Writers and New England: a Many-Sided Mad Affair

Porter Square Books, Tuesday, April 23rd, 7 p.m.

"Writers and New England: a Many-Sided Mad Affair"

A presentation from With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others
by Kathleen Spivack

This presentation is going to be fun--and relevant. I’m going to focus on New England (a major character in the book) and of course on Lowell, Bishop, Plath, Sexton, Rich, as well as some of the other poets around the time and place. What is it about our wonderful--and maddening--region that has had such an influence on writers? There'll be time for questions and comments.

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PS: My two forthcoming workshops are already filling up, "Excellence" and "Publish (Before) You Perish." All genres and levels welcome; just bring whatever project you're working on, and writing materials. For more information, visit the Massachusetts Poetry Festival or the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

Upcoming events: March - June

With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others
Full schedule of readings, conferences, and workshops: March - June, 2013
(along with some other upcoming readings that might interest you!)

Thursday, March 28: "Great Poets at Boston University," 7 PM, Barnes & Noble @ Boston University, Boston, MA. "In 1959 I came to Boston to study with poet Robert Lowell, and attended his workshop along with Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and others. Boston University has hosted some of the great poets of our time..."

* Thursday, April 4: Megan Marshall reads from her new book, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life. 7 PM, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA.

April 5-7: Featured poet along with Sam Cornish, Judith Steinbergh, Richard Hoffman, Afaa Weaver, David Ferry and others, at the Boston National Poetry Month Festival, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA. Reading at 3 PM Friday, April 5. Free and open to the public.

Saturday, April 13: Reading & signing, Hingham Public Library, Hingham, MA, 3 PM. Co-sponsored by Buttonwood Books.

Tuesday, April 23: "Writers and New England: a Many-Sided Mad Affair." 7 PM, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA. "Robert Lowell's circle existed in a pre-MFA time, 1957 on. It was a golden age of American letters, and New England was an epicenter. Its traditions, its pressures and repressions, contributed to an outstanding creative flowering among the Lowell circle."

* Thursday, April 25: Joe Cohen reads at the Cervena Barva Press Studio, Somerville, MA.

May 3-5: Teaching the workshop "Excellence, Completion and Publication of Your Work" (filling now!) and reading "Dead Poets Among the Living," at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Salem, MA. Open to the public.

May 23-26: "Robert Lowell as Mentor: Encouragement and Reprimand. Plath, Sexton, Rich." American Literature Association National Conference, Boston, MA. Open to the public.

Sunday, June 2: One-day intensive: "Publish (Before You Perish): An Advanced Workshop." Filling now! 10 AM - 4 PM, Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Cambridge, MA.

Also coming up in the summer: readings at Brookline Booksmith, Wellfleet Library, the Brewster Ladies' Library, and others.

Reviews for With Robert Lowell and His Circle

Here are the various mentions and reviews over the past six months for With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others...

• Barnes & Noble Daybook
• The Elizabeth Bishop Blog
• The Boston Globe (full-page review!)
• GotPoetry
• Boston Globe's Word on the Street
• Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (also published in the Wilderness House Literary Review)
• The Somerville News
• The Washington Post (full page review by Michael Dirda! also syndicated in various other newspapers, including the Kansas City Star)
• Andrew Sullivan @ The Daily Beast
• Richard Marcus @ Blogcritics
• Harvard Magazine

The Providence Journal also just published a lovely review, but unfortunately it isn't available online.

AWP Conference Panel:Fierce Friendships, Raw Rivalries in Robert Lowell's Circle. Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

I'll be at the AWP conference in March and hope to see you there. Here's a panel for your interest, and also a book signing with the University Press of New England. 

 

AWP conference in Boston, Ma 2013

3:00 PM, Saturday, March 9th, room 203.

Fierce Friendships, Raw Rivalries in Robert Lowell's Circle.  Robert Lowell / Elizabeth Bishop.  Anne Sexton / Sylvia Plath.

Lois Ames, co-editor , Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters.

