A Poetry Reading

Saturday, September 24^th @ 4.30PM (please note time change)

Labyrinth Books, Princeton

122 Nassau Street

Princeton, NJ 08542

609.497.1600 #227

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Flies presents an uncompromising vision of joy and devastating loss through a strict economy of language and an exuberant surrealism. Michael Dickman’s poems bring us back to the wonder and violence of childhood, and the desire to connect with a power greater than ourselves. “Hilarity transfiguring all that dread, manic overflow of powerful feeling, zero at the bone — Flies renders its desolation with singular invention and focus and figuration: the making of these poems makes them exhilarating.” (Michael Ryan)

“Death is the new and unshakeable lens through which I see,” writes Dana Levin about her third book, in which she confronts mortality and loss in subjects ranging from Tibetan Buddhist burial practices to Aztec human sacrifice. Shaped by dreams and “the worms and the gods,” these poems are a profound investigation of our inescapable fate. As Louise Glueck has said: “Levin’s animating fury goes back deep into our linguistic and philosophic history: to Blake’s tiger, to the iron judgments of the Old Testament.” “Levin has the skilled ear, magnificent tongue, and fierce mind of the truly prophetic.” (Rain Taxi)

Michael Dickman‘s previous book is The End of the West. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, and Field, among others. Dickman is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton, and the Lannan Foundation. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. Flies received the James Laughlin Award for most outstanding second book by an American poet.

Dana Levin‘s previous books are Wedding Day and In the Surgical Theatre, winner of the prestigious APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She teaches creative writing at the University of New Mexico and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy of Poets, among others.

This reading is free and open to the public.