Award-winning Poet to give reading at library Sally Van Doren, the recipient of the 2007 Walt Whitman Award, will read her poetry from her award-winning collection at the Cornwall Free Library July 28th at 4 pm. The Walt Whitman Award, given by the Academy of American Poets, is one of the most prestigious book contests in the country; it brings book publication to an American poet who has never before published a book of poetry. The Whitman Award also carries a $5,000 cash prize and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Sally Van Doren received the Award for her book-length collection of poems Sex at Noon Taxes, which will be published in the spring of 2008 by Louisiana State University Press. She will read poems from this collection. August Kleinzahler, on selecting Sally Van Doren's book, wrote: Sally Van Doren's poetry gathered in Sex At Noon Taxes, both a palindrome and the title of a painting by Ed Ruscha, is everywhere alive. There are no dead moments, no fill: even the conjunctions, prepositions and assorted connectives carry a charge. The language is alive. The movement of language is alive. The mind at work here is at all points quick, full of play and bite. …Her poems are delicately made, intriguing in conception, unpredictable, balletic and swift in their turns, altogether most stimulating and memorable, and very much her own. Sally Van Doren’s poems have appeared in several journals, including Barrow Street, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, LIT, Margie, Parthenon West Review, Poetry Daily, and Pool. She is a graduate of Princeton University and received an M.F.A. from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She was a semi-finalist in the 2006 "Discovery"/The Nation Poetry Contest. Her poem, "The Sense Series," was the text for a multi-media performance at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in February 2007. She teaches for Springboard to Learning in the St. Louis Public Schools and curates the Sunday Poetry Workshops for the St. Louis Poetry Center. She divides her time between St. Louis and Cornwall. A reception follows the reading. One of her poems is below:
Preposition
The before took us right up to
the after, even though under
meant we should not try over,
from being stronger than to,
up shying from its ascent
in the face of down. I held
on to you and beside you
I became with and about.
In our around, the near/far
could turn away and toward,
within the without. By my above
and your below, the wheres and
whens retreated, leaving time
and space stranded, in off, on out.
