Lew Klatt, Department of English
| Professor Lew Klatt is a graduate of Wittenberg University and holds master’s degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and St. John’s College, Annapolis. He earned his PhD in English from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia. His first book, Interloper,won the 2008 Juniper Prize for Poetry and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2009. His second collection, Cloud of Ink, won the 2010 Iowa Poetry Prize and was published this last spring by the University of Iowa Press. Recent poems of his have appeared or will appear in Best American Poetry 2011, Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, West Branch, The Cincinnati Review, The Believer, Hotel Amerika, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. |
Lecture: Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011
4 p.m., CFAC Recital Hall
(vimeo of the lecture)
About the lecture: In an America that loves to hear itself talk—talk radio, talk shows, talking points, pillow talk, even God-talk—all of us suffer from language fatigue. It is the task of the poet—and the faithful human—to resuscitate the ways we speak. But what will we say? And how will we say it?
Looking at writers T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, and others, this lecture will attempt to articulate a Christian poetics. It will do so by delving into the attribute of beauty so often cited as a touchstone for a Reformed renovation of the literary arts. It will also explore the ways in which a poet, aiming for the beautiful while embracing a cosmos that is disfigured, must infuse her art with mystery, radiance, and what artist Makoto Fujimura calls “the aroma of the new.”
| Other lectures in 2011-2012:
John Wertz, assistant professor, Biology Suzanne McDonald, assistant professor, Religion |
