Dorianne Laux

Michelle Bitting, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar

7 JULY 2016 — thursday

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, and Michelle Bitting, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Michelle Bitting's new book of poems is The Couple Who Fell to Earth. Juan Felipe Herrera says, "In a multi-directional 'one shape' of voices, time, people, spaces Bitting takes us in and out of her all seeing third eye poetics. We go into an orb of family, love, then we swoop out into the delight of humanity.…A unique treasure of visions and voice." Her first collection, Good Friday Kiss, was chosen by Thomas Lux for the DeNovo First Book Award, and her second, Notes To The Beloved, won the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award and got a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.
Dorianne Laux's fifth book of poems is The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Prize. Alan Shapiro says, "The Book of Men…could just as easily have been called The Book of Empathy, or The Book of Negative Capability, or The Book of Intimate Awareness of Who We Are and How We Got To Be This Way. Whether she is writing about men or women, the powerful or the powerless, the present day or the past, Laux observes, evokes and meditates with profound compassion and understanding for the delicate complexities of the human heart." Her previous collections are Awake, What We Carry, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Smoke, and Facts About the Moon, which won the Oregon Book Award. Among her other honors are a Pushcart Prize, two appearances in Best American Poetry, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Joseph Millar's new book of poems is Blue Rust. Tony Hoagland observes of it, "…long spiraling sentences full of used cars and kung pao chicken, umbilical blood and rent money, lentils and sausage and death.…Blue Rust is a big, beautiful book of poems—moving, sensuous, artful, full of courage and blessings." His previous collections are Overtime and Fortune. His honors include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Pushcart Prize.