No charge for the program. Advance registration required. Register online in order to receive the Zoom session invitation link and readings packet. Please email Michael Bellacosa at mbellacosa@wiltonlibrary.org with any questions.

The novelist Jhumpa Lahiri pointedly says of Edward Hirsch’s poetic voice that it is “intimate but restrained, tender without being sentimental,”  and that he “witnesses life without flinching.”
We will experience these qualities as we read his poems.  He said of his own poems that he had “the true voice of feeling.” His long poem about the death of his son Gabriel, published in 2014, is considered “a masterpiece of sorrow.”

Hirsch was born in 1950 in Chicago. He won many awards, and as a critic for The Washington Post, he reached out to poets and to those unfamiliar with poetry in a regular column on poetry and poets.

Presently, he is dealing with his blindness very well. On March 28th, 2023, Hirsch wrote an opinion piece in “The New York Times” about coping with his condition. He now finds it “Strangely Exhilarating.”  He certainly proves he “witnesses life without flinching” in his daily life as well as in his poems.

Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, “Borrowed Scenery,” Yuganta Press, and “Through the Trees of Autumn,” Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s  young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild. Several of her poems have been published in Amethyst Review.