All Souls: Poems from the Dakotas
by Kathleen Norris
with drawings by Ed Colker
New York: Haybarn Press, 1993. Edition of 100.

Gathering: An Exhibition of Poems & Prints by Ed Colker
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8, 6:00-8:00pm
On view Monday, June 28 through Saturday, September 18 during regular library hours

Creating art in response to poetry since the 1960s, Ed Colker has "produced pure expressions, stirring symbols of inner truths or imaginings that can sometimes be inspired by or incite poetry" (New York Times). This show consists of mercurial abstract visuals painted in response to the work of a diverse group of fifteen poets, ranging from Rosmarie Waldrop to Kathleen Norris to Pablo Neruda; the poems are printed in letter-press form alongside the color vignettes. The exhibition marks 50 years of "prints for poetry" by Ed Colker and his presses, Editions du Grenier and Haybarn Press.

Admission Free

King of the River (to Stanley Kunitz), 2010
oil on birch panel, 48 x 48 inches

Radiance: An Exhibition of Paintings by James Walton Fox
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8, 6:00-8:00pm
On view Monday, June 28 through Saturday, September 18 during regular library hours

The paintings of James Walton Fox find inspiration in the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Rumi, A.R. Ammons and others, combining lines of poetry with the gesture of handwriting, saturated colors and dynamic compositions. His work "treats the concrete reality of language as place," as Fox says, and "create[s] a dimension where the radiance of life is not separate from forms; text is not separate from space, but actually generates space; and the Poetry—the very music of creation—is made visible, physical, and local."

Admission Free

Wednesday, September 29, 7:00pm
Other Worlds: Afzal Ahmed Syed with Mahwash Shoaib

Born in India and a longtime resident of Pakistan, Afzal Ahmed Syed is an acclaimed master of classical and modern Urdu poetic forms. Syed reads from Rococo and Other Worlds: Selected Poems, his first English-language publication, and discusses Urdu poetry, Middle Eastern and South Asian history, and the politics of translation with poet and translator Mahwash Shoaib.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Thursday, September 30, 7:00pm
New York Inferno: Eileen Myles with Douglas A. Martin

Legendary New York School poet Eileen Myles joins novelist and poet Douglas A. Martin for conversation and a reading from her new book, The Inferno (aa poet's novel), a coming- of-age chronicle set in New York City's poetry world and downtown queer scene of the 1970s and beyond.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Saturday, October 2, 1:00pm
The Art of Losing with Nick Flynn, Marie Howe & Kevin Young

From reckoning and regret to recovery and redemption, these poets read and comment on poems from The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief & Healing, edited by Kevin Young.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

From top: Nick Flynn, Marie Howe & Kevin Young

Tuesdays, October 5–November 9, 6:30-9:00pm
Open Enrollment Six-Week Course
Vision and Revision with Neil Shepard
$295, pre-registration required; call (212) 431-7920 or email classes@poetshouse.org

Participants of this class will discuss how to see into "the deep heart's core" of a poem and how to refine that core sentiment and sensibility by heightening attention to images, tropes, diction, syntax, line breaks and other musical features of the language. Poems from literary magazines will be examined for specific technical issues, but students' poems will be the inspiriting focus and force of workshop discussion. Writing exercises that steer the poem toward new strategies and discoveries will be considered.

Neil Shepard has published three books of poetry, Scavenging the Country for a Heartbeat, I'm Here Because I Lost My Way and This Far from the Source. In 2011, his fourth book, (T)ravel/Un(t)ravel, will be released. Shepard currently teaches in the Wilkes University low-residency MFA program in creative writing. He is also the founder and editor of the literary magazine Green Mountains Review.

