Bruce Spang will offer a workshop and reading on Saturday, October 4, at 1:00 p.m. at the Seligmann Center for the Arts, 23 White Oak Drive, Sugar Loaf, New York (across from the SLPAC). The program is free and open to all. No preregistration is required.
Spang’s most recent book of poems, Boy at the Screen Door, was published this year by Moon Pie Press. He is author as well of a novel The Deception of the Thrush from Piscataqua Press and of the earlier poetry collections To the Promised Land Grocery and The Knot. His work has appeared in several anthologies including Passion and Pride: Poets in Support of Equality which he edited .
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He wrote the libretto for Charlie!, a musical drama about Charlie Howard, a young gay man, who was killed by three teenagers in Bangor, Maine. Spang was named third Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine in 2011.
The workshop will examine the use of imagery and figures of speech. After looking at how Flannery O’Conner used similes and analogies in developing her characters and setting up the reader with expectations that she will later contradict, the group will study how contemporary poets like Tim Seibles and Tony Hoagland lace their poems with similes that both create humorous counterpoints to what they are saying and force the reader to reconcile the different layers of meaning. “The right simile,” says Spang, “can be the trump card of a poem. Often poems, if they work well, depend on them.”
After the workshop Spang is the featured Poetry on the Loose reader at 3:30. His presentation will be followed by an open reading.
On November 1 the workshop will be led by Teresa Costa.
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