POETRY FOUNDATION AND THE PULITZER FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS PRESENT POETRY AT THE PULITZER: WATER
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts are pleased to announce an evening of poetry and discussion in relation to the Pulitzer’s current exhibition, Water. The second in a series of collaborations between the two organizations on art and poetry within the context of an exhibition at the Pulitzer, the event will feature noted art critic and poet John Yau moderating a panel with some of the most innovative poets writing today, including Andrew Joron, Cole Swensen, and Arthur Sze. The panel will relate specific poems to the artworks and themes within the exhibition.
When: Thursday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m.
What: Poetry at the Pulitzer: Water
The Pulitzer’s current exhibition, Water, engages the prevalence of water within the Pulitzer building by addressing the range of responses that water has elicited from modern and contemporary artists. Artwork by Max Beckmann, Roni Horn, Roy Lichtenstein, Henri Matisse, Claes Oldenburg, Cy Twombly, and others is exhibited in relation to the building’s prominent watercourt and the space itself, which was conceived by Tadao Ando as a fluid substance directed by walls. Panelists will select poems that aesthetically connect the exhibition to the art form of poetry. Andrew Joron will focus on how, in circulating a melee of meanings, poetry mimics the transformational qualities of water. Cole Swensen will blend poetic and critical languages in talking about the blending myths of water and whiteness in Cy Twombly’s Hero and Leandro. Arthur Sze will discuss the ways in which water is talked about in ancient philosophies and read a poem inspired by water in the I Ching.
Where: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, 3716 Washington Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri, 314.754.1850, www.pulitzerarts.org
About the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
The Pulitzer, www.pulitzerarts.org, aims to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of art and architecture. With the works of art themselves, along with programs, collaborations, and exchanges with other cultural and educational institutions, the Pulitzer is a resource for artists, architects, scholars, students, and the general public. Media contact: Rachel Gagnon, 314.754.1861, [email protected].
About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine and one of the largest literary organizations in the world, 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 www.poetryfoundation.org.
About the Panelists
Andrew Joron was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1955 and grew up in Stuttgart, Germany; Lowell, Massachusetts; and Missoula, Montana. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in history and the philosophy of science. After spending a decade and a half writing science-fiction poetry, culminating in his volume Science Fiction (Pantograph Press, 1992), he turned to a more philosophical mode of speculative lyric. This work has been collected in The Removes (Hard Press, 1999) and Fathom (Black Square Editions, 2003). His most recent book is The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose, which brings together a selection of his prose poems and critical essays. Joron is also the translator, from the German, of the Marxist-Utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch’s Literary Essays (Stanford University Press, 1998). A new collection of Joron’s poetry, The Sound Mirror, is forthcoming from Flood Editions in 2008. Andrew Joron lives in Berkeley, where he works as a freelance indexer.
Cole Swensen is the author of 11 volumes of poetry; the most recent is The Glass Age (Alice James 2007). An earlier book, Goest, was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, and her other volumes have won the Iowa Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, Sun and Moon’s New American Writing Award, and the National Poetry Series. A new book, Ours, is due out from the University of California Press in 2008. A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, she has also received grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, the Shifting Foundation, and others, and has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. She’s also a translator of contemporary French poetry, prose, and art criticism; her translation of Jean Fremon’s The Island of the Dead won the 2004 PEN USA Award for Literary Translation, and she has received translation grants from the Association Beaumarchais and the French Centre du Livre. She is the founder and editor of La Presse, a small press dedicated to experimental French poetry translated by English-language poets. She teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Washington, D.C., and Iowa City.
Arthur Sze is the author of eight books of poetry, including Quipu (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998, and The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese. His poems have appeared internationally in such journals and anthologies as The American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Boston Review, Carnet de Route (Paris), Chicago Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Pushcart Prize, and Raster (Amsterdam). His poetry has been translated into Albanian, Bosnian, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Romanian, and Turkish. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Lannan Literary Award, a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, an American Book Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and a Western States Book Award. He is a corresponding editor for the literary journal Manoa, is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and is the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
John Yau is the author of over 30 books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. His publications include Ing Grish, Borrowed Love Poems, Hawaiian Cowboys, and The Passionate Spectator: Essays on Art and Poetry. In addition to contributing a long essay to In Company: Robert Creeley’s Collaborations, he has written extensively about Jasper Johns, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Joan Mitchell. Since the early 1980s, he has collaborated with American and European artists such as Norman Bluhm, Max Gimblett, Leiko Ikemura, Suzanne McClelland, Thomas Nozkowski, Ed Paschke, Jurgen Partenheimer, Archie Rand, Pat Steir, and Robert Therrien. Yau has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry (2006–7), three fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts, and a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets; has been named a Chevalier in France’s Order of Arts and Letters; and is an associate professor of critical studies at the Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University). He is also the arts editor of the monthly newspaper the Brooklyn Rail; his reviews and essays on contemporary art can be found at www.brooklynrail.org.
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