Frank Bidart, co-editor, Robert Lowell: Collected Poems.

Kathleen Spivack,writer. With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Staney Kunitz and Others

Thomas Travisano, co-editor, Words in Air: The complete correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

 At 4:30, Kathleen’s book signing for With Robert Lowell and His Circle at the University Press of New England's table.  Will also be near the Grolier table during the conference, which will have books of the other panelists also. We look forward to seeing you!

More about the AWP Annual Conference & Bookfair here.

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Kathleen’s other spring events in the Boston area regarding With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Staney Kunitz and Others include, so far :

Thursday, March 28: "Great Poets at Boston University." Barnes & Noble @ Boston University,
Saturday, April 13: Hingham Public Library, Hingham, MA, Buttonwood Books.
Tuesday, April 23: " Writers and New England, a Many-Sided Affair." Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA,

April 26-28: Boston National Poetry Month Festival at Boston Public Library.
Wednesday, May 1: Cambridge Center for Adult Education, "The Writer's Life."
May 3-5: Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem, MA. Workshop/Master Class"Writing Towards Excellence and Completion."
May 23-26: American Literature Association Conference, Boston. “Robert Lowell: the Influence.”

June 2, Cambridge Center for Adult Education,Advanced Writing Workshop."Publish (Before You) Perish!"

July 15 and July 23, Wellfleet Library and Brewster Ladies’ Library. Cape Cod.

New Book, With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sexton, Plath, Bishop, Rich, Kunitz and others. University Press of New England. Fall 2012

click here to order or for more information

My new book,With Robert  Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, & Others is available now from the University Press of New England. The book begins when I came to Boston in 1959 on a fellowship to study with Robert Lowell. He introduced me to the poets of his day, some of whom were in his workshop alongside me; Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, etc. The book looks at how these poets approached their work and how they managed to influence so many poets who are writing today. It also talks about Boston and New England and its great literary influence. It is mainly a book about becoming a writer and a dedication to writing.    

Here's what the University Press of New England says about With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sexton, Plath, Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Stanley Kunitz and others. 

"In 1959 Kathleen Spivack won a fellowship to study at Boston University with Robert Lowell. Her fellow students were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, among others. Thus began a relationship with the famous poet and his circle that would last to the end of his life in 1977 and beyond. Spivack presents a lovingly rendered story of her time among some of the most esteemed artists of a generation. Part memoir, part loose collection of anecdotes, artistic considerations, and soulful yet clear-eyed reminiscences of a lost time and place, hers is an intimate portrait of the often suffering Lowell, the great and near great artists he attracted, his teaching methods, his private world, and the significant legacy he left to his students. Through the story of a youthful artist finding her poetic voice among literary giants, Spivack thoughtfully considers how poets work. She looks at friendships, addiction, despair, perseverance and survival, and how social changes altered lives and circumstances. This is a beautifully written portrait of friends who loved and lived words, and made great beauty together.

A touching and deeply revealing look into the lives and thoughts of some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, With Robert Lowell and His Circle will appeal to writers, students, and thoughtful literary readers, as well as to scholars."

Comments. "This book is absorbing and alive, human and compelling . . . the best memoir yet about Robert Lowell." -- Steven Gould Axelrod, University of California, Riverside

"A portrait [of Lowell] that serves to define his role as poet and teacher in fresh and significant ways . . . This is a memoir that will make an impact right away and that will be referred to by scholars, readers and biographers for many years to come." -- Thomas Travisano, Hartwick College

"I devoured your book in one sitting last weekend; it's extraordinarily evocative of the poet and his time, your time. Thank you so much for writing it." -- Don Share, Senior Editor, Poetry Magazine

"I couldn't put the book down except to eat and sleep . . . a moving portrait of Lowell and a really valuable antidote to Hamilton's view of constant breakdown and mania. . . " -- Barry Goldensohn, Skidmore College

