A Poetry Reading: Kevin Young on Poems of Food and Drink, Campbell McGrath on In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys, Dana Gioia on Pity the Beautiful, and Richard Blanco on Looking For The Gulf Motel
Saturday, Nov. 17, 12:30 p.m., Room 8303 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)
Author(s) and Guest(s)
Kevin Young
Hungry for some poetry? Poet Kevin Young has compiled a feast of 150 poems by some of our most beloved poets for his latest anthology, The Hungry Ear:Poems of Food & Drink (Bloomsbury, $25.00). Whether considering breaking bread or picking blackberries, “dinner for two” or “beer for breakfast,” these poems describe food not just as a necessity, but as a necessary, elementary pleasure. Poets include Elizabeth Bishop, Bill Collins, Mark Doty, Allen Ginsberg, Seamus Heaney, Tony Hoagland, Langston Hughes, Li-Young Lee and many more. Young is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Ardency and Dear Darkness. His collection For the Confederate Dead won the Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, and Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath’s latest poetry collection, In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys: Poems (Ecco, $14.99) presents the banality of American pop culture, combined with the cosmic and comical mystery lurking at its edges. Whether he’s exploring the slow decline of American cities, the flashing beauty of a smog saturated sunset, or the extra-mortal lifespan of books, McGrath writes poems deeply engaged with American popular culture and commerce. McGrath has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. His previous collections are Shannon, Seven Notebooks, Capitalism, American Noise, Spring Comes to Chicago, Road Atlas, Florida Poems, and Pax Atomica.
Dana Gioia
Pity the Beautiful (Graywolf Press, $15.00) is Dana Gioia's first new poetry book in over a decade. “Ghosts flit through these poems, and a sense of mystery elevates the mundane.”—Wild River Review. Gioia’s previous book of poems, Interrogations at Noon, won the American Book Award. Gioia's many literary anthologies include Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 100 Great Poets of the English Language, The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, and Literature for Life. A former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, he is currently the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at USC.
Richard Blanco
Richard Blanco describes his latest poetry collection, Looking for The Gulf Motel (University of Pittsburgh Press, $15.95) as “A genealogy of the heart,” in which he explores his family’s emotional legacy and how it has shaped his Latino identity, sexual identity, and understanding of life’s great questions. Blanco is the author of two previous poetry collections: Directions to The Beach of the Dead and City of a Hundred Fires.
Schedule
Location
Miami Book Fair International * Miami Dade College
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132
Room 8303 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)
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