Rose Solari Joins in a Dickinson Tradition at this Year’s Tell it Slant Festival
For the first time, Tell it Slant Festival is going digital. Make sure you catch the final days of the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon.
While the Emily Dickinson poetry marathon is not a marathon in the traditional sense, it does test the endurance, fortitude, and preparedness of all its participants. Over a seven day period, 14 hours in all, participants will read every one of the enigmatic 19th-century poet's 1,789 poems in the order prescribed by R.W. Franklin's The Poems of Emily Dickinson.
This year's Tell it Slant Festival, for the first time, is entirely virtual. This means that it is open to anyone who wishes to watch the spectacle of 20 or so professional poets reading the entirety of Dickinson's oeuvre.
One of the poets reading on day 4, September 17th, will be ASP's own Rose Solari. Solari will be reading from poems 661-918. Day four is hosted by none other than the Folger's Shakespeare Library. Anyone can register as a listener HERE.
Featured Audio: Rose Solari reads “The Beginning, 1939”
In “The Beginning, 1939” Rose Solari’s mastery of recitation is put to the music of her capricious mother and the frantic hopes of her father who wishes to leave “no long, tight pauses for her to fill.” I’ve written before about Rose’s use of swing and rhythmic motifs in her work, elements which are alive in this poem, but what is really mesmerizing to me about “1939” is the musical image toward the end which harbors no pretense of cramming lieder into language, but instead focuses on the very physical act of her mother playing the piano:
Mikaela Lefrak Examines the Life of Maryland Poet Laureate, Grace Cavalieri
The beloved Grace Cavalieri “contains multitudes” according to Mikaela Lefrak in her newest article from WAMU taking a look at the life and career of the 10th Poet Laureate. And Ms. Lefrak treats her subject with the due respect of a life which cannot be covered succinctly in 500 words. She delivers a reverent tourists’ view of Grace Cavalieri’s life, hitting the big things: her poetry and work ethic, the passing of her husband, Kenneth Flynn, her conversion to Buddhism, and finally her new tenure as Poet Laureate.
Listen to Grace Cavalieri on the Kojo Nnamdi Show
Grace Cavalieri’s recent stop at NPR’s The Kojo Nnamdi show is now streamable. Over a substantive 22 minutes, listen to Grace talk about poetry, inspiration, and her plans as the 10th Maryland Poet Laureate.