Wednesdays at 4 Plus


FALL POETRY AND PROSE September 4 - November 20, 1996
AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, BUFFALO (AMHERST CAMPUS)

LINEbreak on WBFO
Mondays at 8pm starting Sept. 9
Host Charles Bernstein interviews poets and fiction writers in this one-hour arts magazine of the air produced by Martin Spinelli. Tune in on WBFO radio (88.7 FM).

Cris Cheek
Catherine Walsh
Poetry Reading and Performance
Weds., Sept. 4, 4pm, University Gallery, Center for the Arts
Catherine Walsh lives in Dublin, where she teaches English to refugees. Her poetry books include Idir Eatortha, Pitch, and Short Stories. Cris Cheek is an English performance artist and poet with a new spoken word CD in the works. His books include: a present, m u d, and 444. He is also a member of the performance music trio Slant.

Deanna Ferguson
Poetry Reading
Weds., Sept. 11, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
Deanna Ferguson lives in Vancouver, where she is a publisher of Tsunami Editions and a co-editor of BOO Magazine. Her books include Rough Bush, The Relative Minor; Link Fantasy, with Stan Douglas; and Will Tear Us.

Pierre Joris
Poetry/Translation Reading
Weds., Sept. 25, 4pm, CFA Screening Rm
Talk
"Untranslatability/Translatability : Community/Uncommunity"
Thurs., Sept. 26, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens Hall
Pierre Joris is the author of Brecca: Selected Poems 1972-1986, the translator of Celan, Blanchot, Jabès, and Schwitters; and the co-editor of Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. He teaches at SUNY-Albany.

John Felstiner, Armand Schwerner
Translation Colloquium
Thurs., Oct. 3, 12:30, 420 Capen Hall
Lecture by John Felstiner: "The Art of Loss: Translating Neruda and Celan"
Poetry Reading and Talk by Armand Schwerner: "The Tablets / Dante"
Introductions/responses: Jerome Rothenberg, Dennis Tedlock, Ray Federman
Armand Schwerner's most recent book collects his legendary serial poem The Tablets (Atlas Press). Presently, he is at work on translations of Dante. John Felstiner is the author of the critically acclaimed study, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (Yale) and of Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu (Stanford). He teaches English and Jewish studies at Stanford. Felstiner will also be giving a talk and book signing at Talking Leaves Books at 6:30pm.

Lawrence Block
Prose Reading
Weds., Oct. 9, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
Buffalo-native Lawrence Block is a contemporary master of mystery and suspense. Among his most recent, best-selling books are Coward's Kiss (Carroll & Graf), Spider, Spin Me A Web (Morrow/Quill), The Burglar Who Liked To Quote Kipling (Dutton), and You Could Call It Murder (Carroll & Graf).

Susan Schultz
Lecture
"Local Vocals: Hawai'i's Pidgin Literature, Performance, and Postcoloniality"
Thurs., Oct. 10, 4pm, 438 Clemens
Susan Schultz's poetry books include The Lost Country, Another Childhood and, forthcoming, Aleatory Allegories. She is a professor at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and the editor of the literary magazine Tinfish and of the critical collection The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry. Schultz is a Poetics Program Fellow for the semester.

Robert Creeley at 70: A Celebration
Thurs., Oct. 10 to Sat., Oct. 12
Join John Ashbery, Gil Sorrentino, Amiri Baraka, Eileen Myles, Jim Dine, and Steve Kuhn & Carol Fredette, Mercury Rev at the Katherine Cornell Theater (UB North Campus) and Hallwalls.

Serge Gavronsky
Poetry/translation reading
Weds., Oct. 16, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
Talk
"Transpoetics: Theory and Models"
Thurs., Oct. 17, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens Hall
Serge Gavronsky has translated Ponge, Zukofsky, Hocquard, Mansour, and Arakawa & Gins; he edited Modern French Poetry and the forthcoming Six Contemporary French Woman Poets; his most recent book is Towards a New Poetics: Contemporary Writing in France. He teaches at Barnard.

Al Cook
Lecture
"New Musics in Poetry: Senses of Sound"
Fri., Oct. 18, 4pm, 420 Capen Hall
Al Cook is the legendary founder of "poetics" at UB, where he taught from 1963-1978. Cook is the author of 20 books of criticism and 8 books of poetry, and the translator of Oedipus Rex and The Odyssey. He is Ford Foundation Professor (Emeritus) of Comparative Literature, Classics, and English at Brown.

