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Thursday, April 2nd, 8:00pm
Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center, UConn, Storrs Campus
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Friday, April 3rd, Noon
Hartford Classical Magnet School
Both readings are free and open to the public
McHugh's poems "are both comic and profound" wrote Publisher's Weekly. "Their depth comes from the belly laugh of Medusa."
“My whole work is to catch the word by surprise, sneaking up on language, sneaking up on the world as it lurks in words.” - Heather McHugh, Poet
Etymological Dirge
From The Father of Predicaments
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.
Calm comes from burning.
Tall comes from fast.
Comely doesn't come from come.
Person comes from mask.
The kin of charity is whore,
the root of charity is dear.
Incentive has its source in song
and winning in the sufferer.
Afford yourself what you can carry out.
A coward and a coda share a word.
We get our ugliness from fear.
We get our danger from the lord.
Heather McHugh
Educated at Harvard University, Heather McHugh is an award winning poet,
translator, and educator. Her books of poetry include Eyeshot (2004),
which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize; The Father of Predicaments
(2001); Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (1994), a finalist for the National
Book Award; Shades (1988); To the Quick (1987); A World of Difference
(1981); and Dangers (1977).
McHugh currently serves as the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence
at the University of Washington in Seattle. Ms. McHugh has won awards
from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, PEN
(Voelcker Poetry Award), Wellesley College (Sara Teasdale Award), and,
together with her husband, translator Nikolai Popov, the 2001 Griffin
Prize for Poetry in the International Category for Glottal Stop: 101 Poems
by Paul Celan (2000).
Poetry Program Information:
The Wallace Stevens Poetry Program began in 1964 with funding support by
The Hartford Financial Services
Group, Inc., to honor the poet Wallace Stevens, a former
Vice-President. The Program's mission is to promote poetry at the
University of Connecticut and in the Hartford area by offering two
poetry readings each spring, one in the Storrs campus, the other in the
city, by a poet of national or international reputation.
Each year we invite students and teachers from Hartford area high
schools to attend the city poetry reading. Here, student winners of a
poetry contest sponsored by the Hartford Friends
and Enemies of Wallace Stevens present their poems, followed by the
guest poet's reading. The Wallace Stevens Poetry Program also promotes
poetry at UConn by holding an annual all-campus poetry contest for UConn
students.
Wallace Stevens
Was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on October 2nd, 1879 and died in
Hartford, Connectict on August 2nd, 1955. He was educated at Harvard
and the New York Law School. Harmonium, Steven's first volume
of poems, was published in 1923 followed by Idea of Orders
(1936), The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), Parts of a
World (1942), Transport to Summer (1947), The Auroras
of Autumn (1950), The Necessary Angel (a volume of essays,
1951), The Collected Prose of Wallace Stevens (1954), and
Opus Posthumous (edited by Samuel French Morse, 1957). A
selection of his letters was published in 1966. Wallace Stevens was
awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949. In 1951 he won The
National Book Award for The Auroras of Autumn; he won it a
second time in 1955 for his Collected Poems, which was also
awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry that year. From 1916 until his
death, Wallace Stevens lived with his wife and daughter in Hartford,
where he was associated with The Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company
of which he became vice-president in 1934.
Past Wallace Stevens Poets
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