October 7, 1996
Contact: Lew Harris (615) 322-2706
Award-winning poet to read from work at Vanderbilt
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Award-winning poet Dave Smith will read from
his work Oct. 16 as part of the Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt
Visiting Writers Series.
The program is slated for 8 p.m. in Room 126 of Wilson Hall. The Visiting
Writers Series is sponsored by the Vanderbilt English Department and is
made possible through an endowment fund. Members of the community are invited
to attend.
Smith is the author of many collections of poetry published in the United
States and abroad, including two volumes of selected poems: "The Roundhouse
Voices" and "Fate's Kite."
His most recent book, "Floating on Solitude," gathers three of
his poetry collections in one volume. Smith has also published a novel,
"Onliness," and a collection of critical essays, "Local Assays."
"Dave Smith emerges as a distinguished allegorist of human experience,"
Helen Vendler wrote in an essay about Smith in The New Yorker. "He
is solemn, harsh, driven, obdurate, hungry for some guarantees--which he
wants as much to create as to experience--of promises kept, love exchanged,
hope confirmed. Since he is an accomplished watcher of inner states, he
will write a changing poetry."
Smith is the recipient of many awards for his work, including fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation. He also won the Virginia Poetry Prize in 1988 and the American
Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in 1979.
Smith, an LSU professor, is in his sixth year as co-editor of The Southern
Review. For more information, call Vanderbilt's English Department at 322-2541.
-VU-
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