Wednesdays, October 6–November 10, 6:30–9:00pm
Open Enrollment Six-Week Course
Basic and Bold: The Remix with Patricia Spears Jones
$295, pre-registration required; call (212) 431-7920 or email classes@poetshouse.org

This workshop is for serious poets who are looking for different ways to refresh their vision and expand their writing; who want to make poems that are ambitious, thoughtful and innovative; and who want to see how best to use poetry’s basics from stanza forms to rhyme to free verse in writing poems that will be bolder and larger in expression. The workshop will include in-class writing; the reading of poets representing a range of styles and approaches, such as Ai, Charles Bernstein, Frank Bidart, Brenda Hillman and many others; and a revision project called Can This Poem Be Saved?

Patricia Spears Jones is an award-winning African- American poet, editor, playwright and teacher. Her poetry collections are Painkiller (forthcoming), Femme du Monde and The Weather That Kills. She has taught at St. Mark's Poetry Project, Cave Canem's New York City Workshop, Sarah Lawrence and elsewhere.

Wednesday, October 6, 7:00pm
Greek Avant-Gardist: Demosthenes Agrafiotis with John Sakkis

This evening marks the publication of new English translations of two books by experimental Greek poet and visual artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis: Chinese Notebook and Maribor. John Sakkis, one of Agrafiotis's English-language translators, joins the poet for a performance and discussion of his work.

Cosponsored by Ugly Duckling Presse and Veer Books.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Thursdays, October 7–November 18 (skipping October 21), 6:30–9:00pm
Open Enrollment Six-Week Course
The Chapbook with Anna Moschovakis
$295, pre-registration required; call (212) 431-7920 or email classes@poetshouse.org

This course engages the poetic and formal scope and limits of the chapbook-length poem or poem series. Through readings and examples, each participant will write a single chapbook-length book. The workshop will also cover some production techniques so that students leave the class with a book as well as ideas for more.

Anna Moschovakis is the author of the book of poems I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone and the forthcoming You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake, as well as several chapbooks. She is a visiting professor in the writing department at Pratt Institute and an editor, designer, administrator and printer at Ugly Duckling Presse.

Thursday, October 7, 7:00pm
Nordic Voices: Jörgen Gassilewski & Anna Hallberg with Charles Bernstein

Two young Swedish poets read their work and exchange views on poetry and poetics with preeminent poet and essayist Charles Bernstein.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

From top: Jörgen Gassilewski, Anna Hallberg & Charles Bernstein

Thursday, October 14, 7:00pm
Passwords: Kathleen Norris on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Poetry

A celebrated poet and writer of spiritual nonfiction, Kathleen Norris considers the significance of Biblical themes in the work of contemporary poets, from Richard Wilbur and James Wright to Denise Levertov and Mary Oliver.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Saturday, October 16, 2:00–4:00pm
Spiritual Poetics: A Seminar with Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris, an acclaimed poet and author of the best-selling classic Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, leads a round-table discussion on poetry and spirituality that includes close readings and in-class writing. Norris offers interpretations of poems in the context of Judeo-Christian and Buddhist beliefs as well as other spiritual traditions that are grounded in nature.

$15, $12 for students and seniors, $5 for Poets House Members

Wednesday, October 20, 7:00pm
At the Crossroads: Kamau Brathwaite with Elaine Savory

Renowned Caribbean poet Kamau Brathwaite celebrates his 80th birthday and the publication of the poetry volume Elegguas (referencing the Yoruba deity of the threshold, doorway and crossroads). With scholar Elaine Savory, Brathwaite discusses and reads from his groundbreaking new book, which continues his "rewriting [of] the relationship between Africa and the aging "new world'" (Mark Nowak).

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Thursday, October 21, 3:00pm
Poets & Readers Together
W. S. Merwin Visits with Librarians at Poets House

W. S. Merwin, the 17th Poet Laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, will speak to public librarians at Poets House on Thursday, October 21 at 3:00pm, as part of Poets & Readers Together, a Poets House program created in collaboration with New York City's public library systems. The program builds on the success of One City, Many Poems, a poetry discussion initiative launched by Poets House and hosted at New York City's public libraries.