". . . Spivack records Lowell's mix of generosity and obliviousness that endeared him to writer friends and students . . . . [Her] portrait offers a window on a man, a city, and a method for anyone not lucky enough to have taken part in those times." -- Valerie Duff, The Boston Globe

". . . a passionate, unpretentious and carefully documented memoir in which the main character is not a poet--although the book is full of lively sketches of writers . . . --but the practice of poetry itself. We see the intensity and sheer everyday labor, with insight into the particular impact of the period on women writers." -- Elena Harap, Streetfeet

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Please join me  for a celebration of the launch of this book, cosponsored by  The Harvard Bookstore and  the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Ma. on Sunday Dec.2, from 4-6pm. Your friends are welcome. Brief presentation and lots of refreshments. Looking forward to your presence!

Part of chapter on Adrienne Rich from forthcoming “With Robert Lowell and His Circle” see below.

  Robert Lowell introduced me to Adrienne Rich in 1959.  Adrienne was the young woman poet whom Robert Lowell admired the most.  He held out her writing as an example to me of something to work toward. And he cared desperately about her good opinion of him, which she withheld in the later years of his life.

     Adrienne Rich had won the Yale Younger Poets Prize with her first book of poem. She was at that time a formally classical poet with restrained feeling.  She had a clear, noble, crystalline quality to her work and a strong, opinionated way of looking at poetry.  Her sleek feathered hair and focused glint created an impression of a proud young eagle.  Her career had already launched itself, splendidly. She had a suppressed impatience about her being, a hardly tamed striving that showed itself only in fine strain marks about the eyes. She suffered from painful arthritis, even than. I was too terrified to tell her that I was interestd in writing.
     She asked me to be a babysitter for her three young boys. They ran me ragged!  But it was worth it; just to listen to Adrienne, who always had me sit in the kitchen and have tea with her when she came back home.
     Although as an undergraduate at Radcliffe, Adrienne had already won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for her first collection of poems, Harvard University would not allow her to attend its upper level English level classes. Professor Harry Levin and others maintained that the upper level courses with the “real” professors at Harvard were reserved for the men; the Radcliffe girls could make do with the teaching assistants.
     We stayed in touch, and I followed Adrienne’s work closely. I admired her strong uncompromising spirit.

New Book. Memoir: With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others to be published this fall 2012 by The University Press of New England.

My new book, a personal memoir, With Robert Lowell and His Circle:  Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz  Stanley Kunitz  and Others  will be published this  fall 2012 by The University Press of New England. I came to Boston in 1959 to study with Robert Lowell in his "famous class."  He introduced me to the poets of his time who took me under their wing.  

      This book portrays the close and variegated relationship between the most gifted poet of his generation, Robert Lowell, and a young poet, myself, who first came to Boston to study with him. It spans eighteen years of our lives and carries over into the present.
    A delicate intimacy grew alongside pressing personal events:  hard won publication, success, disappointment, other friendships and loves, marriages, celebrations, rejections, families, failure, break ups, break downs. There were wider realities as well: historical, political and social.  There is a little bit about Peter Drucker and my family of origin.  There were  many dimensions to these realities.
    The central importance in this book is the dedication to writing and a shared love of literature.  What started out with Robert Lowell as a teacher-student relationship became something else, but it always kept at its heart two people, happily and deeply engaged together in a greater quest.  This is a story of love, respect, trust, generosity—on both sides—and discreet boundaries formally observed making this lifelong closeness possible: a precious and protected flowering outside of definitions.  

     This book shares closely observed relationships with some other amazing poets in Robert Lowell’s circle: most notably Sexton, Plath,  Bishop, and Kunitz, but also many others.  I am almost a generation --or more- away from  these poets and probably one of a few American poets still living to have known them all personally.
    It is time to remember that great world of literary values and writers, to celebrate their greatness, struggles, and commitment. These writers believed in their art, and inspired so many others by their life and work. Some of the great writers of our present  time who also passed though the Lowell/Bishop nexus share their perceptions as well.   I hope you like this book!
For readings, to pre-order, and more info please contact : http://www.upne.com