Poet David Lehman to speak for Writing Program Reading Series April 2

Poet David Lehman, editor of The Best American Poetry series, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 2, for Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

The talk — part of The Writing Program’s fall Reading Series — is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, on the university’s Danforth Campus. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.

Duncker Hall is located at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle, near the intersection of Brookings and Hoyt drives. For more information, call (314) 935-7130 or email David Schuman at dschuman@wustl.edu.

Lehman’s collections of poems include Poetry Forum: A Play Poem: A Pl’em (with Judith Hall, 2007), Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (with James Cummins, 2006), When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (2002), The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (2000), Valentine Place (1996), Operation Memory (1990) and An Alternative to Speech (1986).

Lehman launched The Best American Poetry series in 1988, and also serves as general editor of the University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry series. In 2006 he edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry and last year edited a new anthology, The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present.

Lehman’s books of criticism include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (1998), which was named a “Book to Remember 1999” by the New York Public Library; The Big Question (1995); The Line Forms Here (1992); and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (1991). His study of detective novels, The Perfect Murder (1989), was nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Born in New York City in 1948, Lehman graduated from Columbia University and attended Cambridge University in England as a Kellett Fellow before receiving a doctorate in English from Columbia University. He is currently associate professor of writing and poetry coordinator for The New School.