Russell Edson, Wednesday, April 27th, 5:30 p.m., Gifford

WHEN: Wednesday, April 27th, 5:30 p.m
WHERE: in Gifford Auditorium (HBC Bldg.) Syracuse University. Reading preceded by a question and answer session from 3:45-4:30 p.m.

Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and currently resides there with his wife Frances. Edson, who jokingly has called himself "Little Mr. Prose Poem," is inarguably the foremost writer of prose poetry in America, having written exclusively in that form before it became fashionable. In a forthcoming study of the American prose poem, Michel Delville suggests that one of Edson's typical "recipes" for his prose poems involves a modern everyman who suddenly tumbles into an alternative reality in which he loses control over himself, sometimes to the point of being irremediably absorbed--both figuratively and literally--by his immediate and, most often, domestic everyday environment. . . . Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre, Edson delights in having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo the most unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. . . .

Reclusive by nature, Edson has still managed to publish eleven books of prose poems and one novel, The Song of Percival Peacock (available from Coffee House Press). This bio from web del sol.


Read an interview with the author here

Nicholas Samaras, Friday, April 15th, 7:00 p.m., DWC

WHEN: Friday, April 15th, 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: Downtown YMCA, 340 Montgomery St.

Nicholas Samaras has lived in Greece, England, Wales, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Jerusalem, and now America. His first book of poems, Hands of the Saddlemaker, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His second collection, Survivors of the Moving Earth, is published by University of Salzburg Press. Mr. Samaras has taught at Columbia University, the University of Denver, and the University of South Florida. His many awards include the Academy of American Poets Award, fellowships from The Lilly Endowment Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the states of Florida, Colorado and New York. His poems have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Poetry. The reading is free and open to the public.

For more information:
Philip Memmer
Director, the Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse
340 Montgomery St.
Syracuse, NY 13202
www.ymcaarts.org
(315) 474-6851 x314
(315) 474-6857 (fax)
phil@ymcaarts.org

Charles Martin, Friday, April 8th, 7:00 p.m. DWC

WHEN: Friday, April 8th, 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: Downtown Writer’s Center
Downtown YMCA, 340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Charles Martin’s verse translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid was published in November of 2003 by W.W. Norton and Co and was selected as co-winner of the Harold Morton Landon Award from the Academy of American Poets for 2004. His most recent book of poems, Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems, published in July 2002 by the Sewanee Writers’ Series/The Overlook Press, was chosen as a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award of the Academy of American Poets. He is a professor at Queensborough Community College (CUNY), and teaches poetry at Syracuse University. In February, he was named Poet in Residence at Cathedral St. John the Divine in New York City. 

The reading is free and open to the public. For more information:

Philip Memmer
Director, the Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse
340 Montgomery St.
Syracuse, NY 13202
www.ymcaarts.org
(315) 474-6851 x314
(315) 474-6857 (fax)