"It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there." The sentiments of William Carlos Williams notwithstanding, we'll make it a little easier for you to get your news and your poetry this Summer.
Doug Anderson's poetry is powerful. The language is raw -- stripped of pretense. It is also wry and brave and -- in the case of his poem "Crows" -- full of whimsy. Doug Anderson is a writer of fiction, film scripts and criticism. He is the author of two collection of poetry, Blues for the Unemployed Secret Police and The Moon Reflected Fire.
Doug Anderson teaches at Eastern Connecticut State University. He reads his poem Crows.
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High School Poets
August 11, 2001
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From left, back row,
Amy Ma, Liam Sherwin-Murray, Cassandra Faustini, Emily Madsen. Middle row, Rebekah Hayes, Margaret Crowley,
Tarrady D. Front, Chris Gyngell.
Photo: Hill-Stead Museum
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Listen for the influences of Anne Sexton and Robert Hass in the poetry of Emily Madsen, but don't be surprised if you hear the music of Miles Davis. This fall, Ms. Madsen will be a senior at Avon High School in Avon, Connecticut.
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or Listen
Rebekah Hayes graduated this year from Suffield High School and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. This fall she will attend Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Ms. Hayes credits her teachers for influencing and forming her work.
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or Listen
Edgar Gabriel Silex
July 28, 2001
The poetry of Edgar Gabriel Silex has been described this way: "There are mountains, colors, dirt, sky and music in (his) poems. There appears to be an ancestral hand feeding him the words." Widely anthologized, Silex is the author of two volumes of poetry, Through all the Displacements and Even the Dead Have Memories. He says he writes because "forgiveness is our highest form of love, awe is our only muse ... displacement is our human inheritance, passion is our only freedom ... and poetry is our most constant state."
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"There appears to be an ancestral hand feeding him the words."
Luis Rodriguez
on Edgar Gabriel Silex
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Edgar Gabriel Silex teaches at St. Mary's College. He reads his poem The Planting of the Blue Corn.
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or Listen
Linda McCarriston
July 14, 2001
Linda McCarriston grew up in a family of first-generation Americans in the working-class city of Lynn, on the Massachusetts shore, north of Boston. This place and its people inform a poetry that is able, in the words of writer Josephine Jacobson, to "fuse knowledge of waste and sadness and the savage possibilities of nostalgia with a fresh and buoyant strength."
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"…a wise, unillusioned vitality of joy."
Josephine Jacobson
On Linda McCarriston
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McCarriston has published three collections of poetry: Talking Soft Dutch, Little River and Eva-Mary, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Arts at the University of Alaska. Linda McCarriston reads her poem Birthday Girl: 1950.
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or Listen
Rennie McQuilkin
June 30, 2001
Rennie McQuilkin is the author of North Northeast; We All Fall Down, which won the Swallow Tale's Poetry Prize; and An
Astonishment and an Hissing, for which he won the Texas Review Poetry Award. He is the recipient of the Ruth Fox Award, and has received a poetry fellowship from the NEA and numerous fellowships from the CT Commission on the Arts. His poetry appears in many journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Yale Review, and Poetry.
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"...pungently exact about the properties of the real world."
Richard Wilbur
on
Rennie McQuilkin
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David Bottoms writes, "Rennie McQuilkin is a poet with an extraordinary eye. He looks at the hard questions of the world, never flinching, and translates them with a clarity that is rare in American poetry today." McQuilkin reads his poem Skunk Cabbage.
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or Listen
Sonia Sanchez
June 16, 2001
The festival began with the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, the 2001 recipient of the Frost Medal, awarded for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry.
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or Listen
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"Only a poet
with an innocent heart can exorcize so much pain with so much beauty."
Isabel Allende
on
Sonia Sanchez
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Her collections include: Wounded in the House of a Friend; I've Been a Woman; A Sound Investment; Does Your House Have Lions?; Under a Soprano Sky; Homegirls and Handgrenades; Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums; and Shake Loose My Skin
Links
Sunken Garden Poetry Festival Web site
The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival is recorded and produced by Phyllis Joffe and David Budries.
