92ND STREET Y UNTERBERG POETRY CENTER 1994-95 SEASON Calendar of Readings Join us for an exciting season of readings and lectures with internationally celebrated novelists, poets and playwrights. On February 6 at 8 p.m., The 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center will present playwrights Tony Kusher and Caryl Churchill. British playwright Caryl Churchill has written for the stage,television, and radio. She has twice been the recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. American playwright Tony Kushner was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the 1993 Tony Award for Best Play for Millennium Approaches, the first part of his theatrical epic Angels in America, excerpted below. "Why has democracy succeeded in America? Of course by succeeded I mean comparatively, not literally, not in the present, but what makes for the prospect of some sort of radical democracy spreading outward and growing up? Why does the power that was once so carefully preserved at the top of the pyramid by the original framers of the Constitution seem drawn inexorably downward and outward in spite of the best effort of the Right to stop this? I mean it's the really hard thing about being Left in this country, the American Left can't help but trip over all these petrified little fetishes: freedom, that's the worst; you know, Jean Kirkpatrick for God's sake will go on and on about freedom and so what does that mean, the word freedom, when she talks about it, or human rights; you have Bush talking about human rights, and so what are these people talking about, they might as well be talking about the mating habits of Venusians, these people don't begin to know what, ontologically, freedom is or human rights, like they see these bourgeois property-based Rights-of-Man-type rights but that's not enfranchisement, not democracy, not what's implicit, what's potential within the idea, not the idea with blood in it. That's just liberalism, the worst kind of liberalism, really, bourgeois tolerance, and what I think is that what AIDS shows us is the limits of tolerance, that it's not enough to be tolerated, because when the shit hits the fan you find out how much tolerance is worth. Nothing. And underneath all the tolerance is intense, passionate hatred." (From Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner. NY:Theatre Communications Group, Inc. 1993. Reprinted with permission from the author.) October 3 E.L. Doctorow October 6, Thursday, 8 pm Sam Shepard October 10 Alice Munro and Carol Shields October 17 Sir Stephen Spender October 24 Doris Lessing October 31 Writers and Ghosts A Halloween reading with Brad Leithauser, Benjamin Cheever, Alison Lurie, and Joyce Carol Oates November 7 Nadine Gordimer November 14 History and Fiction I: Shelby Foote on "The Novelist as Historian," followed by a conversation with Madison Smartt Bell November 21 Mary Jo Salter and Mark Strand November 28, 6 pm Writers-at-Work Live Interview Garrison Keillor is interviewed by George Plimpton November 28, 8:30 pm Garrison Keillor reads from his work December 5 Two Masters from the Low Countries: Hugo Claus and Cees Nooteboom December 12 Edward Albee with Mel Gussow December 19 Jack Gilbert and Linda Gregg January 9 William Gaddis and William H. Gass: A Literary Conversation and Reading January 16 A Martin Luther King Day Gathering of Poets with E. Ethelbert Miller, Thulani Davis, Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady, Eugene B. Redmond, Primus St. John, Sonia Sanchez, and Al Young January 23, 8:15 pm Cyrus Cassells, Martn Espada and Marilyn Hacker January 30 Women in Mind: New Musical Melodramas with Claire Bloom and Brian Zeger February 6 Caryl Churchill and Tony Kushner February 13 After Ovid: New Metamorphoses A reading from new translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses with Eavan Boland, Amy Clampitt, Carol Ann Duffy, Alice Fulton, Jorie Graham, Michael Hofmann, Kenneth Koch, James Lasdun, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, Robert Pinsky, Robin Robertson, and C.K. Williams February 20 Robertson Davies February 27, 8:15 pm Readings by New Poets: The Tenth Muse I Mark Strand introduces Jacqueline Osherow, Susan Prospere and Patricia Storace March 6 History and Fiction II: Russell Banks, Allan Gurganus, Charles Johnson, and Marilynne Robinson. Moderated by Simon Schama. March 13 Elizabeth Tallent and James Welch March 20 Yusef Komunyakaa and William Matthews March 27 Ivan Klma and Pawel Huelle April 3 Sandra Cisneros and Grace Paley April 10, 8:15 pm Readings by New Poets: The Tenth Muse II Mona Van Duyn introduces David Clewell, Donna Masini and Wyatt Prunty April 17 History and Fiction III: George Garrett, Thomas Keneally, Patrick O'Brian, and Mary Lee Settle. Moderated by Daniel Aaron. April 24 E. Annie Proulx and Jane Smiley May 1 Anne Waldman and Jay Wright May 8, 8:15 pm "Discovery"/The Nation 1995 Contest Winners: Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prizes May 15 Ursula K. LeGuin and Carolyn Kizer May 23, Tuesday, 8 pm Octavio Paz BIOGRAPHERS & BRUNCH Seven Sunday morning lectures by literary biographers. A light brunch with coffee will follow each lecture. (Poetry Center Members receive a discount on series subscriptions and single tickets.) 11 am-1 pm October 23 E.E. Cummings: A Centennial Panel Discussion with David Diamond, Leslie A. Fiedler, Richard S. Kennedy, and Grace Schulman. Moderated by Norman Friedman. November 6 Annie Cohen-Solal on Jean-Paul Sartre November 20 R.W.B. Lewis on Robert Penn Warren December 4 Francine du Plessix Gray on The World of Louise Colet: Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Alfred de Musset and Alfred de Vigny December 18 David Leeming on James Baldwin February 5 Nicola Beauman on E.M. Forster March 5 Jay Parini on John Steinbeck (with Elaine Steinbeck) For more information on The Poetry Center's programs, including an extensive Writing Program, please pick up a Poetry Center brochure in the lobby. To Order Tickets, call Y-CHARGE at (212) 996-1100 The Unterberg Poetry Center is part of the Tisch Center for the Arts and is supported by a major grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. The 92nd Street Y is an agency of UJA-Federation. .