Monday, November 6, 2017, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST

Gene Bianchi, Don Saliers, Holly York:  Emeriti Professors of Religion, Theology, and French

“An EUEC Poetry Slam:  Members Share Their Own Poetry (Plus)”

In this very special Lunch Colloquium, Gene Bianchi (founding director of the Emeritus College and continuing contributor to its success) will share some of the poetry from his most recent collection, The Hum of it All, and some from earlier times and times since, as well.  As Dana Greene put it in the blurb she wrote for the collection’s jacket (revealing her own poetic capacities),  “In [these] poems of nature, illness, aging, and every kind of unfixable brokenness one hears a cosmic hum, whittling down belief to heart wood.  It is the hum, the sound of all sounds, the ur-sound, taught by cat and owl, birch and wind which is the inspiration for these wonderful poems.”  As in the past, Gene has insisted that we invite other emeriti poets to present along with him—and we’re delighted that Don Saliers and Holly York have agreed to do so.  We will also invite attendees who might want to share a poem they have written themselves (or one written by another that they find especially powerful) to “stand and deliver” in the final twenty minutes of this program using poetry to celebrate poetry, which is, according to Marianne Moore, “the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads in them.’  Real toads, humming.