Canio’s Books to Celebrate Emily Dickinson’s Birthday with a Talk by Poet George Held

The poet George Held will be giving a talk on the poet Emily Dickinson in honor of her birthday. Canio’s Books, 290 Main St., Sag Harbor, NY. 4 p.m., Saturday, December 10.

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Roxanne Hoffman

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Sag Harbor, NY (Dec 02, 2011) – The poet George Held will be giving a talk on the revered American poet Emily Dickinson, in honor of her 181st birthday, at Canio’s Books, 290 Main St., Sag Harbor, NY on Saturday, December 10, 2011, at 4 p.m. "Miss Emily´s Hymnal: The Art of Common Meter" will be a look at the formal structure and themes of Dickinson´s work with a chance to practice.

Maryann Calendrille, one of the owners of Canio's, where George has frequently given readings of his own work, took a haiku workshop led by him last summer and asked if he’d like to give a talk on Emily Dickinson on her birthday, which this year falls on a Saturday, the day Canio's Cultural Café normally offers readings and other programs. George, who taught Emily Dickinson’s poetry for years as a professor at Queens College, and led a workshop based on her verse, a few years ago, for the Live Poets Society in Bayshore, NY, promptly agreed.

Emily Dickinson, daguerreotype, circa 1848, Yale

Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Though now considered one of America’s greatest poets, she had less than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems published in her lifetime.

"Common meter," the verse form of Protestant hymn Emily Dickinson often borrowed to construct a poem, also serves George Held as an occasional instrument. Its four-line stanza, or quatrain, combines an alternating rhyme scheme (abab) with alternating long (8-syllable) and short (6-syllable) lines as this untitled poem by Dickinson demonstrates:

It's such a little thing to weep --
So short a thing to sigh --
And yet -- by Trades -- the size of these
We men and women die!”

A satiric poem by Held, originally published in Light, follows that same pattern:

Tell All . . .

Tell all the lies but tell them well;
Make customers believe
The sales pitch blooming on your lips
So they won’t feel aggrieved.

Sell all the dreck despite its flaws,
Don’t worry ’bout the toys;
Just hope the folks won’t sue your ass
After the obsequies.

For more information about Canio’s Books and directions on how to get there, please visit their website at http://www.caniosbooks.com/ or call 631.725.4926.

George Held

George Held, a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of two full-length collections, ten chapbooks, as well as two e-books of poetry, and the editor of “Touched by Eros,” an anthology of erotic verse. His “After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets” was recently published by Červená Barva Press. A teacher, translator, writer and poet, his work has appeared in “The Philadelphia Inquirer,” “Confrontation,” “Notre Dame Review,” “New York Quarterly” and “Rattle,” among numerous other publications including two-dozen anthologies, and been featured on National Public Radio (NPR). Among his chapbooks is “Phased” (Poets Wear Prada, 2008). He holds a B.A. from Brown, an M.A. from University of Hawaii, and a Ph.D. from Rutgers, taught at Queens College for 37 years, was a Fulbright lecturer in Czechoslovakia (1973-76), and serves on the executive board of The South Fork Natural History Museum, Bridgehampton, NY. He lives in Greenwich Village with his wife Cheryl.

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Poets Wear Prada is a small literary press based in Hoboken, NJ, devoted to introducing new authors through high-quality chapbooks primarily of poetry, since October 2006. Please visit us at: http://pwpbooks.blogspot.com/ . "Have you had your poetry today?"