Welcome to the Vallejo Library monthly poetry event!
Meet Your Poetic Cousins & Ancestors
This guided review of legacy poets from around the world is an intimate exploration group, meeting to review many fine & famous (or infamous, or not-so-famous) poets of the past & present who have left a mark on literature, the art of poetry, and society as a whole.
JOIN US to discover (or re-discover) male, female & other poets of all ethnicities.
We’ll review poets romantic & erotic, political, pastoral & personal, dreamers, ragers, firebrands, sensualists – poets of all colors & stripes – names you will recognize, and (we hope) many you don’t recognise.
To keep in touch with interested poets & potential participants, the library will publish this growing list on its website of all the poets currently suggested for review, with a short bio & picture, plus a selection of poems titles for all the poets listed. Our Facebook page will also show reviews & suggestions from participants. We also plan a separate website in the future.
On the Second Wednesday of each month, we will gather for a round-table review of several poets, with each participant at that meeting having chosen a poet to explore for the evening. Participants will have unlimited time before the meeting to read about their chosen poet, explore one or more biographies & several poems, and sketch out in advance a piece to read at the next gathering.
We will open with a participant reading on of the chosen poet’s poems, then we will open a discussion among the participants, after which that participant can read his or her written offering. The next participant will then read a chosen poem, followed by a discussion, as well as his or her written offering. This pattern will follow until all the participants have read – ending at 8pm. Depending on how many people are present, each segment will have to be timed so that everyone can read.
A working list at press-time includes: Alex Pushkin, Alla Gutnikova, Allen Ginsburg, Andrei Codrescu, Anna Akmatova, Cesar Vallejo, Dylan Thomas, E.E. Cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, Emerald GoingSnake, Federico Garcia Lorca, Hannah Arendt, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Jessie Lamont, Jesus Papoleto Melendez, Joy Harjo, John Berryman, Kahlil Gibran, Shams Hafez, Katrine O Jensen, Langston Hughes, Maria Stepanova, Mary Oliver, May Sarton, May, Swenson, Maya Angelou, Omar Khayyam, Pablo Neruda, Silvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, Vaclev Pavel, V. Mayakovski, A. Voznesensky, W H Auden, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Y. Yevtushenko
Free
