[SIDE CONVERSATIONS]
I can see by the size of the audience tonight
and by how early many of you came
that you know we're in for a great, great treat tonight.
Our next reading is one week from tonight,
and that will be a prose reading by Ron Hansen.
Ron Hansen is with the creative writing faculty this year.
And that's in this auditorium on the 24th.
I brought some more of the green schedules.
They'll be on the refreshment table.
I hope you can stay and have some punch and cookies
and tell Charles how wonderful he is after the reading.
It is not true that there is a reading every week.
We have one week off in October.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm very happy to announce that due to the kindness of Bruce
Malcolm and Kim Mollica, we can resume our Sunday afternoon
hours at the Poetry Center.
We'll be open from 1:00 to 4:00 each Sunday afternoon.
And last week, I forgot to announce
that we had already resumed our Thursday evening hours.
We're open on Thursday evening from 7:00 to 10:00.
So I hope those of you who are not
able to come during the daytime will take
advantage of that time to read.
If you haven't been to the Poetry Center,
we're at the corner of Speedway and Highland--
1086 North Highland.
Across the street from the computer building.
I had said that last Friday was the last day
to give items for the newsletter,
and then I didn't get things ready.
So I still would be happy to take news this evening
if you have good news for the newsletter.
As you know, we only publish good news.
Not babies and weddings and things like that.
[LAUGHTER]
Literary news.
Charles Simic has come to us from New Hampshire, where
he teaches at the university, and he lives in Stratford.
Strafford, not Stratford.
His 11th book of poetry--
Selected Poems-- was published by Braziller Press last year.
Some of his other collections are Weather Forecast
for Utopia and Vicinity, Austerities, Classic Ballroom
Dances--
that's poems, not a how-to book--
Dismantling the Silence, and my favorite title--
Return to a Place Lit by Milk.
I love it.
Is that wrong?
Lit by a Glass of Milk.
I can't read--
I can speak, but I can't read.
Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk.
I like it better the other way.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm sorry.
This is one of those days when I was either laughing or crying.
I can't help it.
With Mark Strand, he co-edited an anthology
called Another Republic from contemporary South American
and European writers.
He's published many translations of East European poetry,
including two collections of the Yugoslav poet, Vasko Popa.
It's a great pleasure to introduce to you Charles Simic.
[APPLAUSE]
I was standing here 16 years ago.
It's a little strange.
It seems like a long time ago.
I want to read a mixture of things--
older things, not too old.
Some things from the Selected Poems.
And then some poems from a book which
is coming out in November and then some even more
recent things.
And I'm going to mix them up.