Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

Poet Baker to Speak at Oct. 16 Raymond Carver Series Event

Friday, October 11, 2013, By Renée K. Gadoua
Share
College of Arts and SciencesEventsspeakers

The poet David Baker is the next speaker in this semester’s Raymond Carver Reading Series at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 16, in Gifford Auditorium. A question-and-answer session will precede the reading from 3:45-4:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in SU’s paid lots.

David Baker

David Baker

His most recent collection of poetry, “Never-Ending Birds” (Norton, 2009), won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, named for the late poet who won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for the poem “The Waking.” One of the judges, the award-winning poet Rosanna Warren, noted the sensory nature of Baker’s writing. “He understands the human story as part of a larger story of life on earth, but he never forces the analogy,” she said. “His rhythms are as alive to the roll and tang of syllables on the tongue as they are to the recurrences and interruptions of the circulation of blood and sap. His poems respond deeply to life, and enlarge our imaginative responses to it.”

Baker’s other poetry collections include “Treatise on Touch: Selected Poems” (Arc Publications, 2007), “Midwest Eclogue” (Norton, 2005), “Changeable Thunder” (University of Arkansas, 2001), “The Truth about Small Towns” (1998), “After the Reunion” (1994), “Sweet Home, Saturday Night” (University of Arkansas Press,1991), “Haunts” (Cleveland State University, 1985), and “Laws of the Land” (Ahsahta/Boise State University, 1981).

Baker’s work invites readers to “lean down and listen,” Kirkus Reviews wrote about “The Truth about Small Towns.” “And when we do, we hear the steady rhythms and strong cadences of a poet who measures his praise of the natural world and his celebration of love with the darkness that threatens both, all within the setting of small, rural towns.”

He teaches English and creative writing at Denison College in Ohio and is the poetry editor of Kenyon Review. His poems and essays have appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Paris Review and Slate.

“I write in fits and starts,” he said in an online video profile for Dennison. “Sometimes I’ll write for days without stopping. Then months or weeks will go by when I don’t really write.” Since publishing his first poem at about 20, his writing has become “less linear, more associative,” he said. “I know I’ve gotten more engaged with text and stories and narratives beyond the moment or this day or this place.”

To be a poet, “You have to be two things at once: extremely arrogant, enough to think you’re going to sit down and say something of value to the world and extremely humble and embarrassed by that very thing so that you realize that as you write you’re not writing to yourself, you’re not writing your own story,” he said. “In fact, as you write a poem, it’s more and more about relinquishing yourself to this other thing.”

Fall 2013 Series Schedule
Following are the remaining speakers in this semester’s series. All readings begin at 5:30 p.m. in Gifford Auditorium. Question-and-answer sessions are from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m. Further information is available by calling 315-443-2174.

Nov. 13: Stephen Dunn G’70, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for “Different Hours” (W.W. Norton, 2000). His poetry collections include “Here and Now: Poems” (W.W. Norton, 2011) and “What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009” (W.W. Norton, 2009).

Nov. 20: Cheryl Strayed G’02, author of The New York Times bestselling memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” (Knopf, 2012), “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar” (Vintage Books, 2012) and the novel “Torch” (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

Dec. 4: Jane Springer, a poet whose books include “Dear Blackbird” (University of Utah Press, 2007) and “Murder Ballad” (Alice James Books, 2012).

  • Author

Renée K. Gadoua

  • Recent
  • Data Privacy Day 2021: Is Your Personal Information Safe?
    Monday, January 25, 2021, By Daryl Lovell
  • Spring 2021 Office of Research Events Focus on Research Success
    Monday, January 25, 2021, By News Staff
  • A&S Speech Disorders Professor: Poet Amanda Gorman’s Story Shares Important Lesson
    Monday, January 25, 2021, By Daryl Lovell
  • Syracuse University Names Four as “Unsung Heroes” in Honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Monday, January 25, 2021, By News Staff
  • WAER Will Transition to the Newhouse School This Summer
    Monday, January 25, 2021, By Wendy S. Loughlin

More In Arts & Culture

Drama Department to Virtually Present New Theatrical Work Inspired by University’s 150th Anniversary

Inspired by Syracuse University’s 150th anniversary, the Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will virtually present “Impact: Past, Present, Future,” a new theatrical piece that will be performed live in a series of four staged…

Special Collections Research Center Launches Latin American 45s Digital Collection

Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), working in partnership with the Digital Library Program (DLP), recently launched the Belfer Latin American 45s Digital Collection. The digital collection will eventually provide access to over 12,000 recordings that date from…

VPA Faculty to Present World Premieres at Society for New Music Concert Jan. 31

Performers affiliated with the Setnor School of Music in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) are teaming up with the Society for New Music (SNM) for world premieres by two up-and-coming composers. Cellist Gregory Wood and percussionist Rob…

Sound Beat: Access Audio Offering Children’s Audiobooks about Enslaved People by Cheryl Wills ’89

Sound Beat: Access Audio is providing two free family audiobooks written by Emmy Award-winning journalist Cheryl Wills ’89,  the great-great-great granddaughter of Emma and Sandy Wills, enslaved people from Haywood, Tennessee. The audiobooks are narrated by the author and are…

Syracuse Stage Announces Changes to the 2020/2021 Season

Syracuse Stage announced adjustments to the schedule for the remainder of the 2020/2021 season. These adjustments include replacing previously announced shows with new titles and come in direct response to the evolving situation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting in February,…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2021 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.