[Englmajors] Poetry reading, April 8, by Robert Chrisman (fwd)

[Kimberly Swayze]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:06:21 -0700


This is a rare opportunity to hear a major African-American poet and 
scholar read his recent work.

Poetry Reading by Robert Chrisman
Petersen Room, Allen Library
*
*Weds April 8, 3.30-5pm *

**

*Followed by drinks in the UW Club
sponsored by the English department Visiting Speakers Committee

Robert Chrisman is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of /The Black Scholar/,
/Journal of Black Studies and Research/, the leading journal of
African-American scholarship and intellectual inquiry in the United
States. Dr. Chrisman co-founded /The Black Scholar/ in 1969. Dr.
Chrisman has published two volumes of poetry, /Children of Empire/
(1981) and /Minor Casualties : New and Selected Poems/ (1993). He has
edited three major anthologies from /The Black Scholar/: /Contemporary
Black Thought /(1972), /Pan-Africanism /(1973), and /Court of Appeal:
The Black Community Speaks out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of
Clarence Thomas v. Anita Hill /(1993). He co-edited with Laurence
Goldstein the anthology, /Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry/ (2001).

Dr. Chrisman has an MA in Language Arts from San Francisco State College
(where he studied with Herb Blau), and a doctorate in English from the
University of Michigan. He retired from a Professorship and Chair of
Black Studies at University of Nebraska, Omaha, in 2005. His previous
teaching includes University of Michigan, Williams College, UC Berkeley,
University of Vermont, and Wayne State University.

Chrisman?s poetry is concerned with the issues of empire, both intensely
personal and global. In these explorations, poems range from intense
lyricism, to celebration and measured elegiac statement, to biting satire.

?Chrisman?s poignant poems speak of alienation?in families, in a world
of machinery. . . There is a concurrent theme: ?In suffering we shall
find / the lost garden of our grace,? and these elegant poems do exactly
that.? . . . Library Journal

?/Minor Casualties/ ranks with the very best poetic works of Robert
Hayden, Melvin B. Tolson, Michael Harper, Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan,
and Jayne Cortez.? Andrew Salkey

?His metaphors search out the reality of social turmoil, the agony and
courage of mythical and contemporary struggles for justice. He sees how
the deep-rooted, historical social conscience is also a poetic vision of
the measurement of personal and communal achievements.? James Schevill

?Revealed in this beautifully lyrical poetry is a mind?s intense desire
to comprehend the limits of, and to break through the snares of an
essentially Euro-Teutonic orientation into the larger world of
struggling humanity: the offer the songs of fishermen, cotton choppers,
can cutters and coffee pickers. . .? Alice Walker*

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