The author of over twenty books of poetry, twenty translations and many other volumes of prose and memoir, Merwin explores diverse concerns in his writing, including a passionate regard for the natural world. His talk is made possible with generous funding from the Brooklyn Community Foundation.

For more information about W. S. Merwin's visit to Poets House, please email Reggie Harris at reggie@poetshouse.org.

Saturday, October 23, 11:00am
Poetry for Children
The Monsterologist with Bobbi Katz

"Ghostwriter" Bobbi Katz shares hair-raising poems from her new book The Monsterologist: A Memoir in Rhyme, the spooky account of a man who devotes his life to the study of monsters. After reading from this "Who's Who of Monsterhood" (Paul Janeczko), Katz guides children in writing their own monstrous verse.

For ages 4 through 10
Admission free

Saturday, October 23, 12:00-4:00pm
Sunday, October 24, 12:00-4:00pm
Open Enrollment Weekend Workshop
Structural Excavations with Lisa Jarnot
$195, pre-registration required; call (212) 431-7920 or email classes@poetshouse.org

This workshop poses the question, "What are the structural elements that make for a good poem?" The writing of workshop participants will be looked at alongside works by writers like Robert Hayden, Lorine Niedecker, Allen Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara. Poems will be excavated for patterns of sounds, meter, word etymologies, images and symbols, and students will write a few poems in the style of their favorite writers.

Lisa Jarnot is the author of four full-length collections of poetry—Some Other Kind of Mission, Ring of Fire, Black Dog Songs and Night Scenes—and a forthcoming biography of San Francisco poet Robert Duncan. She has taught poetry at Bard College, Brooklyn College and the Naropa Institute.

Wednesday, October 27, 7:00pm
Passwords: Archie Burnett & Christopher Ricks on A. E. Housman

Esteemed Housman scholar Archie Burnett and renowned poetry critic Christopher Ricks take stock of the life and work of British classicist and poet A. E. Housman (1859– 1936), who released only two poetry volumes during his lifetime, the popular A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems, but remains a "poet about whom poets write poems" (Ricks).

Co-sponsored by the Housman Society.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

From top: Archie Burnett & Christopher Ricks

Friday, October 29, 2:00pm
Engaged Poetics with Andy Croft, Minnie Bruce Pratt & Afaa M. Weaver

In this panel and reading, Smokestack publisher and U.K. poet Andy Croft addresses the intersection of poetry and politics with poets Afaa M. Weaver and Minnie Bruce Pratt.

Cosponsored by the NYU Creative Writing Program.

@ Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House
58 West 10th Street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues)

Admission free

From top: Andy Croft, Minnie Bruce Pratt & Afaa M. Weaver

Monday, November 1, 7:00pm
A Mirror for the Twentieth Century: An Evening with Adonis

Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis is one of the most revered and influential poets of the Arabic-speaking world. In honor of his 80th birthday, Adonis reads from and discusses the newly published translation into English (by Khaled Mattawa) of his Selected Poems.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Thursday, November 4, 7:00pm
A Nuyorican State of Mind: The Life & Writing of Pedro Pietri
with Bob Holman, Marilyn Kiss, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, Nancy Mercado, Myrna Nieves, Dan Shot & Quincy Troupe

Poets and friends gather to honor the life and work of Pedro Pietri (1944– 2004), a seminal Nuyorican poet and playwright, whose subversive, irreverent writings include Puerto Rican Obituary, Invisible Poetry, Traffic Violations and The Masses Are Asses.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Friday, November 5, 7:00pm
Passwords: Jerome Rothenberg on Experimental Romanticism & the Roots of Contemporary Poetics

Jerome Rothenberg, poet and editor of the Poems for the Millennium series, reads from and analyzes the work of Romantics and Post-Romantics such as Blake, Shelley, Hölderlin, Hugo, Whitman, Dickinson and Rimbaud, as well as poems by contemporary poets. The talk also covers work outside of conventional literature, such as sound and nonsense poems, visual poems, outsider poems and more.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Saturday, November 6, 11:00am
Poetry for Children
World Record Imaginations with Karen Benke

Young poets break impossible world records of their own invention in this writing workshop with Karen Benke, author of Rip the Page: Adventures in Creative Writing.

