Jasper Johns | Unfolding Language Literary Series
Rigoberto González
Rigoberto González is the author of What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood (March 2018) and four books of poetry, most recently Unpeopled Eden, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His twelve books of prose include two bilingual children’s books, the three YA novels in the Mariposa Club series, and four books of nonfiction, including Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, which received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The recipient of Guggenheim, NEA and USA Rolón fellowships, he is contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine and writes a monthly column for NBC-Latino online. Currently, he is professor of English at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey, and the inaugural Stan Rubin Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Rainier Writing Workshop. As of 2016, he serves as critic-at-large with the L.A. Times.
Douglas Kearney
Douglas Kearney has published six books, most recently, Buck Studies, winner of the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry and silver medalist for the California Book Award in Poetry. He was the guest editor for 2015’s Best American Experimental Writing, and has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, residencies and fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Poetry, nocturnes, Pleiades, Iowa Review, Boston Review, and Indiana Review; and anthologies, including Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky, Best American Poetry, Best American Experimental Writing, Of Poetry and Protest, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, The Breakbeat Poets, and What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Poets in America. Raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in California’s Santa Clarita Valley. He teaches at CalArts.
Chris Kraus
Chris Kraus is the author of four novels, two books of cultural criticism, and most recently, After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography. She is a co-editor of the independent press Semiotexte, alongside Hedi El Kholti and Sylvere Lotringer. She writes for various publications, and lives in northern Minnesota when she’s not in LA.
Location
Oculus Hall at The Broad
221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Directions and Parking
Tickets
Tickets will be available for purchase at thebroad.org or by calling 213-232-6250. Tickets are $15 (poetry reading only); $30 (includes poetry reading and one-time return to Jasper Johns: ‘Something Resembling Truth’ (any time during regular museum hours)
Main Image: Foirades/Fizzles (1976) by Jasper Johns and Samuel Becket, courtesy of Manhattan Rare Book Company.
This program is co-presented with
Rigoberto González on Hart Crane:
Hart Crane is every gay poet’s literary ancestor–his queerness is in his ability to express desire, beauty, and love through a rigorous, formalist language. His canvas was melancholia, and from his work we learned to appreciate the fleeting moments of light during the dark times–an all too-familiar state of being for many of us.
Douglas Kearney on Samuel Beckett:
His bleakness somehow teems. In the short plays I’ve encountered, his syntax accumulates, seems a heap of hewn bramble in which sudden utterances are thorns playing berries. This program gives me impetus to rummage deeper and maybe get cut a bit sweet.
Chris Kraus on Louis-Ferdinand Céline:
Celine, an equal-opportunity misanthrope, captured the ontological ruptures of the early 20th century in a way few others did. Bitterly funny, his work is shot through with the disillusion that follows hope and desire. He’s a favorite of many of my favorite writers, including Gary Indiana, John Godfrey, and William S. Burroughs.
Event Media
Unfolding Language: Rigoberto González + Douglas Kearney + Chris Kraus
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