Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A Change of Plans

I am not a believer of circumstance. I was supposed to be attending a mult-journal off-site AWP reading in Chicago this evening. Instead, my flight having been cancelled, I was pleased to attend Rochester native and 2008 Pulitzer prize winner Philip Schultz's reading at the University of Rochester. Schultz, whose work spans his youth growing up here in Living in the Past (Harcourt, 2004) and moves through multi-faceted Failures in his notable book of the same name (Harcourt, 2008) addresses recurring themes related to the imigrant experience and mind-set. His reading immediately connected several audience members to that past time and place so often now only found in foggy memory and vacant lots where the quaint but serviceable homes of families once stood. As the imigrant neighborhoods of his generation are re-shaped, a driving cultural amalgamation of the 20th. century in the United States diminishes and will all but disappear but for the efforts of artists such as Schultz.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Remembering Faces Reading

Join guest host Donna Marbach (publisher/editor) for a reading by the poets from the anthology Remembering Faces (Palettes & Quills, 2008) sponsored by Just Poets. The reading is at 7:00 pm Thursday, February 12 at Barnes & Noble Pittsford in the Community Room. An open mic will follow. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance via email: claudiastanek@yahoo.com.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Adam Wilcox Discusses the Poetry of Alan Dugan

Adam Wilcox will be discussing the poetry of Alan Dugan at the next Just Poets meeting, Saturday, February 7 at St. John Fisher College.

Adam is the president of WritWilcox, LLC. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Colorado Review, Folio, Cairn, and Blueline, among others. He has been a featured reader for the Genesee Readers Series. For eight years, he wrote the "Gut Instincts" food column for Rochester City Newspaper. H.e plays in two original bands in addition to playing jazz as a volunteer with the ARC of Monroe County. He lives in Rochester, NY with his choreographer wife, Anne Harris Wilcox and their three homeschooled children.