2-21-08

Media Release

Stephen Yenser to Give Poetry Reading

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Stephen Yenser will give a poetry reading on Friday, Feb. 29, at Oregon State University as part of OSU’s Visiting Writers Series.

The free public reading will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Valley Library Main Rotunda. A question-and-answer session and book signing will follow.

Yenser writes poems of great precision and quirky wit, critics say. Often reflecting on the experience of travel – whether to Greece or through the chamber of an MRI machine – his poems touch on mortality, our appetite for novelty, the layered textures of ordinary experience, and the vulnerabilities that love imposes on us. Though puns, double entendre, and other word play characterize his poems, he also is willing to risk sentiment and to express strong emotions directly.

Yenser’s most recent volume of poems is “Blue Guide,” published by the University of Chicago Press. His first collection, “The Fire in All Things,” (LSU Press), received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Among his other awards are the B. F. Connors Prize from the Paris Review, two appearances in the Best American Poetry series, and two Fulbright Fellowships. Yenser is Distinguished Professor of English and director of creative writing at UCLA.

In addition to being a lauded poet, Yenser is a prolific and highly regarded critic and editor. He has published three books on American poets and poetry and has just completed a fourth, “Extravagant Engagements: American Poetry Undefined.”

The Visiting Writers Series is sponsored by the OSU English Department, the Valley Library, and the Office of the Provost.