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| 1997 - 1998 Featured Writers |
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| Marilyn Nelson - Sept. 15, 1997 |
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Realted Links:
Marilyn Nelson's Homepage
Poets on the Line: Marilyn Nelson |
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inaugural reader in the series will be Marilyn Nelson,
author of six books of poetry, including her first "For
the Body" (1978), "Mama's Promises" (1985)
and "The Homeplace" (1990). Working with domestic
settings, memories of her own childhood and her family's
history, Nelson writes poems which range in style from
traditional to free verse. Her early poetry gained her
critical notice as "one of the major voices of
a younger generation of black poets." "The Homeplace" has been praised for the range of voices in which the
poet tells her stories. Nelson has co-written books
and poems for children, including "The Cat Walked
Through the Casserole" (with Pamela Espeland, 1984)
and has translated poetry from Danish and German. She
has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts fellowships
and in 1991 was a finalist in poetry for the National
Book Award. She is currently a professor of English
at the University of Connecticut. |
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| Li-Young Lee -
Nov. 6, 1997 |
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Related Links:
Dia Center for the Arts: Eating Together
NYU: Literature & Medicine Database: Annotations: Persimmons
Three Poems by Li-Young Lee |
| The
son of exiled Chinese parents, Li-Young Lee was
born in Djakarta, Indonesia, in 1957, and spent
his early years wandering with his family through
Southeast Asia to avoid political persecution. Lee's
mother was a member of the Chinese royal family.
His father at one time had been personal pysician
to Mao Zedong but left for Indonesia where he became
a professor of English and Philosophy at Gamaliel
University, which he helped found. Arrested by then-dictator
Sukarno in a wave of anti- Chinese upset, the father
and his family managed to escape and spent five
years moving from Hong Kong to Macau and Japan before
finally emigrating to the United States in 1964.
Not surprisingly, given his personal history, his
poetry deals with questions of identity, what it
means to be Chinese, and broader questions of life
in a world where the old idea of the nation state
seems to be breaking down. Critics have compared
his work to famous poets of the past such as John
Keats, Rainier Maria Rilke and Theodore Roethke.
Lee has taught creative writing at the Iowa Writer's
Workshop, Northwestern University, the University
of Oregon, and the University of Texas, Austin.
He is also the recipient of many poetry awards,
including a creative artist grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts. He was also featured on
the PBS series The Power of the Word with Bill Moyers. |
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| Stephen Dunn -
Feb. 19, 1998 |
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Related Links:
NYU: Literature & Medicine Database: Annotations:
After the Argument
Among Men
Checklist
He/She
Long Term |
| Stephen
Dunn has won numerous writers' grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Guggenheim
Fellowship, the Academy of American Poets Award,
the Theodore Roethke Prize, and other awards. His
1991 book, "Landscape at the End of the Century," was published by W.W. Norton, and his most recent
collection, a retrospective volume entitled "New
and Selected Poems: 1974-1994" celebrates over
twenty years of his work. Critics have praised Dunn's
"distinctive converstional voice, his ease
of expression," and his "ability to offer
insights without didacticism." His subjects
include sensitive and compassionate examinations
of family relationships and of relationships between
men and women as well as treatments of everyday
subjects that pivot "from levity to profoundness."
Dunn himself defines poetry as "an act of coherence
amidst the fragmentation of modern life." |
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| Naomi Shihab Nye -
March 31, 1998 |
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Related Links:
Atlantic Monthly: Darling
Austin Chronicle: Books: Many Voices |
| Naomi
Shihab Nye began her poetic career when she was quite
young. At age six, her first poem was published in a
magazine called "Wee Wisdom." Since then, she has
carried on a love affair with words that has taken her
to several states within the United States where she
has worked as a writer in the schools, and on a tour
of the Mideast and Asia sponsored by the United States
Information Agency. She has also been featured on Bill
Moyer's PBS series The Power of the Word. Critics have
praised her work for the clarity with which she creates
poetry which is international in its subjects yet remains
focused on the inner lives of contemporary men and women.
Her books "Different Ways to Pray" and "Hugging
the Jukebox" were both winners of the Voertman Poetry
Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters, and she has
also won three Pushcart Prizes for her work. "Hugging
the Jukebox" and "This Same Sky" were both chosen
as notable books by the American Library Association.
A fine reader of her own work, she has produced three
recordings of her original songs and poems and has read
widely through the United States at campuses and writers
festivals. |
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