Lemony Snicket Selects Poems for the September 2013 Issue of Poetry
Includes work by Sherman Alexie, John Ashbery, Dorothea Lasky and Eileen Myles
CHICAGO —The September 2013 issue of Poetry magazine features a portfolio of 20 poems selected and annotated by children’s author Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) and illustrated by Caldecott Award–winning artist Chris Raschka.
The portfolio, entitled Poetry Not Written for Children That Children Might Nevertheless Enjoy, is, according to Snicket, a collection of poems “all strange in some way, because all great literature is strange, the way all good slides are slippery.” Snicket’s portfolio was born out of what might have otherwise been an unfortunate event. As he explains:
Some time ago I found myself locked in the basement of the Poetry Foundation building.… The basement is crammed with the efforts of poets living and dead, famed and forgotten, terrific and terrible.… By the time it was safe for me to emerge, blinking, onto the streets of Chicago, I had gathered together the poems you now find here.
Lemony Snicket is best known for A Series of Unfortunate Events. The second in his new series, All the Wrong Questions, is forthcoming in October 2013 and is called When Did You See Her Last?
Poetry magazine and the Chicago Humanities Festival present Daniel Handler on Friday, November 1, at 6 pm at Francis W. Parker School. Handler first wrote for Poetry in January 2011.
The September issue of Poetry also includes poems by W.S. Di Piero, Eliza Griswold and Maureen N. McLane; a notebook from Kay Ryan; and a review of Jonathan Galassi from Frederick Seidel.
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About Poetry Magazine
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume 1 of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre, or approach. The magazine established its reputation early by publishing the first important poems of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and other now-classic authors. In succeeding decades it has presented—often for the first time—works by virtually every major contemporary poet.
About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs. For more information, please visit poetryfoundation.org.
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