The West Virginia University Department of English will host a lecture and reading by James Longenbach on Thursday, April 16. The lecture will be held at 2:30 p.m. in 130 Colson Hall and the reading will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Robinson Reading Room in the Downtown Library.

Longenbach is a poet and a critic whose most recent collection of poems, “The Iron Key,” is a meditation on the conditions and consequences of beauty. One of his recent critical works, “The Art of the Poetic Line,” is an account of the work of lineation in free verse, syllabic, and metered poetry (ranging from Shakespeare to Ashbery).

He has also written widely about modern and postmodern poetry, sometimes emphasizing the historicity of poetic language (“Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things”) but also exploring the ways in which poems resist their historical situation (“The Resistance to Poetry”).

“I am happy to welcome Jim Longenbach to WVU,” said English professor Mary Ann Samyn. “I’m a big fan of his poems and his prose about poetry. Both Jim Harms and I have taught his work, and we and our students are looking forward to meeting him.”

The lecture and reading are free and open to the public. A book signing and reception will follow.

-WVU-

mb/04/08/2015

CONTACT: Devon Copeland, Director of Marketing and Communication, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, West Virginia University, 304-293-6867, Devon.Copeland@mail.wvu.edu

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