SPENCER REECE’s poems have been described as “subtle, atmospheric and lucent,” echoing the works of Bishop and James Merrill. His first collection, The Clerk’s Tale, was selected by Louise Glück to win the 2003 Bakeless Poetry Prize. In her introduction, Glück praises the tone of the poems, “so supple, so deft, so capable of simultaneous refinements and ironies as to seem not a tone, not an effect of art, but the truth.”  A long-time Brooks Brothers employee, Reece’s work is filled with gentle humor, isolating sorrow, and a keen alertness to the characters that inhabit the Mall of America, which he compares to a gothic cathedral. Currently, he is studying for the priesthood at Yale Divinity School.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore and educated at the universities of Allahabad and Bombay. The journal Fulcrum has said that his poems are “coded messages from the unconscious, but [that] there is an exceedingly conscious hand that crafts them.” A History of Indian Literature in English, which he edited, was awarded the Choice magazine’s Outstanding Academic Title of the Year. Translator from the Prakrit, and author of four collections of poems, including, most recently The Transfiguring Places, Mehrotra is Professor of English and Chair of the Department at the University of Allahabad.  His visit to Smith is sponsored by the departments of Philosophy, English, and Comparative Literature.

Presented by the departments of Philosophy, English, and Comparative Literature

*POSTPONED: Due to circumstances beyond her control, Ms. Smith was unable to come to Smith College on this date. Her reading has been postponed to Fall 2009.*

Tracy K. Smith ’s poems treat grief and loss, historical intersections with race and family, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood, prompting Yusef Komunyakaa to write, “Here’s a voice that can weave beauty and terror into one breath.” Joy Harjo has called her work “a true merging of the ancient roots of poetry with the language of an age of a different kind of sense.” Author of two collections, The Body’s Question (Graywolf Press 2003) and Duende (Graywolf Press 2007), and recipient of many honors, including a Whiting Writers Award and the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, Smith teaches creative writing at Princeton.

Jacqueline Osherow’s work explores “Jewishness,” often in difficult verse forms (sestinas, sonnets, terza rima), often with humor and an intimate tone. Some of her best known poems address her post-Holocaust consciousness. For my generation," she says, "those born in the aftermath of the war—the horror...defined the world to us. It is as a testament to this predicament that I wish these poems to stand." Author of five books of poems, most recently The Hoopoe’s Crown, Osherow has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill Foundations, among other prizes and awards. She is Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Utah. 

Presented by the Program in Jewish Studies and the Office of the Jewish Chaplain

Former US Poet Laureate Mark Strand is the author of eleven books of poems, including Blizzard of One, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1999. “To read Strand from his first book through the present,” notes Poetry magazine, “is to see a single course pursued with exquisite precision.” Booklist proclaimed him “a fabulist and a surrealist in the manner of Borges and Calvino, [who] writes spare, melancholy, and haunting poems.” Recipient of many distinguished honors, including a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation, Strand is a former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.