Talk On Wallace Stevens' Poetry At Tunxis Campus Farmington, CT

 

This looks really interesting, if anyone is close to Farmington, CT on December 3rd it might be worth taking in.

If any readers make it to this, I’d love to hear from them about it.

Submitted by Melissa Lamar, Tunxis Community College, on 2009-11-23.

The public is invited to attend "Philosophy of the Supreme Fiction: In and Beyond the Metaphysics of Wallace Stevens," a free talk by James Finnegan at Tunxis Community College on Dec. 3, from 1-2:30 p.m., in Founders Hall. Lunch will be provided.
Finnegan will explore the common ground of poetry and philosophy, with Wallace Stevens as a guide and muse. Hartford's most noted poet and once one of its more prominent insurance executives, Wallace Stevens has often been studied for the philosophical character of his work. Considered a true American heir to the English Romantic poets, he was also influenced by philosophers as diverse as Nietzsche and such pillars of American pragmatism as Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Santayana. With verse so invested in the problems of epistemology and metaphysics, Stevens' poetry has been freshly examined in the light of current philosophical trends with each new decade. However, the unique way he explores the interaction between imagination and reality resists dissection by logicians and diehard rationalists.
Finnegan is a poet, thinker, and founder of The Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens, a Hartford area arts organization that supports the cultural legacy of Wallace Stevens and promotes poetry in the community. With Dennis Barone, he edited "Visiting Wallace: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Wallace Stevens" (University of Iowa Press, 2009). Finnegan's poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry East, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review among others. He is a senior vice president at Lee & Mason Financial Services, Inc.
The lecture is one of a two-part "Proof & Possibility" series of talks on philosophy and the history of ideas. For more information, call 860-255-3623 or 860-255-3500, or e-mail jabbot@txcc.commnet.edu. Visit Tunxis at tunxis.commnet.edu. Tunxis is located at the junction of Rtes. 6 and 177 in Farmington.

Technorati Tags: Tunxis Community College,Wallace Stevens quote

 

My recommended poet for the week

I wanted to recommend a poet to read this week that some of you may not be familiar with.  I always enjoy it when someone else pointed me in the direction of a poet that is new to me. If their writing hits the spot with me it’s like finding a four leaf clover or a great Chardonnay that is new  to me.
I’ve read Cecilia Woloch and I love the genuine nature of her writing. You get the impression that she confronts herself when she writes and I feel this allows her the write from a read position of strength.  Her book Late is among my favorite of contemporary poets and while I’ve not yet purchased a copy of her newest book Carpathia, there are two poems in particular that I’ve read that confirm for me this book too is going the be a keeper.
Fireflies which can be found here is a recitation of vices that anyone could get snared by and say, “that’s me!”  I love the admissions of among other things,
“driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house”
In the title poem Carpathia, which can be found here,  Cecilia has a tremendous knack for interweaving history with the contemporary.   Her poetic voice in this poem spans a wide range.  She’s like singer hitting notes octaves apart!

Technorati Tags: Cecilia Woloch,Late,Carpathia,Fireflies

And my voice changed

 

I’ve been looking forward to the Elton John-Billy Joel concert at the Sprint Center in Kansas City on December 1st but learned it’s been postponed till February. [insert sigh here]  On a positive note, my tickets for the Kansas City Symphony’s production of Handel's Messiah with 250 voice choral accompaniment arrived in the mail yesterday!  To this day I get chills down my neck when I hear the Hallelujah Chorus.  Going back to grade school, we would sing this in Choir.  I recall the stories – and there are many, of King George standing at the beginning of this chorus, thereby causing everyone else to stand, and how this tradition has lived for the hundreds of years since.

The funny thing about my memory of this was that my voice was high then and I was placed in the choir section with the older girls [mostly 7th and 8th graders] singing soprano. They were forever teasing me and making me blush. I became like some kind of mascot to them. The choir director [I bet most grade schools have had this position cut from their budgets long ago] preferred the term descants to soprano, or at least used it as often if not more. As a mousy little kid who hears thing but didn't always get them, I for years though she had called us “desk hands” and could never find anyone who knew what the hell I was talking about. It’s funny how such things come about and decades later you realize why no one knew what you were talking about. It’s like a light comes on and “well duh” it wasn’t desk hand! Oh, and my voice changed!

Technorati Tags: Elton John,Billy Jole,Handel's Messiah

photo credit: Michael A. Wells

Journal bits

Haven’t don this for a while. From the pages of my journal…

• Noted quote - “Some ghosts are women, neither abstract nor pale, their breasts are as limp as killed fish.” ~ Annie Sexton
• sometimes we are as much alike as we are different… separated by a difference / of views smacked down on the table / one hand a royal-flush / the other unworthy of mention here.
• One woman nurses the masses / and breaks bread to disperse. / Another swears by formula, / their are no expiration dates / on breasts but we know them  / to have an end life.
• Toy soldiers are always frozen / in some conscripted position.
• Chunks of sky fall/ beneath the urban path / of the Action News helicopter / but go unnoticed below.

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I like it when good things happen to poets who deserve it!

 

Congratulations Ivy Alvarez on your Pushcart Nomination! Way to go!

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The Final Poem - by Andree Chedid

I selected a poem by Andree Chedid that I like to feature here today -  click on the link   The Final Poem

Flarf Collective goes public

This captured my attention today...

Just last week, the Flarf Collective made its long-exclusive listserv public, welcoming poets who use material from people's Facebook status, search histories and chat room discourse, techniques that have also become known as flarf. [Story here]