Thom Gunn
"Committee for Poetry" Reading
Mon., Oct. 21, 4pm, location TBA
Poet and MacArthur fellow Thom Gunn's Collected Poems were published last year by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which has also issued Moly, and My Sad Captains. His other books include two collections of essays and memoirs: The Occasions of Poetry and Shelf Life.

Leslie Scalapino
Poetry Reading
Weds., Oct. 23, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
A Conversation with Leslie Scalapino
Thursday, Oct. 24, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens
Leslie Scalapino's remarkable series of books include The Front Matter, Dead Souls (Wesleyan), Defoe (Sun & Moon), a collection of essays Objects in the Terrifying Tense / Longing from Taking Place (Roof), and a new selected works Green & Black (Talisman). She edits O Books, teaches in Bard's MFA program, and lives in Berkeley.

Robert Olen Butler
Prose Reading
Wed., Oct. 23, Hallwalls (2495 Main Street, Buffalo), 8 pm
Robert Olen Butler the author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Holt) will read from his new book, Tabloid Dreams. His reading is sponsored Butler Chair (Department of English), the World Languages Institute, the Program in Asian Studies, and Just Buffalo.

Leslie Heywood
Multimedia Performance
"Building Backlash Bodies: Visible Invisibilities"
Weds., Oct. 30, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
Leslie Heywood's Dedication to Hunger: The Anorexic Aesthetic in Modern Culture is just out from UC Press. Her performance touches on the intersection between her experiences as a "disciplined body" in intercollegiate track and cross country and a "disciplined mind" in the academy. A champion weight-lifter, she teaches at SUNY-Binghamton.

Murray Edmond
Poetry Reading and Talk
Fri., Nov. 1, 11am, 438 Clemens Hall
Auckland poet Murray Edmond will read from new work and talk about new developments in New Zealand poetry. Edmond's books include End Wall, Letters and Paragraphs, From the Word Go, and The Switch. He has recently completed a study of experimental theater in New Zealand in the 1960s and 70s.


John Kinsella
Barrett Watten
Poetry Reading
Weds., Nov. 6, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
"From BASIC English to Under Erasure: Is There a Metalanguage?" - lecture by Barrett Watten: Thurs., Nov. 7, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens
Discussion with John Kinsella on new Australian poetry: Thurs., Nov. 7, 10:30am, 438 Clemens
Barrett Watten's Frame is new this Fall from Sun & Moon. Editor of This and co-editor of Poetics Journal, Watten's other books include Progress and Total Syntax. He teaches at Wayne State.
John Kinsella is the author of The Undertow: New and Selected Poems and Syzygy. One of Australia most innovative young poets, he edits Salt.

W. S. Merwin
Silverman Poetry Reading
Fri., Nov. 8, 8pm, 250 Baird Hall
Among award-winning poet W. S. Merwin's recent books are The Lost Upland (Knopf), Selected Poems (Atheneum), and his translation of Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.

Hank Lazer
Susan Schultz
Poetry Reading
Weds., Nov. 13, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
Talk/Discussion with Hank Lazer
"Poetry, Criticism, and Institutional Negotiations"
Thurs., Nov. 15, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens
Opposing Poetries is Hank Lazer's new two-volume collection of essays from Northwestern. His poetry books include Doublespace, Inter(ir)ruptions, and, forthcoming, Displayspace. Professor of English at the University of Alabama, Lazer is also Assistant Dean for Humanities and Fine Arts.

Third Annual French Poetry Festival
Josée Lapeyrere, Yves Di Manno, Bernard Noël
Bilingual Poetry Reading
Weds., Nov. 20, 4pm, Univ. Gal., CFA
Josée Lapeyrere is a psychoanalyst, artist, and editor, as well as the author of Belles joues les geraniums, a collection of poems. Yves Di Manno is the director of the collection "Poesie" at Flammarion; Partitions is his most recent poetry collection. Bernard Noël is the author of 35 works including novels (Le Syndrome de Gramsci), art criticism (Magritte), and poetry (La Chute des temps).

Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" is a Poetics Program production sponsored, in part, by the Melodia E. Jones Chair in French, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (Raymond Federman); the James H. McNulty Chair, Department of English (Dennis Tedlock); the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities (Robert Creeley); and the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters, Department of English (Charles Bernstein), in cooperation with the University Gallery and the Poetry and Rare Books Collection. The Silverman Reading is sponsored by the Oscar Silverman Fund; the Committee for Poetry Reading is sponsored by the Abbott Fund. This series is made possible, in part, by Poets & Writers, Inc., through a major grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and a grant from the Literature Program of the New York State Council on the Arts. Design by Susan Bee. Coordinated by Charles Bernstein. For further information call (716) 645-3810 or contact us at dunlap@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu.