Subtext continues its monthly series of experimental writing with readings by Ed Roberson & April DeNonno at Richard Hugo House on Wednesday, July 5, 2006. Donations for admission will be taken at the door on the evening of the performance. The reading starts at 7:30pm. For readings and more information, click here.

Ed Roberson, teacher and former aquarium worker in Pittsburgh, has a new book, City Eclogue, from Atelos Press. Earlier books include Lucid Interval as Integral Music; Atmosphere Conditions (Sun & Moon); Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (winner of the 1995 Iowa Poetry Prize); and Just In/Word of Navigational Challenges: New and Selected Poems (Talisman Books). Roberson lives in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Review of City Eclogue (Atelos, 2006) from Publishers Weekly:

"Alternately detailed and abstract, calmly attentive and angry about bad news, this set of short lyrics from Roberson (Atmospheric Conditions) describes urban verticality ('buildings/ modulate the blocks// upwards/ the city a sky of floors') and zeroes in on the New York metropolitan area in particular. His depictions include the detritus of so-called urban renewal, 'From the project slabs leveled/ to the poor pride-kept and neat/ stands of/ old houses mowed down.' They include, too, the sounds of black America, from 'the street-talk birdcall of sucked teeth' to the disorienting jazz of Thelonious Monk. Lines like 'Adventure somehow decides to bypass all the already,' announces a modernist aesthetic which finds the basis for poetry anywhere. But however abstract he gets, Roberson never loses his sense of a personal voice, of a man talking (to himself or others) about the space in which we might try to live."

April DeNonno teaches contemporary literature, film, and cultural studies at Cornish College. Recent poems have appeared in the literary magazines Monkey Puzzle, Facture, and Fine Madness.

For info on these & other Subtext events, see the website. Subtext events are co-sponsored by Richard Hugo House.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Recommend this article...