February 8, 1994

Press Contact: Craig D'Ooge, (202) 707-9189

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Two American Expatriate Poets To Read at the Library of Congress

On Thursday evening, March 17 at 6:45 p.m., the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund will present a reading by expatriate poets Cyrus Cassells and Shirley Kaufman in the Library's Mumford Room. Tickets are not required.

Cyrus Cassells's first book, The Mud Actor (Holt, 1982), was a National Poetry Series selection and a nominee for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. His second collection, Soul Make a Path Through Shouting, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in July 1994. A graduate of Stanford University, he is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Lavan Younger Poet Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. He has been poet- in-residence at Northeastern University and at the College of the Holy Cross, where he also lectured in Spanish, Catalan, and African American literature, with an emphasis on the work of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. He has just completed a play, "Doctor Free," about the Underground Railroad, and a book of translations of the late Catalan poet Salvador Espriu. Mr. Cassells, who has traveled widely, lived recently in Florence as a student of Italian language and literature, and currently lives in Rome.

Shirley Kaufman, born in Seattle, Washington, has lived in Jerusalem, Israel, since 1973. Her collections of poetry include The Floor Keeps Turning (1969), Gold Country (1973), From One Life to Another (1979), all from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Claims (1984), from Sheep Meadow Press; and Rivers of Salt (1993), from Copper Canyon Press. Her book-length poem, Looking at Henry Moore's Elephant Skull Etchings in Jerusalem During the War, was published in a hand-printed edition with Mr. Moore's etchings by Unicorn Press in 1977 and by Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv, in 1980 (translated into Hebrew by Israeli poet Dan Pagis). Among her awards and honors are the Academy of American Poets' Prize, the Discovery Award of the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street YM-YWHA, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Columbia University translation prize.

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PR 94-032
2/9/94
ISSN 0731-3527