The debate on poetry’s responsibility, or lack thereof, to an audience is undoubtedly as old as the art itself. Recent movements have taken noted stances on the “for” and “against” poles, from hermetic aesthetic-worship to cries for accessibility. Critic and author David Orr took up the debate via a review of several new books in Poetry’s April issue — and continued the discussion by responding to my Letter to the Editor in the June issue regarding his essay. Using releases by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Timothy Donnelly, C.D. Wright, and Eleanor Wilner as points of departure, Orr’s original piece, “Public poetry?”, […]
Category: Literary News
ZYZZYVA Literary News.
The Bay Area Benefit for Dean Young
by editor
ZYZZYVA and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers present an evening of readings from some of the nation’s finest poets and writers in a special Bay Area fundraiser for Dean Young, the acclaimed poet recovering from heart transplant surgery. The event is at 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 23, at Wheeler Hall, Maude Fife Room 315, at the University of California, Berkeley. Admission is free.
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PEN World Voices Heads to the West Coast
by editor
The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature begins April 25, but you don’t have to live near Manhattan to get a taste of what the festival has to offer: stellar authors from around the globe communing with their American peers and readers. Along with stops in the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Eastern Seaboard, the PEN World Voices Festival tour will be coming to the West Coast from May 2 to May 4. Rahul Bhattacharya, whose first novel, “The Sly Company of People Who Care” (FSG), has earned him comparisons to V.S. Naipaul, and acclaimed (and banned) author Yan […]