visual art

As part of the Next Word series, Philip Jenks reads from his first two books and from the chapbook How Many of You Are You? (2006). He opens and closes the reading with two poems that would go on to be collected in colony collapse metaphor (2014). This performance was originally given with Akilah Oliver and Brandon Shimoda.

In response to questions from attendees, John Ashbery discusses cinema, wide-ranging responses to his two earliest books (Some Trees, 1956, and The Tennis Court Oath, 1962), and his appreciation for the poetry of Walt Whitman. He also considers movements in American poetry including modernism, postmodernism, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and new formalism.

As part of the Poetry Center's "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology" series, Lucinda Bliss discusses her art. This performance continues with a dialogue between Lucinda Bliss and Alison Hawthorne Deming and concludes with a reading by Alison Hawthorne Deming.

Danielle Vogel reads from lyric essays describing the genesis of her ceramic architecture exhibit Narrative Nests, presented at the Poetry Center's May 2012 Poetry Off the Page Symposium. One of these essays appears in Narrative & Nest: Pre-Natal Architectures & Narrative Rituals (2012).

Longtime University of Arizona faculty member Peter Wild reads poems from The Brides of Christ (1991), together with poems that would remain uncollected or appear in his final poetry collection, Easy Victory (1994). Throughout, he reads poems about individuals from American history, European art history, and the Bible.

Terrance Hayes reads from each of his published books: Muscular Music (1999), Hip Logic (2002), Wind in a Box (2006), Lighthead (2010), and How to Be Drawn (2015). He also reads recent, unpublished poems on the spectacle of violence. This reading was given as part of the Spectacular Poetics series.

Alec Finlay reads selections from two long poems: Global Oracle: a Work of Prophetic Science (2014) and The Road North: a journey through Scotland guided by Bashō's oku-no-hosomichi (2014).