Author, Screenwriter Price to Kick Off Wednesdays at 4 PLUS; Poet Fraser, Critic Altieri Also on Spring-Semester Slate

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Richard Price, author of such novels as "The Wanderers," "Freedomland" and the best-selling "Clockers," and a prolific writer of screenplays -- one of which, "The Color of Money," earned him an Oscar nomination -- will bring his urban sensibilities to the University at Buffalo on Feb. 7 as the first guest in this semester's "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" literary series.

The spring 2001 lineup for the popular series also will feature senior American poet Kathleen Fraser, a major figure in the alternative poetry world, and Charles Altieri, a former UB English professor noted among his contemporaries as a leading critic of 20th-century poetry.

"Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" also will welcome as part of its ñ, or Latin American, poetics series Chilean poet and performance artist Cecilia Vicuña, a New York City dweller whose installations have been exhibited in such worldwide venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Chilean Mapuche poet Leonel Lienlaf and Maya poet and Guatemala native Humberto Ak'abal -- writers of Spanish and the indigenous languages of Mapudungun and K'iche', respectively -- will round out the ñ series.

The spring slate also will include UB's inaugural digital poetry conference, "E-POETRY, 2001: An International Digital Poetry Festival," April 18-21, as well as a cross-border exchange between Toronto and Buffalo, "Poetry Across the Frontier (I and II)," which will culminate in a Canadian poetry festival April 14 in Buffalo.

Charles Bernstein, series coordinator, director of UB's Poetics Program and David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, says that while Price is atypical for the series - "he exists in mass culture, whereas most of our writers are very obscure" -- his participation demonstrates the series' range of writers. Price, whose trademark style is his deft use of the vernacular, will read from his prose at 4 p.m. on Feb. 7 in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

Just three years after graduating from Cornell University in 1971, Price found success with his first novel, "The Wanderers," at the age of 24. Notoriously defined by its raw, urban intensity and currents of both emotional and physical violence, Price's fiction has focused on gang warfare and coming of age in the Bronx ("The Wanderers"), drug dealers and homicide investigators ("Clockers") and America's racial divide -- as told through a story closely modeled on the Susan Smith child-abduction case ("Freedomland"). The writing of Price, a native of the Bronx, is shaped largely by his experiences in New York City. His other novels are "Ladies' Man" and "Bloodbrothers."

Having branded his dual profession of novelist and screenwriter a "mutually disastrous existence," Price nonetheless has managed to turn out eight other successful screenplays besides the Oscar-nominated "The Color of Money," including "Sea of Love," "Mad Dog & Glory," "Night and the City," "Ransom," "New York Stories," "Kiss of Death," "Clockers" and, most recently, "Shaft 2000."

Fraser, whose works include the essay collection "Translating the Unspeakable: Poetry and the Innovative Necessity" and selected poems "Il Cuore: The Heart," will give a poetry reading at 4 p.m. on Feb. 28 in the CFA Screening Room. She also will give a talk at 12:30 p.m. on March 1 in 438 Clemens Hall on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

A major proponent of feminist concerns and founding editor of "How2" -- an on-line journal devoted to non-traditional approaches in poetry and scholarship by women, Fraser has continued to take a stance on women's issues in her own writing, while also supporting the work of innovative poets from the early part of the last century up to the present, Bernstein said. Her latest book is "20th Century."

Vicuña will be at UB for three separate events, the first of which will be a talk, "Words within Words," by the filmmaker, painter, sculptor and poet at noon on March 19 in 540 Clemens Hall. Vicuña will screen and discuss her films "What is Poetry to You?," "Cloud-net" and others at 8 p.m. on March 20 in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 2495 Main St. At 4 p.m. on March 21, she will give a poetry reading in the CFA Screening Room.

Vicuña is the author of 12 books of poetry, including "QUIPOem/The Precarious," "Unravelling Words and the Weaving of Water" and "Cloud-net."

Altieri, a UB English faculty member from 1968-75, will speak on "Affect and Intention in Robert Creeley's Poetry During the 1960s" at 4 p.m. on April 11 in the CFA Screening Room. Currently a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of California-Berkeley, Altieri -- who specializes in literature, visual art and contemporary poetry -- is the author of "Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry" and "Postmodernisms Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts."

Other series guests will include Michael Gizzi and Gillian McCain, Feb. 14; Jed Rasula and Darren Wershler-Henry, Feb. 21; Fiona Templeton and Steve McCaffrey, Feb. 24; Robert Flanagan, March 23; Julie Patton, March 24; Tan Lin, March 28 and 29; Donald Revell, April 4, and Michael Basinski, June 8. Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature, will

appear as part of the series at Buffalo State College at 8 p.m. on May 17 for an event sponsored by Just Buffalo Literary Center.

The complete schedule of events for the "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" series, which will continue through June 8, can be found at http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/calendar/spring01.html. Details of UB's digital poetry festival can be found at http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2001.

All events will be free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.

The "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" series is a Poetics Program offering co-sponsored by the James H. McNulty Chair in the Department of English (Dennis Tedlock), the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities (Robert Creeley), the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters in the Department of English (Charles Bernstein), the Just Buffalo Literary Center and the Poetry Society of America. Poetry Committee readings are sponsored by the Abbott Fund. The series is produced with assistance from the Center for the Arts, the Department of Media Study, the Poetry and Rare Books Collection (Robert Bertholf) and Talking Leaves Books.

For more information, call 645-3810 or email mdunlap@acsu.buffalo.edu. For more information on line, visit the Poetics Web site at http:// epc.buffalo.edu/poetics.