Monday Muse: Poetry at the Folger

The 2013-2014 O.B. Hardison Poetry Series at Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., kicks off next Monday evening, October 28, with "Mortally Beautiful: C.K. Williams and Stanley Plumly". Michael Collier will introduce and moderate a conversation with the poets. Williams, who teaches in Princeton University's Creative Writing Program, most recently published Writers Writing Dying (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012); Plumley's latest collection is Orphan Hours (W.W. Norton, 2012). 

The remainder of the season is as follows:

✭ The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, Monday, November 18, Folger Elizabethan Theatre, 7:30 p.m. ~ Poet Joseph Harrison, who is the senior American editor at The Waywiser Press, co-sponsor of the evening, makes the introductions. The 2012 recipient is Shelley Puhak, whose Geuinevere in Baltimore, is to be published this fall by The Waywiser Press; Puhak will read with prize judge Charles Simic.

✭ Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute, Monday, December 9, Folger Elizabethan Theatre, 7:30 p.m. ~ Peter Gizzi, poetry editor for The Nation and a professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is scheduled to talk about Dickinson's legacy and to read from his own work. Gizzi's collections include From Threshold Songs (Wesleyan University Press, 2011).

✭ Made in the USA, Thursday, February 27, 2014, Phillips Collection Auditorium, 6:30 p.m. ~ Poets Tina Chang, Poet Laureate of Brooklyn who most recently published the collection Of Gods and Strangers (Four Way, 2011), and Maurice Manning, author of The Gone and the Going Away (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), read in response to artworks at The Phillips Collection, where the event will take place.

✭ Making Your Own Map, Monday, March 24, 2014, Folger Elizabethan Theater, 7:30 p.m. ~ Identity, culture, and race are among the issues poets Joy Harjo and Evie Shockley explore in their work. Harjo's memoir Crazy Brave (W.W. Norton) was published in 2012. Shockley's latest is The New Black (Wesleyan Poetry Series, 2012).

✭ The Literary Legacy of Seamus Heaney, Monday, April 7, 2014, Lutheran Church of the Reformation, Washington, D.C., 7:30 p.m. ~ The great Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, was to have read from his work; because of his death this past August, the original program has been changed (the date and time of place remain the same, howeer). Heaney wrote more than 30 books of prose, poetry, and translations, including Human Chain (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). The celebration of Heaney's life in poetry will include a reading of his work. Details are pending.

Obituary for Seamus Heaney, The New York Times

✭ Folger Board Reading, Monday, May 5, 2014, Folger Elizabethan Theatre, 7:30 p.m. ~ Scottish Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the first woman appointed to the position, the author, most recently of Rapture (Faber & Faber, 2013) and The Bees (Faber & Faber, 2013), will appear. Duffy also is scheduled to read at a benefit dinner in a private home on May 4 (contact the Folger for details).

All events are $15.00, except for the reading by Seamus Heaney, which costs $25.00 per person; season subscriptions are available.