September 14, 2004

UCSD Poets In The Best American Poetry 2004; Reading Set For Oct. 9

By Barry Jagoda

The University of California, San Diego Department of Literature is well represented in The Best American Poetry 2004, the prestigious annual that sets the current standard in the United States and Canada. Poets represented in this year's edition include literature professors Rae Armantrout, Michael Davidson, and Eileen Myles as well as Professor Emerita Fanny Howe and a host of poets who have been invited to teach at UCSD and/or give readings on campus.

The Best American Poetry series, which dates back to 1988, has become an eagerly anticipated annual event. Library Journal calls it "one of the best things going in modern American literature." Each year a respected guest editor culls through countless contemporary journals to find poems of highest quality that represent the state of the art. In 1988 John Ashbery was guest editor; in 2004 it is Lyn Heijinian – who among her numerous credits taught poetry and personal narrative at UCSD in the spring of 1992 and has returned a number of times to read for the UCSD New Writing Series.

Rae Armantrout, whose poem "Almost" appears in The Best American Poetry 2004, has just been appointed professor of writing in the Department of Literature. She is not a newcomer, however. A Department of Literature lecturer from 1981 to 2004, she has also been coordinating the New Writing Series for over a decade. Armantrout is a highly regarded poet -- both nationally and internationally – with eleven books to her credit, including most recently Up to Speed, Veil, and The Pretext. Her poems also appeared in The Best American Poetry series in 2001 and 2002.

Michael Davidson, who has been affiliated with UCSD since 1974 and professor of American literature since 1988, is represented in this year's Best American Poetry by a poem entitled "Bad Modernism." In addition to being a widely published poet and poetry editor, Davidson is known for his insightful literary criticism and his work in disability studies. Recent publications include Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics and The Arcades. He is also the editor of George Oppen: New Collected Poems. Named the 2004 Academic Senate Faculty Research Lecturer in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Davidson was invited to deliver a campus lecture last spring, a talk he entitled "Universal Design: The Work of Disability in an Age of Globalization."

Eileen Myles, whose "No Rewriting" appears in The Best American Poetry 2004, came to UCSD as a professor of writing and head of the writing section in 2002. She is widely recognized as a fiction writer as well as the "rock star of modern poetry." Author of several books, including most recently Skies, on my way, Cool for You, and School of Fish, Myles was also a candidate for the 1992 Presidential election.

Professor Emerita Fanny Howe, an active member of the Department of Literature from 1987 to 2001, is represented in The Best American Poetry 2004 by "Catholic." She is author of over 20 books, most recently The Wedding Dress, Gone, and Selected Poems -- all published by the University of California Press. In 2001 she was awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the Most Outstanding Book of Poetry Published in 2000. Howe's poems also appeared in Best American Poetry editions of 1990, 2001, and 2002.

Among the Best American Poetry 2004 poets who have taught at UCSD and given readings for the New Writing Series are Will Alexander, Carla Harryman, and Ron Silliman. Others who have made guest appearances on campus, primarily for the New Writing Series, are Bruce Andrews, Mary Jo Bang, Anselm Berrigan, Anne Carson, Rita Dove, Kenward Elmslie, Barbara Guest, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ann Lauterbach, Nathaniel Mackey, Harry Mathews, Steve McCaffery, Alice Notley, Bob Perelman, Carl Rakosi, Ed Roberson, Kit Robinson, Artur Sze, Edwin Torres, and Rodrigo Toscano. Other 2004 contributors are Charles Bernstein and Rachel Blau DuPlessis, who have both given readings in conjunction with receiving the Roy Harvey Pearce Award sponsored by the Archive for New Poetry at Mandeville Special Collections.

On Saturday, October 9, at 7:00 pm, D.G. Wills Books, 7561 Girard Avenue, in La Jolla Village, will celebrate The Best American Poetry 2004 with a reading by contributors Will Alexander, Rae Armantrout, Michael Davidson and Eileen Myles. For additional details, please visit the UCSD website, http://literature.ucsd.edu/news/currentevents

Media Contact, Barry Jagoda, (858) 534-8567