Carolyn Forche in the New Yorker

Carolyn Forche's new anthology of poems written by prisoners, slaves, victims of torture, and others testifying to conditions of political oppression, Poetry of Witness (2014), is featured in a capsule review in the New Yorker's "Books to Watch Out For." Forche visits the Institute on Thursday.

Reviewer Andrea Denhoed says, "The editors’ extensive and varied selection amounts to a reconfiguration of English literary history and a consideration of the purposes and achievements of poetry."

More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/books-to-watch-out-for-january-1.html

Details of Forche's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#forche

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Carolyn Forche, Winner of 2013 Poetry Academy Fellowship

Carolyn Forche, the first guest of the NYS Writers Institute's Spring 2014 Visiting Writers Series, is the recent recipient of the 2013 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, awarded annually to an individual poet for "distinguished poetic achievement."

More:  Prestigious Poetry Prize Goes to Professor, Activist Carolyn Forché
http://www.georgetown.edu/news/carolyn-forche-wins-prestigious-poetry-fellowship.html

Forche will visit the University at Albany to present her new anthology of poetry written under duress by men and women as they face political violence and persecution, Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500 – 2001 (2014), a sequel to her landmark anthology, Against Forgetting (1993).

More about Forche's visit here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/forche_carolyn14.html

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On Men and Violence

Read Mary Gaitskill's short story, "The Other Place," about men and obsessions with violence in last year's Valentine's Day issue of the New Yorker:

"My son, Douglas, loves to play with toy guns. He is thirteen. He loves video games in which people get killed. He loves violence on TV, especially if it’s funny. How did this happen? The way everything does, of course. One thing follows another, naturally."

More.

Gaitskill will share the stage with poet Tom Healy, tonight, Wednesday, July 25th, 8PM, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga. Free.

Click here for more events in the series. All are free and open to the general public.

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Why Violence Has Declined

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) is being discussed everywhere.

Pinker visited the Institute to talk about his book How the Mind Works in 1997.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

In his latest book The Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker argues that the world has never been a safer place to live in. Looking back at the history of violence from prehistoric times up the present day, Pinker says it became far more beneficial for human beings to be less violent.... More.

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