For ages 8 through 12
Admission free

Thursday, November 11, 7:00pm
Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture with Maria Damon, Hank Lazer, Stephen Paul Miller & Alicia Ostriker

In conjunction with the publication of Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture (edited by Stephen Paul Miller and Daniel Morris), this panel surveys the work of Jewish poets writing within the American modernist lineage, exploring fragmented identities, irony, skepticism and belief in a tradition that questions rather than answers.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

From top: Maria Damon, Hank Lazer, Stephen Paul Miller & Alicia Ostriker

Saturday, November 13, 2:00pm
(Re)writing Culture with Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Craig Santos Perez & Barbara Jane Reyes

In this panel, three young poet-scholars investigate the intersection of research and poetic practice, including Perez's interest in ethnography and poetry, Reyes's practice of rewriting/retelling Filipino mythology and Lee's exploration of geography, psychology and the textuality of nations (focusing specifically on the United States and North and South Korea).

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

From top: Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Craig Santos Perez & Barbara Jane Reyes

Thursday, November 18, 7:00pm
A Sweetness Buried in the Mind: Gerald Stern with Ross Gay

National Book Award-winning poet Gerald Stern—described as "a postnuclear, multicultural Whitman for the millennium" (Kate Daniels)—reads from his just-published Early Collected Poems 1965-1992 and discusses his work with Ross Gay, the author of the poetry collection Against Which.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

From top: Gerald Stern & Ross Gray

Saturday, November 20, 12:00-4:00pm
Sunday, November 21, 12:00-4:00pm
Open Enrollment Weekend Workshop
Poems, Prayers & Possession with Gabrielle Calvocoressi
$195, pre-registration required; call (212) 431-7920 or email classes@poetshouse.org

This class examines the way spiritual practice and the life of the mind (often one in the same) play themselves out in poems as old as the Song of Songs and as contemporary as the work we are doing today. Participants will do a close reading of the Song of Songs and consider what makes that poem so timeless. Guest speakers may visit to talk about their own journeys and practices.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of two books of poetry, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart and Apocalyptic Swing, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. She was a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.

Saturday, November 20, 2:00–4:30pm
The Lost Poetry of World War II:
A Seminar with Daniel Swift

Daniel Swift, the author of Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War and a professor of English at Skidmore College, examines poems written in response to the bombing campaigns of World War II and contemplates the role of poetry as a means of moral witnessing and historical testimony. Texts include the poetry of Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Randall Jarrell and John Ciardi, as well as extracts from the diaries of Virginia Woolf.

$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Saturday, December 4, 11:00am
Poetry for Children
Wind, Ice & Other Tremblings of Winter with Richard Lewis

Poet and educator Richard Lewis leads an exploration of the poetry of shivering winds and frozen rivers, mounds of snow and seamless skies. Children imagine becoming icicles reflecting sunlight and learn how to keep warm inside the words of the wintery poems they write.

For ages 4 through 10
Admission free

Saturday, December 4, 12:00-4:00pm
Sunday, December 5, 12:00-4:00pm
Master Class with Edward Hirsch
For advanced writers of poetry
$375, space is limited
Application Deadline: Friday, November 5

Edward Hirsch is the author of eight collections of poetry, including Wild Gratitude, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems. A longtime professor in the creative writing program at the University of Houston, he is now the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Application Guidelines: Send three poems accompanied by a cover sheet with your name, address, email address and phone number to Attn: Classes, Poets House, 10 River Terrace, New York, NY 10282, or by email to classes@poetshouse.org. Poems must arrive by the designated deadline. No names or addresses should appear on the poems themselves.