of essays, parodies, burlesques, poems, speeches, short stories, letters, musicals, novels, reviews, films, and staged performances. These works, by some of the most creative minds in America, explore the cultural fault-lines that have always existed just below the surface of our national conversations.”
Monday, April 28, 8:15 pm, from $22 ($15 for ages 35 and under)
Poetry: The Tenth Muse With Michael Ondaatje
This National Poetry Month, Michael Ondaatje carries on a long-standing Poetry Center tradition by curating and introducing readings by three of his favorite poets: Dionne Brand, Pura López-Colomé and Jan Zwicky. Ondaatje’s poems “are a joy, as all his writing is,” wrote W. S. Merwin. “The wonderful twists, painful and funny; the utterly individual touch and sumptuous wealth of language.” Historically speaking, the term “tenth muse” was coined by Plato, in reference to Sappho, the poet who lived in 7th and 6th century B.C.; the Poetry Center’s “Tenth Muse” series attempts to broaden our acknowledgment of poets who are deserving of greater notice.
