Poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Lloyd Schwartz, a friend of renowned poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) during the last decade of her life, will give a talk at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 11, in Olin Library (Ginkgo Reading Room, Level 1).
In his lecture, entitled "'Friending' and Editing Elizabeth Bishop," Schwartz will discuss what makes Bishop a great writer, how he got to know her and work with her, and the various problems that arose in editing her work. The event is sponsored by the University Libraries and the Department of English.
Schwartz is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Classical Music Editor of The Boston Phoenix, and a regular commentator on NPR's Fresh Air. His most recent book of poems is Cairo Traffic, and his poems and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. In 2994 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. He is co-editor of Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters and editor the new centennial edition of Bishop's Prose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).
The Department of Special Collections at Washington University Libraries includes some 250 letters between Bishop and poet May Swenson, as well as 40 letters between Bishop and poet Anne Stevenson, in the Libraries' Modern Literature Collection.
Books will be available for purchase through the University Campus Store at the event, which is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow Schartz's talk.
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