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X.J. Kennedy will be the featured poet for the 40th Annual
Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading on May 22, 2003 at 8 pm in Roethke Auditorium, Kane Hall. With this reading Kennedy joins a remarkable group of
poets to honor
Theodore Roethke (pictured at left), who taught here from 1947 until his
death in 1963.
Kennedy is the author of several books of poetry, including Nude Descending a Staircase: Poems, Songs, A Ballad (1961, rpt. 1994), Cross Ties (1985), Dark Horses (1992), and The Lords of Misrule: Poems 1992-2002 (2002). He is a former poetry editor of The Paris Review and his poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, The Hudson Review, and The New Yorker.
His writing includes poetry and books for children, including The Eagle as Wide as the World (1997) and Exploding Gravy (2002) as well as college textbooks, which include Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (with Dana Gioia), The Bedford Reader (with Dorothy M. Kennedy & Jane E. Aaron) and The Bedford Guide for College Writers. He co-authored Knock at a Star: A Child's Introduction to Poetry with his wife, Dorothy.
His first poetry collection, Nude Descending a Staircase, won the Academy of American Poets’ Lamont Award. Among his other honors are a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Los Angeles Book Award. He was the first recipient of the Michael Braude Award for light verse given by the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, and in 2000 received the Award for Excellence in Children's Poetry from the National Council of Teachers of English.
Many avant-garde artists and writers spent the 1990s trying to figure out whether, how, and why they should use digital technologies in their work. This talk will survey efforts--successful and failed--to turn the desktop PC into a medium for highbrow artistic self-expression. From hypertext fiction to microcinema, interactive Elvis to hamsterdance, we will examine how the fine arts have fared in their efforts to homestead on the digital frontier. Doors open at 4:30, presentation at 5:00.
Assistant Professor Brian Reed is the speaker for this April
23rd event. He specializes in twentieth-century literature, with an emphasis
on American
poetry.
His past distinctions include a Rhodes Scholarship and a Whiting Fellowship
in the Humanities. His co-edited volume, Situating El Lissitzky:
Moscow Vitebsk Berlin, is forthcoming from the Getty Research Institute.
