Poetry Center to Host Reading

Distinguished poet Jay Wright will read from his work at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in the Neilson Library Browsing Room. Sponsored by the Poetry Center at Smith College, this event is free and open to the public.

Jay Wright is the author of eight books of poems, including "The Homecoming Singer" (1971), "Dimensions of History" (1976), "Selected Poems" (1987) and, most recently, "Boleros."

In 1996 the Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets awarded Wright the Academy's 62nd Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement. "Over the past quarter-century," reads J. D. McClatchy's citation, "Jay Wright's books have appeared like summer lightning: sudden, unexpected, brilliant in the surrounding dark." His poems, which reflect the landscapes and cultures
of Africa, Latin America, and the American West, are "miracles of visionary energy, moralized lyricism and a buoyant, complex mythmaking."

Wright's other honors include a Rockefeller Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literary Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. He was born in
Albuquerque, N. M., educated at the University of California at Berkeley and Rutgers University and resides in Vermont.

The reading will be followed by bookselling and signing. For more information, contact Cindy Furtek in the Poetry Center office at (413) 585-4891 or Ellen Doré Watson, Director, at (413) 585-3368.

February 25, 2000