Wow, what a rare evening, so many old and new friends in the audience. Poets everywhere. Thank you Joyce Jenkins, Richard Silberg, Catherine Taylor, and the Albany Library.
In a rare West Coast appearance, Gerald Stern read from his new collection, Divine Nothingness, and from his previous book, In Beauty Bright—as well as from his latest manuscript of 60 pages and growing by the minute. Prolific and energetic, Gerald Stern taught us with much laughter and wit, that 90 is the new 60.
Gerald Stern is the recipient of a National Book Award, the Library of Congress 2005 Wallace Stevens Award, and the 2012 Rebekah Johynson Bobbitt National Prize. As this year’s Robert Frost Gold Medalist for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry From the Poetry Society of America, Stern is one of the country’s most honored poets. He has been writing for over seventy years, with seventeen books of verse and a memoir, Stealing History.
Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner, introduced Gerald Stern. We had a book signing with cake at Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, hosted by Poetry at the Albany Library and co-sponsored by Poetry Flash.I also ran into Jane Hirshfield at the reading, and she gave me a big hug. We haven’t physically seen each other in decades. Al Young took a photo of us together, but it was blurred. Story of my life.
