RELEASED: Sept. 22, 2005

DANVILLE, KY—The Centre College English program will sponsor a free public lecture by Lesley Wheeler, associate professor of English at Washington and Lee University, on September 29 at 7 p.m. in the Norton Center for the Arts boardroom on campus.

Wheeler's lecture, titled "Resonances: The Meanings of Poetic Voice," will focus on American poetry.

Helen Emmitt, associate professor of English at Centre, says, "The Centre College English program is excited about the visit by Lesley Wheeler. Not only is she a sensitive and intelligent theorist of American poetry, she's also, as a practicing poet, sensitive to the nuances of language in a way that's both rare and fascinating."

Wheeler recently won a sabbatical fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to complete her second book, Voiceprints: Sound and Presence in American Poetry from the 1920s to the Present. The book will investigate poetic voice as a metaphor and as a physical element of performance. Chapters will discuss authors ranging from Edna St. Vincent Millay and Langston Hughes to James Merrill, Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton and Spoken Word artists.

Wheeler's first book, The Poetics of Enclosure: American Women Poets from Dickinson to Dove, was published in 2002 by the University of Tennessee Press. Wheeler has also published numerous essays and reviews, and her poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Barrow Street, Puerto Del Sol and other journals. 

Wheeler graduated summa cum laude from Rutgers University, and she earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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