Wednesdays at 4 Plus

SPRING 1998 POETRY AND PROSE February 4-April 25
AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, BUFFALO (AMHERST CAMPUS)

John Yau
Poetry Reading
Weds., Feb. 4, 4pm
Center for the Arts (CFA) Screening Room
Lecture: "Johns and Warhol: Assimilation and Segregation"
Thurs., Feb. 5, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Poet and art critic, John Yau's most recent books are Forbidden Entries and Edificio Sayonara (Black Sparrow) and The United States of Jasper Johns (Zoland). A frequent contributor to Artforum, Art in America, Art News, and Vogue, in 1989 he published Radiant Silhouette: New & Selected Work 1974-1988.

The Canadian Invasion Poetry Festival
Readings and Performances and VisUalS
Sat., Feb. 7
Cornershop Gallery, 1:30pm and 8pm
Six of Canada's most innovative poets - Christian Bök, Lise Downe, Beth Learn, Dan Farrell, Peter Jaeger, and Darren Wershler-Henry - mount a voco-visual assault in a very special one-day festival. The Cornershop Gallery is located at 82 Lafayette Ave., at the northwest corner of Lafayette and Dewitt, Buffalo.

Allen Fisher
British Poetry Festival (III)
Poetry Reading
Weds., Feb. 18, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Lecture: "Recurrence and the Grand Theme in the Art of R. B. Kitaj"
Thurs., Feb. 19, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Fisher is a poet, painter, publisher, editor, and art historian, who has been enormously influential on the younger generation of UK poets. Anthologized in the major British anthologies, Fisher is the author of 114 chapbooks and books. He currently edits Spanner, lives in Hereford, and is Head of Art at the Roehampton Institute London.

Rod Smith
Heather Fuller
Poetry Reading
Weds., Feb. 25, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Rod Smith is the author of In Memory of My Theories, The Boy Poems, and
Protective Immediacy. He edits Aerial, publishes Edge Books, and manages Bridge Street Books, in Washington, DC. Heather Fuller is the author of perhaps this is a rescue
fantasy and is the literary editor of the Washington Review. She works at the National Law Center in Washington, DC.

Loss Pequeño Glazier
Lecture: "The Poetics of the Web"
Thurs., Feb. 26, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Poet Glazier is the Director and Founder of the Electronic Poetry Center, and is now working with UB's Faculty of Arts and Letters' web team. His books include Leaving Loss Glazier, The Parts, and Small Press: An Annotated Guide.

Black Ice Festival of Fiction
Prose Readings
Fri. Feb. 27, 3pm
CFA
Sat., Feb. 28, 8pm
Hallwalls (2495 Main Street)
A festival of avant-pop, postmodern, and just plain exciting fiction: Mark Amerika, Brown University's hypertext guru and the author of Sexual Blood, heads of a lineup of UB PhDs & ABDs (all but dissertations), featuring Jeffrey Deshell and Elisabeth Sheffield, both now teaching at Allegheny College: Deshell's controversial S&M novel was by the FC2/Black Ice in 1997; Sheffield coedited the FC2/Black Ice anthology Chick-Lit II. Also starring four of Buffalo's best: Edmund Cardoni, Director of Hallwalls, who edited Blatant Artifice; and aspiring novelists Alan Bigelow, Ted Pelton, and Nicolette De Csipkay. Hosted by Ray Federman.

Michael McClure
Poetry Reading
Weds., March 18, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Talk: "Scratching the Beat Surface"
Thurs., March 19, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Poet and playwright Michael McClure gave his first reading when he was 23 at the legendary San Francisco event where Ginsberg first read Howl. He's been creating a sensation ever since, winning two Obies for his play The Beard; recording and touring with Ray Manzarek, former Door's keyboardist; and writing nineteen books of poetry, including Selected Poems from New Directions, two novels, eight books of plays, and three collections of essays.

Samuel R. Delany
Prose Reading
Weds., April 1, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Talk: "Longer Views"
Thurs., April 2, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
A towering figure of postwar science/speculative fiction, Delany grew up in Harlem and published his first novel at twenty. His many prizes include the Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to gay and lesbian literature. Wesleyan University Press has recently reissued many Delany classics and has published two essay collections, Longer Views and Silent Interviews. Delany is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Buffalo Theory Group, and the Eugenio Donato Chair.

Harryette Mullen
McNulty Chair Residency
Poetry Reading
Weds., April 8, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Talk, "Black Chant: Expanding the Repertoire of Black Poetry"
Thurs., April 9, 12:30pm
438 Clemens
Like W. C. Handy, Mullen was born in Florence, Alabama. She grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, home of Ornette Coleman. Her three recent books - Muse & Drudge, SPeRM**KT, and Trimmings - have established her as one of the most innovative voices in new poetry. She is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Carolyn Burke
Lecture: "Writing a Modernist Life: Mina Loy"
Thurs., April 23, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Carolyn Burke's most recent book is Becoming Modern, The Life of Mina Loy
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996; University of California Press, 1997). An art writer,
essayist, and translator of Luce Irigaray, she is currently working on a biography of the American photographer Lee Miller. Co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America.

Man of Rabinal
A Mayan Dance-Drama of Sacrifice
Fri., April 24 and Sat., April 25, 8pm
Katharine Cornell Theatre
Translated and produced by Dennis Tedlock; directed by Leandro Soto. The play concerns events that took place in an ancient Mayan kingdom in Guatemala. Its closest kinship is with Japanese noh drama. Co-sponsored by a grant from Conversatiosn in the Disciplines, the Faculty of Arts and Letters, and the Faculty of Social Sciences.

ALL EVENTS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

"Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" is a Poetics Program production sponsored, in part, by the James H. McNulty Chair, Department of English (Dennis Tedlock); the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities (Robert Creeley); the Melodia E. Jones Chair in French, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (Raymond Federman); the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters, Department of English (Charles Bernstein), and the Poetry and Rare Books Collection (Robert Bertholf). The series is produced with the cooperation of the Center for the Arts and the Department of Media Studies, and Talking Leaves Books. Design by Susan Bee. Coordinated by Charles Bernstein. For further information call (716) 645-3810 or contact us at Mdunlap@acsu.buffalo.edu. Visit our web site: writing.upenn.edu/epc.