Selected Contemporary Poetry
Allow me to present the wonderful worlds of Amy Gerstler, Carolyn Forché, Alexandria Hall, Kazim Ali, Rosanna Warren, Diane Loue, Jane Hirshfield, and Jan Beatty.
In line with the times, the 2020 Miami Book Fair was conducted ONLINE. The Maja Desnuda on UPV Radio - a program I have hosted for 32 years - was present. Now, Mercurian Friends, I should like to share some fascinating voices with you.
Amy Gerstler
Amy Gerstler reads the poem “Sea Foam Palace” from her new collection Scattered at Sea (Penguin Random House).
Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, nonfiction, and journalism. Her ten previous poetry collections include Bitter Angel, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Dearest Creature, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Amy Gerstler’s new collection, Scattered at Sea (follow the link to purchase directly from Penguin Random House) evokes notions of dispersion, diaspora, sowing wild oats, minds, and mortality. Using dramatic monologue, elegy, humour, and collage, these poems explore hedonism, gender, ancestry, reincarnation, bereavement, and the nature of prayer.
Groping for an inclusive, imaginative, postmodern spirituality, Gerstler draws from an array of sources, including the philosophy of the ancient Stoics, 1950s recipes, the Babylonian Talmud, and Walter Benjamin’s writing on his drug experiences. The Washington Post compared Scattered at Sea with “a wave that knocks you over and changes how you view the world. . .[It] mixes salty humour, invigorating rhythms and sharp-edged wisdom.”
Carolyn Forché
Carolyn Forché reads “Toward the End” from her collection In the Lateness of The World (Penguin Random House).
Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 28, 1950, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a B.A. in International Relations at Michigan State University in 1972, and MFA at Bowling Green State University in 1975. She taught at a number of universities. She is now Director of the Lannan Center for Poetry and Poetics and holds the Lannan Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She lives in Maryland.
Alexandria Hall
Alexandria Hall reads from her collection Field Music.
Alexandria Hall’s debut collection of poems, Field Music (Ecco) was selected by Rosanna Warren as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She received her MFA from New York University and is now a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She is founder and editor-in-chief of tele-magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, BOAAT, The Bennington Review, Foundry, Prelude, and Hobart, among others.
Kazim Ali
Titled for the influential singer left almost voiceless by a rare neurological condition, the poems from The Voice of Sheila Chandra bring sweet melodies and rhythms as the voices blend and become multitudinous. There’s an honouring of not only survival but of persistence, as this part research-based, pensive collection contemplates what it takes to move forward when the unimaginable holds you back.
Rosanna Warren
Rosanna Warren was born precipitously on July 27, 1953, on the kitchen floor of the cottage her parents were renting in Connecticut. Her father delivered her. Her life has calmed down since her arrival. Her parents, Robert Penn Warren and Eleanor Clark, were both writers. Her brother, Gabriel Warren, is a sculptor. She is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, The American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Lila Wallace Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the New England Poetry Club, among others. She was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
Diane Louie
Diane Louie reads "Visiting Gertrude Stein in Père-Lachaise" from her book Fractal Shores (University of Georgia Press).
Diane Louie was born in Newfoundland and grew up in Connecticut. She earned degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (for both poetry and fiction) where she held a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. She has taught at the University of Redlands, Knox College, Oberlin College, and the University of California, Santa Cruz where she lived for many years and served on the city’s Planning Commission. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Epoch, Arts & Letters, FIELD, TriQuarterly, Cloudbank, and other journals. She lives in Paris, France with her partner, a research scientist.
Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield was born in, New York City. She received her bachelor's degree from Princeton University in the school's first graduating class to include women.
In 1979, Hirshfield received lay ordination in Soto Zen at the San Francisco Zen Center.
Hirshfield's nine books of poetry have received numerous awards. Her fifth book, Given Sugar, Given Salt, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her sixth collection, After, was shortlisted for the "T.S. Eliot Prize" and named a 'best book of 2006' by The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Financial Times.
Jan Beatty
Jan Beatty's fifth full-length book, Jackknife: New and Collected Poems, was published in Spring 2017 by University of Pittsburgh Press. Her previous book The Switching/Yard was named one of the “30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover Poetry” by Library Journal and won the 2014 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence.
The Huffington Post named her as one of ten women writers for "required reading." Other books include Red Sugar, finalist for the 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize; Boneshaker, finalist, Milton Kessler Award; Mad River, Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize - all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. A limited edition chapbook, Ravage, was published by Lefty Blondie Press in 2012. Another chapbook, Ravenous, won the 1995 State Street Prize.
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