This session of Our Life in Poetry will feature poetry readings and discussion by Monica de la Torre, Cate Marvin, and Brenda Shaugnhessy, three bold, daring, and highly accomplished poets, still in the formative phases of their writing careers. Each of these poets is known for her experimental, innovative, and sometimes provocative style. Their work displays irreverence and surprise, and is filled with playful and unexpected twists and turns. They endeavor in their poems to move beyond direct or confessional expression of emotion or experience, and into a realm where an imaginative and often implausible play of words takes precedence over a response to literal reality. Michael Braziller, publisher of Persea Books, a literary press he co-founded in 1975, will moderate the event. After the poets read their work, they will discuss questions of style, focusing on the use of artifice (such as the unexpected rush of thought, image and feeling) and persona (the use of a voice other than their own) in achieving their sharp and unexpected results. To view Monica de la Torre's, "The Crush," and selected poems by Brenda Shaughnessy, please click on the links below. Please bring a printed copy to the class. Copies of the poem will not be provided at the event.

The Crush (PDF)
The Crush (Word)

Shaughnessy Poems (PDF)
Shaughnessy Poems (Word)

Monica de la Torre writes about art and culture for publications in Mexico and the U.S. and is the author of the poetry books Talk Shows and Acufenos, a collection in Spanish published in 2006 in Mexico City. She is co-author of the artist's book Appendices, Illustrations & Notes, and co-editor of the anthology Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry with Michael Wiegers. She translated the books Poems by Gerardo Deniz and Mauve Sea-Orchids by Lila Zemborain. She is senior editor at BOMB Magazine.

Cate Marvin is an acclaimed poet whose first book, World's Tallest Disaster, was chosen by Robert Pinksy for the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. Her poems have appeared in The New England Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Fence, The Paris Review, The Cincinnati Review, Slate, Verse, Boston Review, and Ninth Letter. She is co-editor with poet Michael Dumanis of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, was published in 2007. A recent Whiting Award recipient and 2007 NYFA Gregory Millard Fellow, she teaches poetry writing in Lesley University's Low-Residency M.F.A. Program and is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy and Human Dark with Sugar, which won the 2007 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have been published in Bomb, Conjunctions, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from The Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University, The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, the Greenwall Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She is the Poetry Editor of Tin House Magazine and Tin House Books and is currently teaching at Princeton University and Eugene Lang College at the New School.