Pinsky, Rothenberg, Lauterbach to Headline Fall "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" Series at UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The fall lineup for the University at Buffalo's biannual poetry and prose series, "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS," promises an eclectic mix of both up-and-coming writers and those entrenched in the literary scene for decades -- a group whose collective work cuts across lines of race, ethnicity, gender, language and politics. The series, presented by the UB Poetics Program, will run from Sept. 12 through Nov. 30.

Among the featured artists in the series will be former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Jerome Rothenberg, a literary radical who is considered a major force in American poetry.

Author of "Jersey Rain," "The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996" -- which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize -- and "The Want Bone," Pinsky will give the Silverman poetry reading at 8 p.m. Nov. 9 in 250 Baird Hall.

Pinsky was named the U.S. Poet Laureate and poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1997. The New Jersey native, who teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University and is poetry editor of the weekly Internet magazine Slate, is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, Poetry magazine's Oscar Blumenthal prize and the William Carlos Williams Award.

Rothenberg will give a poetry reading at 4 p.m. Oct. 3 in the Center for the Arts Screening Room, and will lecture on "Poems for the Millennium" at 4 p.m. Oct. 4 in 438 Clemens Hall on the North Campus.

An acclaimed poet and translator, and editor of the groundbreaking anthologies "Technicians of the Sacred" and "Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern Poetry," Rothenberg is noted as a pioneer in both performance poetry and ethnopoetics, having helped organize the first international symposium on ethnopoetics in 1975. A prolific author of more than 50 books, Rothenberg is a professor of visual arts and literature at the University of California at San Diego. Rothenberg's visit will be sponsored by UB's McNulty Chair/Center for the Americas Residency in celebration of his 70th birthday.

The series will open with a reading by Korean poet Myung Mi Kim.

Author of "Under Flag," "The Bounty" and "Dura," and considered one of the most important voices in contemporary American poetry, Kim will give a poetry reading at 4 p.m. Sept. 12 in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts on the North (Amherst) Campus. Kim, who came from Korea to the United States at the age of 9, is acting chair and an assistant professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.

Luis Rodriguez, author of "Gang Days in L.A.," his memoir of coming of age in East Los Angeles that won a Carl Sandburg Literary Award and a Chicago Sun-Times Book Award, will give a poetry and prose reading at 8 p.m. Sept. 28 in Allen Hall on the UB South (Main Street) Campus. The presentation, sponsored by Just Buffalo literary center, will cost $4 for members, $5 for students and seniors, and $6 for the general public. The El Paso, Texas-born author, whose works include the memoir "Always Running: La Vida Loca" and poetry books "Poems Across the Pavement" and "The Concrete River," is the founder of Youth Struggling for Survival and is a founding member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America and Rock a Mole, which produces hip-hop, jazz and rap artists, and urban youth arts festivals in Los Angeles.

In celebration of the publication of her book "If in Time: Selected Poems 1975-2000," Ann Lauterbach will give a poetry reading at 4 p.m. Oct. 17, as well as host a conversation at 4 p.m. Oct. 18, in the Screening Room. The recipient of a MacArthur fellowship in 1993, she is director of the graduate creative writing program and a professor in the Division of Languages and Literature at Bard College. Lauterbach, whose column "The Night Sky" has appeared regularly in American Poetry Review, is the author of "Many Times, But Then," "Before Recollection," "Clamor" and "On a Stair."

Among the other highlights of the series will be a poetry reading Nov. 14 and a talk Nov. 15 by UB poetics graduate Juliana Spahr, now co-editor of Chain and assistant professor of English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Bruce Andrews, an associate professor in Fordham University's political science department, will give a poetry reading at 4 p.m. Nov. 28 in the Center for the Arts Screening Room, and host an open conversation at 12:30 p.m. Nov. 29 in 438 Clemens Hall. Andrews, whose work helped redefine the edginess of American poetry, is the author of "Ex Why Zee," "Divesture-A," "I Don't Have Any Paper So Shut Up" (or "Social Romanticism") and "Getting Ready to Have Been Frightened."

For a complete list of events, visit http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/calendar/fall01.html. All events will be free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. For more information, call 645-3810 or email mdunlap@acsu.buffalo.edu.

"Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" is sponsored, in part, by the James H. McNulty Chair, 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, Department of English (Charles Bernstein); the Melodia E. Jones Chair in French, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (Gerard Bucher); Susan Howe, UB English and poetics professor; the Just Buffalo literary center; the Poetry Society of America, and Poets and Writers, with funding through a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Support for the series also is provided by the Center for the Arts, the Department of Media Study, Robert Bertholf, curator of the Poetry and Rare Books Collection, and Talking Leaves Books.