In honor of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, who died on Wednesday, 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center offers this tribute—a discussion of her work by Clare Cavanagh, her award-winning translator, on March 20, 2011 at 92Y. This clip also features a reading of the poem “Identification” in both English and Polish.
“I remember being at a conference in Poland with American and Polish poets,” Cavanagh recalled, “and somebody talked about Szymborska—one of the very well-known American poets (fortunately I don’t remember his name anymore)—as being a straight-speaker, and I just felt like slapping him. She’s the opposite of a straight-speaker. She’s a master of voice, and she listens to so many kinds of voices and creates the illusion of straight-speech while challenging what straight-speech even is.”
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Mark Strand’s first appearance at 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center took place back in April of 1965, when he was one of four winners (Robert David Cohen, Jim Harrison and Nancy Sullivan were the others) of that year’s “Discovery” poetry contest, which the Poetry Center continues to oversee to this day. That night, Strand was introduced by Robert Hazel, who praised his poems for “their urgency, released by forms unusually fanciful, unusually skillful. Grace and decorum are valuable qualities here, in their creation of dramatic effects involving a very considerable ironic wit. Best of all, it seems to me, is this poet’s dramatic insight—insinuating and mysterious and with a kind of ardent searching that is very important.”
Mark Strand returns to 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center on January 30, for a reading with Susan Stewart. Stewart is making her Poetry Center debut, but Strand has been appearing here regularly for more than forty years—for readings with Borges, Paz and Brodsky (to name just a few), as well as Tributes to Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens and Zbigniew Herbert.
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Below are Wright’s thoughts on the program.
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Upon the publication, in 2009, of the first volume of the Letters of Samuel Beckett, editors Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck visited 92Y to speak about the influence of music on his art. In anticipation of the editors’ return visit on December 18 (the second volume is just published), here is an audio recording of their earlier presentation.
Volume II covers the years 1941-1956, and in a preview of their upcoming talk, Fehsenfeld and Overbeck write: “After World War II, Beckett is a changed man: his work shifts from the parameters of self to the wider boundaries of all humanity. Watt is written in the early forties out of the absurd and often impossible situations imposed by the war. Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable are forged from isolation and loss. Waiting for Godot offers a stark reminder of the responsibility of survival—’was I sleeping when the others suffered?’
“From 1946, Beckett begins to write in French. He writes plays and becomes involved in their production. In letters to friends, publishers, actors, translators, interpreters and critics, we witness Beckett honing his aesthetic—particularly through the incomparably intense series of letters to George Duthuit. From 1941 to 1956, Beckett’s work emerges from virtual obscurity to achieve international recognition and Beckett must learn to protect his work and writing life from the encroachments of literary renown.”
To purchase tickets to the event, which takes place as part of the Unterberg Poetry Center’s Books and Bagels series, please click here.
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to other recordings, please click here.
You can also download the MP3.
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Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
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Last March, translators Edith Grossman and Clare Cavanagh discussed the tricks of their trade as part of our Books & Bagels series. Toward the end of the conversation, each of them offered an example of recent work, and Grossman read from “a book she is more excited about than any other book she has ever translated”: Luis de Góngora’s long poem “Soledades” (“The Solitudes”).
Next week, in celebration of Góngora’s 450th birthday, Grossman’s version of “Soledades” will finally be published. To mark the occasion, we’d like to share some of her thoughts with you in the podcast above. You can pre-order the book on Amazon.
Here, too, are the poem’s opening lines, in both Spanish and English, so you can follow along.
Era del año la estación florida
en que el mentido robador de Europa
—media luna las armas de su frente,
y el Sol todos los rayos de su pelo—,
luciente honor del cielo,
en campos de zafiro pace estrellas;
It was the flowering season of the year
when Europa’s false-hearted abductor
—a half moon the weapons on his brow,
the Sun’s rays all the strands of his hair—
oh bright glory of heaven,
grazes on stars in fields of sapphire blue;
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to other recordings, please click here.
You can also download the MP3. [15.9 MB]
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
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Posted in The Arts Podcasts All topics of 92nd Street Y at 11:59am
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Wednesday, June 22, 2011
92Y Podcast: Elena Bonner on Russia and the Republics in the Post Cold War Era
Elena Bonner, human rights activist in the former Soviet Union and widow of Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, died in Boston on June 18 at 88. The New York Times writes:
Though Sakharov was better known, Ms. Bonner became a force in her own right, waging a tireless campaign to improve the lives of her people long after her husband’s death in 1989.
It is a role she accepted out of necessity, she would say. A pediatrician by training, whose family suffered greatly during the Stalinist purges, Ms. Bonner longed for a simpler life.
[...]
Strong-jawed, bespectacled and austere in dress, Ms. Bonner was something of a symbol of dignified protest within the Soviet Union. Half-Jewish, she was a target of anti-Semitism.
On April 12, 1994 at 92Y, Bonner sat down with James F. Hoge Jr. to discuss, with the use of a translator, Russia and the Republics in the Post Cold War Era. In this audio clip, she shares a humorous story about the scarcity of socks after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
You can also download the MP3. [7 MB]
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Last April, distinguished biographer Michael Slater delivered a talk in our Books & Bagels series on Charles Dickens’ love of Shakespeare.
Dickens hailed Shakespeare as the “great master who knew everything,” and considered himself a devoted, lifelong follower, “tracking out his footsteps at the scarcely-worth-mentioning little distance of a few millions of leagues behind.” Quotes from Shakespeare’s plays pervade Dickens’ novels, with Macbeth and Hamlet topping the list.
Today’s featured recording is Professor Slater’s comedic reading of the scene from Chapter 31 of Great Expectations when Pip and Herbert see Mr. Wopsle in a rundown production of Hamlet.
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to other recordings, please click here.
You can also download the MP3. [11.6 MB]
Related: The Guardian reviews Slater’s book, Charles Dicken.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
» Follow 92Y Poetry on Facebook and Twitter. Join our eNews
Posted in The Arts Podcasts All topics of 92nd Street Y at 11:43am | Link to this item | Comments (0)
In November and December of 1950, playwright Thornton Wilder delivered the famed Norton Lectures at Harvard University. He focused on Dickinson, Melville, Whitman, Poe and Thoreau, and later said it was because “they all describe America at the moment she was taking her place in world culture, and they showed the dangers of her situation.”
In January of 1951, Wilder made his first appearance at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center, once more talking about Emily Dickinson, only this time “in light of certain ideas of Gertrude Stein,” his close friend who had died a few years earlier. Wilder confesses that he does not know if Stein ever actually read Dickinson, yet offers his speculations nonetheless.
You can also download the MP3. [16.6 MB]
[Right-click and select “Save Target As:” or equivalent to download.]
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
» Follow 92Y Poetry on Facebook and Twitter. Join our eNews
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