Hard Times for Poets
Morris Dickstein, distinguished professor of English at Queens College and at the graduate school of the City University of New York, will give the third annual Stanley Burnshaw Lecture, “Hard Times for Poets: Social Suffering and the Literary Imagination,” on Tuesday, October 26 at the Ransom Center. There will be a reception in the first floor lobby at 5:30pm; the lecture begins at 6pm in the fourth-floor auditorium. The talk and reception are free and open to the public. The Stanley Burnshaw Lecture was established at the Ransom Center in honor of the noted poet, critic, playwright, and publisher. Burnshaw’s still-active career in literature began in 1926 when he founded his own verse journal, Poetry Folio. Since then he has authored a number of works, including his verse play The Bridge (1945), The Seamless Web (1981), and Robert Frost Himself (1986). An award-winning scholar and critic, Dickstein is the author of Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties (1977), which was cited by The New York Times as one of the 12 best books of the year. Dickstein is currently working on a cultural history of America during the 1930s.
Events
Poet, editor, and translator Jonathan Galassi will read from his translations (Eugenio Montale’s Collected Poems, 1920-1954) in the fourth floor auditorium of the Ransom Center on Thursday, October 28 at 7:30pm. Galassi is editor-in-chief of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux and president of the Academy of American Poets and was poetry editor of The Paris Review from 1978-1987. His own poetry has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New Republic, and Poetry… Also on October 28, Edmund Morris will read from and sign Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan at 7pm at BookPeople… El Paso author Abraham Verghese will be at BookPeople on Tuesday, October 26 at 7pm to read from and sign the paperback of The Tennis Partner: A Doctor’s Story of Friendship and Loss… Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review has a new issue out; there will be a reading at BookPeople on Saturday, October 23 at 2pm to celebrate the new issue… Barnes & Noble Homestead (14010 Hwy. 183) hosts local author Ann Rowe Seaman to read from and sign her new book Swaggart: The Unauthorized Biography of an American Evangelist on Monday, October 25 at 7:30pm.
History Award
The Texas Historical Commission is accepting nominations for the annual T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award; the THC will award up to three $1,000 cash prizes to authors of Texas history books published in 1999. The Fehrenbach award encourages original research of Texas history and is named in honor of Fehrenbach, one of the leading authorities on Texas history and the author of 18 books. The nomination deadline is December 30; visit http://www.thc.state.tx.us; call 512/463-6255; or write Texas Historical Commission, Marketing Communications Division, PO Box 12276, Austin, TX 78711-2276.
This article appears in October 22 • 1999.