Elizabeth McFarland’s Poetry
BOOK LAUNCH READING OF ELIZABETH McFARLAND’S POETRY COLLECTION,
“OVER THE SUMMER WATER”
On Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 7:30 p.m., the Mad Poets Society will present a special event celebrating the posthumous release of a first book of poems by Elizabeth McFarland, Over the Summer Water, from Orchises Press. The event will be held at The Main Line Art Center, located at Old Buck Road and Lancaster Ave. in Haverford (Old Buck Rd. runs next to Wilke Lexus dealership/across from Wendy’s.)
Elizabeth McFarland (1922-2005) is the poet who brought poetry into the lives of millions. As poetry editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal from 1948 to 1961, she published new work by many noted poets, W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, Theodore Roethke, among others; and by the soon-to-be famous young poets, among them Maxine Kumin, Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath. Her poems embody purity of feeling in purity of diction and musical structure, and have the fingerprint of her individual style. Rachel Hadas writes, “I am intrigued by the wit that knows what to put in and what to leave out, and the curbed but no less strong sensuality.”
Her husband of fifty-seven years, Daniel Hoffman, will describe her extraordinary and unique editorial career, and define the distinctive lyric virtues of her poems, of which their daughter, Kate Hoffman Siddiqi, will read a selection.
Daniel Hoffman is a former United States Poet Laureate (the appointment previously was known as “Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress”, 1973 to 1974) and is a Chancellor Emeritus of The Academy of American Poets. He has published eleven books of poetry, most recently from Braziller Press, Makes You Stop and Think: Sonnets. He is the Felix E. Schelling Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.
A wine and cheese reception will follow.
For information on this special event, contact Eileen D’Angelo at 610-586-9318, email: madpoets@comcast.net; Website: www.madpoetssociety.com.
Post a Comment