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| Poet Jennifer Reeser and West Chester Poetry Conference Director Kim Bridgford at a 90th birthday party for Richard Wilbur. As he told me that his birthday was March 1, I hope he has had a long Mad Hatter's tea party sort of celebration. June 10, 2011, West Chester. |
How does poetry delight us? To begin with the most inclusive reason, poetry delights us as a manifestation of energy. A poem is an act, and should give us the certainty, the reflected pleasure, that comes from participating in a successful accomplishment. --Donald A. Stauffer, The Golden Nightingale, 1949
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| Several attendees wishing for a signature from Richard Wilbur. Poet Rhina Espaillat at left. June 10, 2011. |
If you would like to see me with a brilliantly lit nose (stage lights, not alcohol) and hear me read some poems, you may wander over to youtube, where poet Annabelle Moseley has posted videos of the Mezzo Cammin 5th anniversary reading: Kim Bridgford and moderator, Rhina Espaillat, Julie Kane, Leslie Monsour, Annabelle herself, and me. A video of the conversation at the close is also up. Individual readings by each of the participants have been posted as well.
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| Three poets at a birthday party: Jennifer Reeser, Kim Bridgford, and me. |
The final joy of the artist is creation, and the greatness of his creation will depend upon the completeness with which he embraces and accepts all materials. --Donald A. Stauffer, The Golden Nightingale, 1949
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| The laughers are poets Leslie Monsour and David Mason. You can catch the birthday boy at right, next to Rhina Espaillat. |
There is in the creative joy an acceptance of what life brings, because we have understood the beauty of what it brings, or a hatred of death for what it takes away, which arouses within us, through some sympathy perhaps with other men, an energy so noble, so powerful, that we laugh aloud and mock, in the terror or the sweetness of our exaltation, at death and oblivion. --W. B. Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 1922.
