The Exit Interview with Laurence Goldstein and Cody Walker

Wednesday, June 21, 2017 - 7:00pm

Literati is proud to present its first ever Exit Interview! In celebration of his recent retirement from the academy, Literati will host Laurence Goldstein for an evening of conversation and poetry. Laurence will be interviewed by local poet, Cody Walker, in addition to reading poems from his previous collections. We hope you might join us as we admire and continue to learn from one of the greats!

Praise for Poetry Los Angeles:

“This book reflects a keen imagination open to Los Angeles as one of the most fluid and dynamic chronotopes of contemporary urban life. Goldstein is a remarkable and astute reader of poetry, from rap lyrics to the ‘high culture’ poetry of Carol Muske-Dukes and Derek Walcott, and his finely tuned sentences intermingle astute cultural observation with a deft sense of dispassionate humor.”

            —Bill Mohr, author of Hold-Outs: The Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance, 1948–1992

 Praise for A Room in California:

"The subject of A Room in California is imaginary kingdoms, from Hollywood to those in the Near East, and the drama of these poems grows out of the disparity between being merely human and, simultaneously, imagining oneself as a ruler or a god. The poems are about fantasy projections and fantastical declines and falls, and they speak to all of us who have kept scrapbooks, gone to movies, read voraciously, and watched fortune's wheel lift up some and drop others. These are beautiful, intricate poems, and this is a book of wonders." 

            —Charles Baxter

Laurence Goldstein is the author of The American Poet at the Movies: A Critical History (1994), four books of poems, including A Room in California (2005), and seven edited or co-edited volumes of cultural commentary. His latest book explores both the city where he spent his first 22 years and a vibrant American tradition of topographical verse. Poetry Los Angeles sets the agenda for twenty-first century studies of urban poetry in general, and the literature of Los Angeles in particular.

Cody Walker is the author of The Self-Styled No-Child (Waywiser, 2016) and Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser, 2008). His poems have appeared in The New York TimesThe Yale ReviewSlateSalon, and The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2007); his essays have appeared online in The New Yorker and the Kenyon Review. The former Poet Populist of Seattle, he now lives with his family in Ann Arbor, where he directs the creative writing minor at the University of Michigan. His new collection, The Trumpiad (Waywiser, 2017), was released in April.

 

Event address: 
Literati Bookstore
124 E. Washington St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Books: 
Poetry Los Angeles: Reading the Essential Poems of the City By Laurence Goldstein Cover Image
Email info@literatibookstore.com or call 734-585-5567 for price
ISBN: 9780472052240
Published: University of Michigan Press - March 12th, 2014

A Room in California By Laurence Goldstein Cover Image
$17.95
Email info@literatibookstore.com or call for price
ISBN: 9780810151598
Published: TriQuarterly - August 2nd, 2005