In his talk on Federico García Lorca's life and work, Edward Hirsch will explore Lorca's artistic sources, including native Andalusian music and the metaphorical style characteristic of the avant-garde Hispanic literary movement Ultraísmo, the intellectual community in which Lorca became a youthful prodigy, his complicated friendships with Salvador Dali and Luis Buñel, his place in Spanish literary history, his emotional and intellectual crises, and how he came to write what Hirsch considers to be one of the greatest books of poems ever written about New York City,

Edna St. Vincent Millay, an elfin, red-haired diva of the sonnet, published some of the wisest, sexiest, and most feminist poetry of the 20th century. From her childhood as caretaker of her siblings in Camden, Maine, to her adolescent near-miss at a national prize for "Renascence" which sparked a national poetry controversy, to her bohemian life in one of Greenwich Village's tiniest brownstones, Millay was as uncompromising in her devotion to the rules of verse as she was in her flaunting of social rules.

Saturday, May 5, 2:00pm-6:00pm
Sunday, May 6, 1:00pm-5:00pm

The popular author of Each Sky Has Its Own Words and A Tree Lives, Richard Lewis invites us into a magical moment of listening, in which the sounds of seashells are transformed into oceans and waves, flying birds and diving fish. The afternoon culminates in the creation of a paper scroll of sea pleasures, all in our own words and images

The Poetics of Walking panelists Brenda Coultas, Lytle Shaw, Jonathan Skinner and Stephen Vincent lead writers and artists on an urban poetry stroll through Lower Manhattan, with illuminating historical information and a series of creative exercises en route. Participants are asked to meet at Poets House and to bring writing and/or drawing materials.

In this foray into the flâneur tradition, panelists address the poetry that emerges from the fundamental act of walking, with insights from such immortal amblers as Whitman, Baudelaire, O'Hara and other peripatetic poets.

Panelist will lead Weekend Poetry Walks on Saturday, May 5th

What are Langston's lessons? An examination of the work of Langston Hughes will help you learn more about America. It will help you explore the tough tapestry of race. His work will make you look into the mirror and see yourself. Are you ready? Who was this man who taught us how to dream? The life and work of Langston Hughes echoes the social transformation of America from the 1920s to the early 1960s. How did he put blues and jazz into his words? What was his secret? Come dance with the dreamer and discover how he changed literature.

Who were the Beat Poets? Why are they "beat" and what does that mean? A look at their work, and the decades of the fifties and sixties in which they wrote, will explain why they remain iconic figures in American poetry. Their writing was shocking to some yet celebrated by others. Contemporary reaction to their poems was vociferous and divided. Today they continue to be notorious, though there is growing interest in their lively, noisy, exciting work. The Beat goes on!