[New-Poetry] Fw: [list] Marie Ponsot & Kevin O'Sullivan: June 6, 2008

[Anny Ballardini]

Friday, June 6th, 2008
7:30 - 9:00
MARIE PONSOT, Award-winning Poet and Mentor to Generations
with
KEVIN O'SULLIVAN, Dactyl Foundation's Emerging Poet of the Year

Space is limited:  rsvp at dactyl.org

Dactyl Foundation
64 Grand Street (Wooster/W. Bdwy)
NY, NY 10013
212-219-2344
www.dactyl.org

MARIE PONSOT, a native New Yorker, was born in 1921. She has published 
numerous works, including Springing (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); The Bird 
Catcher (1998), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a 
finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Green Dark (1988); 
Admit Impediment (1981); and True Minds (1957). When asked why poetry 
matters, Ponsot replied: "There's a primitive need for language that works 
as an instrument of discovery and relief, that can make rich the cold places 
of our inner worlds with the memorable tunes and dreams poems hold for us." 
Among her awards are a creative writing grant from the National Endowment 
for the Arts, the Frost medal, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern 
Language Association. In addition to translating many books from the French, 
Marie Ponsot has taught writing at Queens College, Beijing United 
University, the Poetry Center of the YMHA, Columbia University, and New York 
University. She currently teaches at The New School University in New York 
City.

KEVIN O'SULLIVAN, Dactyl Foundation's Emerging Poet of the Year 2008, has 
worked as a writer, teacher, entrepreneur, actuary, cryptographer, salesman, 
sailor, calligrapher, and draftsman; and along the way, completed a Masters 
in English and subsequent work toward the PhD at CUNY. As a graduate fellow, 
he met Marie Ponsot when they were both teaching at Queens College. No 
longer "distracted from poetry by earning a living," he has just completed 
Marie Ponsot's Poetry Thesis Workshop at the 92nd Y. He seeks out the 
strengths of contemporary poets, an example being Marie's "felicity of 
expression as a function of ferocity of quest." Other examples include "the 
lexical exuberance of Richard Kenney and Saskia Hamilton; Byzantine yet 
matrix-perfect syntax of Jorrie Graham (even the anomalies enchant); 
revelations of relationship in Stephen Dunn and Marie Howe; the 
pop-right-out ordinary speech that dazzles in an Ashbery poem; the loaded, 
omen-laden terseness of both Kay Ryan and Charles Simic, and idea-round-ups 
in an Anne Carson, Paul Muldoon or Auggie Kleinzahler poem."

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