Poetry Center to Host Reading

The Smith College Poetry Center will host a reading by poet, scholar, critic and distinguished literary translator Chana Bloch at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 25, in the Neilson Library Browsing Room.

The reading--which is free, wheelchair-accessible and open to the public--will be followed by a question-and-answer session on the art of translating poetry.

Bloch has published three collections of poems: "The Secrets of the Tribe," "The Past Keeps Changing," and most recently, "Mrs. Dumpty," for which she received the 1998 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry.

A riveting memoir in verse about a "great fall"--the dissolution of a long and loving marriage--"Mrs. Dumpty" is, according to poet Jean Valentine, "a clear-eyed and heartbreaking series of poems." The collection chronicles a process of inner transformation in which "the end of safety," with all its attendant terrors, proves to be the beginning of freedom. Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai writes, "The more powerful the words, the more piercing the images, the deeper the healing. That is what real poetry can do. And that is what "Mrs. Dumpty" succeeds in doing: healing with words, making this life livable."

Bloch's translations include the "Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai," "A Dress of Fire" and "The Window" by Dahlia Ravikovitch (in collaboration with Ariel Bloch), and a translation of the biblical "Song of Songs." She is W.M Keck Professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at Mills College.