Spring 2003

Thursday, April 17, 5-7 pm
Giles Scott
Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford English Department
"Lorine Niedecker's Sung Silences: A Balancing Act"
Boardroom, Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.

Wednesday, April 30, 5-7 pm
Susan E. Dunn
"‘Opposed Aesthetics’: Mina Loy, Modernism, and the Avant-Garde"
Boardroom, Stanford Humanities Center

Thursday, May 15, 10 am-3:30 pm

Practitioners of Reality
A Symposium on Poetry & Buddhism

with Norman Fischer, Michael McClure, and Leslie Scalapino

Terrace Room, Stanford English Department
Building 460, Room 426

10:00 am-noon: What is a Buddhist poet? And what is a Buddhist poem?

Noon-1:30: Lunch

1:30-3:30: The Poetics of Composition, the Poetics of Meditation

Cosponsored by the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies, the English Department, and the Creative Writing Program.

Thursday, May 29, 5-7 pm
Molly Schwartzburg
"Ephemeral Monuments: Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Epigraphic Booklet-Poems"
Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford English Department
Boardroom, Stanford Humanities Center

The Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay's "wee" paper books are the least
discussed of the varied contexts in which he places poems. This presentation discusses specific examples from Finlay's prolific Wild Hawthorn Press in relation
to his broader aesthetic project.

Winter 2003

Thursday, January 16, 5-7 pm
Nicholas Jenkins
Assistant Professor of English, Stanford University
"Poet in (War-time) New York: W H Auden and 'September 1, 1939'"
Baker Room, Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.

Thursday, February 6, 7 pm
A reading by poet
Harryette Mullen
author of Sleeping with the Dictionary and associate professor of English, UCLA
Terrace Room, English Department
Building 460, Room 426

Friday, February 7, 11 am-noon
A discussion with Harryette Mullen
Terrace Room, English Department
Building 460, Room 426

Thursday, Feburary 20, 5:15-7 pm
Hilton Obenzinger
Associate Director of Honors Writing and Lecturer in English, Stanford University
"'New York on Fire': Catastrophe = Story = Body = City"
Terrace Room, English Department
Building 460, Room 426

A discussion of the poetics of narrative voices, the city as imaginary, and the embodied past. New York on Fire will soon be reissued with an introduction addressing 9/11. When it was released in 1989, it was selected as one of the best books of the year by the Village Voice Literary Supplement and was nominated for a Bay Area Book Reviewer's Award for poetry.

In addition to New York on Fire, Hilton Obenzinger's books include Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco, This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, which received an American Book Award, and American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania. Forthcoming are Running through Fire: How Zosia Goldberg Survived the Nazi Murders and Satan's Asshole. He is Associate Director for Honors Writing, Undergraduate Research Programs, and lecturer in the English Department.

Thursday, March 6, 5-7 pm
Timothy Yu
Ph.D. Candidate, English Department, Stanford University
"The Chinese Notebook: Ron Silliman's Documentary Politics"
Baker Room, Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.

Fall 2002

Two events with
Joy Harjo

Thursday, October 3, 7 pm
Joy Harjo performing with Poetic Justice
Icon, 260 California Ave., Palo Alto

Friday, October 4, 10 am-4 pm
Symposium: Intersections in Native American Studies
featuring Joy Harjo and other speakers
Terrace Room, Stanford English Department
Building 460, Room 424

Thursday, October 10, 5:15-7:00 pm
Boardroom, Stanford Humanities Center
Mishuana Goeman
Ph.D. Candidate, Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University
"From the Stomp Grounds on Up: Joy Harjo and the Politics of Globalization"

Readings available in Workshop box under English Department graduate student mailboxes, Building 460, 2nd floor.

Dinner will be provided.

Thursday, November 7, 5:15-7:00 pm
English Department, Building 460, Room 429 [new location]
David A. Colon
Ph.D. Candidate, English Department, Stanford University
"The Ancient Ethics of Modern Aesthetics: Innovation and its Doctrines in 20th Century Poetry"

Readings now available in the Workshop box below the English Department graduate student mailboxes, 2nd floor of Building 460.

Although many radical and experimental poets in the twentieth century have been perceived critically as antagonists of the tradition--seen as nihilistic (in the case of the Vorticist Ezra Pound), obscene (in the case of Howl author Allen Ginsberg) or marginal figures (such as E. E. Cummings, Jackson Mac Low, and Alurista) more deconstructive of form and taste than reconciling substantive modes of ideas--the iconoclastic innovators of aesthetics largely premised their contributions and writing experiments upon the teachings of ancient ethical texts. Oftentimes the work they produced realized a break with a prior generation or movement of poetry through a revisitation of ancient moral or spiritual doctrines, seeking a new consciousness of art through a lens of time-transcending ethical ideals. This discussion will focus on the contributions of Pound, Cummings, Ginsberg, Alurista, and Mac Low to twentieth-century aesthetics, correlating their poetic innovations and motives to long-standing ethical ideologies, and question the valence of their legacies as iconoclasts to the value assumptions we make of the Modernist era.

Monday, November 25, 7 pm
A reading by poet
Myung Mi Kim
Terrace Room, Stanford English Department
Building 460, Room 426

Tuesday, November 26, 10 am-noon
A discussion with Myung Mi Kim
Stanford English Department
Building 460, Room 126 *note new location*

Myung Mi Kim is the author of four books of poetry: Commons (University of California Press, 2002), Dura (Sun & Moon Press, 1998), The Bounty (Chax Press, 1996) and Under Flag (Kelsey St. Press, 1991). Her work has been widely anthologized in such collections as Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women and Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry. Kim’s numerous honors include a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative North American Poetry and the Multicultural Publisher’s Exchange Award for Under Flag. A former Bay Area resident, Kim has taught at San Francisco State University and is now Professor of English in the Poetics Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Publishers Weekly praises Kim’s haunting and powerful lyrics for their unique ability to "capture the cultural and linguistic displacement of immigration with…poise and resonance." Elaine Kim writes that the "beauty and precision of Kim’s language" draws her readers "into a web of fragmentary memories that subvert what we think we know about the violent history that haunts her and never ceases to demand recognition."

Visit the Myung Mi Kim page at the Electronic Poetry Center