April is National Poetry Month, and in celebration, every Thursday this month, there will be live poetry readings from 12:15 to 12:30 at The Gallery! Live poetry for lunch – yea! Come and learn about some great contemporary poets, and enjoy a healthy gourmet lunch at The Wild Plum Cafe at the same time!
We started today with two poems by Missouri Poet Laureate David Clewell, “Vegetarian Physics” and the first half of “But Seriously,” both from David’s Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry winning collection Now We’re Getting Somewhere.
Here’s what past Poet Laureate Billy Collins had to say about David’s work:
“David Clewell is an exuberant, inexhaustible poet and an insider on such diverse American arcana as forgotten Hollywood actors, flying saucers, CIA shenanigans, comic books, cereal favors, beatnik kitsch, and jazz. His unstoppable narrative energy and his multi-layered curiosity are almost enough to drive this poet out to the far right side of the page. His elegy for a federal agent who jumped out a window on LSD is alone worth the price of this collection of Clewell at his best, his most Clewellian.”
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BIO: David Clewell is the author of seven poetry collections, including Blessings in Disguise, a winner in the National Poetry Series, and Now We’re Getting Somewhere, 1994 winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. His newest collection is Taken Somehow By Surprise, winner of the Four Lakes Poetry Prize, released last month by University of Wisconsin Press. Clewell teaches writing and literature at Webster University in St. Louis.
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Links:
Now We’re Getting Somewhere reviewed by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Words That Matter: David Clewell interviewed in Playback: St. Louis Magazine.
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Poems On-Line:
New Year’s Eve Letter to Friends
Jack Ruby’s America – Text, plus audio files available for free download in .wav format
Albert Einstein Held Me In His Arms
Not to Mention Love: A Heart for Patricia
Vegetarian Physics (live reading in MP3 audio format)
A Brief History of the Moon in 20th Century Song and Then Some (live reading in MP3 audio format)
The Collector (live reading in MP3 audio format)
Desperate Measures (live reading in MP3 audio format)
