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Willard Spiegelman to give 2006 Bastian Lecture
RELEASED: Feb. 23, 2006
DANVILLE, KY—Noted literary critic Willard Spiegelman will give the 2006 Bastian Lecture at Centre College. The free lecture, titled "A Poet's Life in Letters: The Case of Amy Clampitt," will take place on March 2 at 8 p.m. in the boardroom at the Norton Center for the Arts.
Poet Amy Clampitt, who died in 1994, became known relatively late in life. In fact, she was 63 years old when she published her first book of poetry, The Kingfisher. Born and brought up in Iowa, Clampitt graduated from Grinnell College and spent most of her adult life in New York City. Author of five volumes of poetry, Clampitt was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Academy of American Poets Fellowship. She was made a MacArthur Prize Fellow in 1992.
Willard Spiegelman, Hughes Professor of English at Southern Methodist University, has edited a collection of Clampitt's letters titled Love, Amy. According to Spiegelman, these letters portray a woman who lived a "fiercely independent and intellectual life" long before she started writing poetry.
Spiegelman has received numerous teaching awards as well as Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Rockefeller fellowships. Twenty-four of his lectures are included in "How to Read and Understand Poetry" on The Great Courses on Tape series. Additionally, he is the author of four books, most recently How Poets See the World: The Art of Description in Contemporary Poetry. He writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal and is editor-in-chief of The Southwest Review.
"Willard Spiegelman's two recent books are only the latest in a long line of important contributions he has made to our understanding and enjoyment of poetry since the Romantics," says Philip White, assistant professor of English at Centre. "Not only has he given us some of the indispensable criticism on the poetry of our time, as the editor of the distinguished literary journal The Southwest Review, he has helped shape the field itself."
The Bastian Lecture Series is named after Carol Bastian, Centre Emeritus Professor of English. Each spring a prominent scholar in English or American literary studies is invited to present a public lecture on campus.
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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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