Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Saturday, December 9, 2000
548 West 22nd Street, NYC, 4:00pm

Jorie Graham

Poem: Prayer

Jorie Graham was born in New York City in 1951. She studied at New York University and the University of Iowa. Her eight collections of poetry include Swarm (Ecco, 2000); The Errancy (1997); The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Materialism (1993); Region of Unlikeness (1991); The End of Beauty (1987); Erosion (Princeton, 1983) and Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts (Princeton, 1980). She has also edited two anthologies, Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language (1996) and The Best American Poetry 1990. Her honors include a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She is a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Harvard University.


Charles Wright

Poem: APPALACHIAN LULLABY


Charles Wright was born in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, in 1935, and attended Davidson College, The University of Iowa and the University of Rome. Chickamauga, his eleventh collection of poems, won the 1996 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His other books include Negative Blue (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000); Appalachia (1998); Black Zodiac (1997) which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The World of Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990; Zone Journals (1988); Country Music: Selected Early Poems (1983), which won the National Book Award; Hard Freight (1973) and two volumes of criticism: Halflife (1988) and Quarter Notes (1995). His many honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. He serves as a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. Since 1983 he has been a Professor of English (since 1988, Souder Family Professor of English) at the University of Virginia.