Sept. 16, 1998
Contact: Lisa Russ Spaar
(804) 924-6675


POET J.D. McCLATCHY, U.VA.'S PETERS RUSHTON
LECTURER, TO SPEAK AT UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE SEPT. 22

	Award-winning poet and translator J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy will
give a reading Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 8 p.m. in the University of
Virginia Bookstore. McClatchy's visit is sponsored by the U.Va. English
Department's Peters Rushton lecture series and kicks off the 1998-99
Creative Writing Program's readings.	
	McClatchy, an English professor at Yale University and editor of
The Yale Review since 1991, has written four volumes of poetry, the most
recent of which is "Ten Commandments," published this year by Knopf. He
also wrote "Twenty Questions," a meditation on the mysteries of poetry
and its relationship to life, published this year by Columbia University
Press. His other works include: "The Vintage Book of Contemporary
American Poetry," "The Art of Poetry, by Horace," "The Rest of the Way,"
and "Woman in White: Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson."
	In addition to writing poetry and literary criticism, McClatchy
is also an opera librettist. He has composed four librettos, including
one for "Emmeline," which was presented recently by the New York City
Opera. 	
	Of his poetry, McClatchy says, "I have learned as much about
writing a poem ... from listening closely to certain pieces of music as
from reading other poems." Faure, Schumann, Mahler, Purcell, Bach and
Verdi Ñ "these have taught me what I know about rhythm, enjambments,
and emotional transitions, the signifying strengths of the line and of
pure sound, and how 'meaning' forms and reforms itself in subsequent
readings of the poem. ... It takes me a long time to write a poem that
pleases me," McClatchy says. "I begin, usually, with a subject, an
urgent abstraction; phrases accrete; rhythms pronounce themselves; a
title intrudes; a form suggests itself; the subject is clarified or
changed or, often, both; the poem grows enigmatic, greedy for my changes
and indifferent to them; there are dozens of drafts: notebook, yellow
pad, typed sheets, fair copies, proofs, afterthoughts."	
	During his career, McClatchy, who earned a Ph.D. from Yale in
1974, has received a number of awards. Among them are: the O. Henry
Award, the Michener Award, the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize, the Melville
Cane Award and the award in literature from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters.
1998-99 Creative Writing Program Reading Series
 sponsored by the University of Virginia's English Department 
all readings to take place at 8 p.m. in the U.Va. Bookstore

J.D. McClatchy, poet & translator
Peters Rushton Lecturer
Tuesday, Sept. 22

Sam Hamill, poet & translator
Tuesday, Sept. 29

Stephen Cushman, poet
Tuesday, Oct. 6

Tom Dyja, novelist
Wednesday, October 14

Jonathan Coleman, non-fiction
Monday, October 26

Chris Godshalk, novelist
Thursday, November 5

David Young, poet & translator
Wednesday, Nov. 11

Charles Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Thursday, Nov. 19

Richard Ford, fiction writer
Monday, Nov. 30

Andrea Barrett, fiction writer
Rea Visiting Writer in Fiction
Informal talk: Tuesday, March 2
Reading: Thursday, March 4

George Plimpton, writer & editor
Peters Rushton Lecturer
Tuesday, March 9

Linda Bierds, poet
Thursday, March 11

Virginia Festival of the Book
March 24 - March 28

Carol Muske, poet
Rea Visiting Writer in Poetry
Informal talk: Tuesday, April 13
Reading: Thursday, April 15

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	For more information, call Lisa Russ Spaar in the U.Va. Creative
Writing program at (804) 924-6675. Television reporters should call our
TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.