Linda Norton

Norman Fischer and Linda Norton

20 JUNE 2021 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a virtual poetry reading by Norman Fischer, There was a clattering as…, and poememoirist Linda Norton, Wite Out: Love and Work, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PDT (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading on Sunday, June 20 at 3:00 pm PDT! We are excited to bring you Norman Fischer and Linda Norton via Zoom. To register for this reading, please click on the link in the calendar listing above. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series during these unprecedented times.

This reading is co-sponsored by Moe's Books in Berkeley; the featured books are available at bookshop.org/lists/poetry-flash-readings and at www.spdbooks.org/AdvancedSearch/DefaultWFilter.aspx?SearchTerm=norman+fischer.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Linda Norton's new memoir with poems is Wite Out: Love and Work. John Keene says, "With Wite Out Linda Norton breaks new ground as an autobiographical poememoirist. Combining an exploration of her familial roots, an interrogation and critique of whiteness as lived experience, a diaristic account of relationships in all their complexity, and a personal, social, and cultural history of certain precincts in American poetry's late twentieth century avant-garde. Wite Out is a masterpiece." Her previous collection, its prequel, The Public Gardens: Poems and History, introduction by Fanny Howe, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A recent East Bay Express review calls Wite Out "a must for anyone trying to understand the nuanced aggression of systemic oppression and how it affects the afflictor and afflicted in equal measure." Born in Boston, Norton lived in Brooklyn for many years before moving to Oakland, where she raised her daughter and met her foster son, who are the heart and soul of Wite Out. She's also a visual artist with a background in book publishing, oral history, and libraries and archives. She was a 2020 columnist-in-residence at SFMoMA's Open Space; you can see her essays, collages, and photographs at openspace.sfmoma,org/author/lindanorton and find her blog here: thepublicgardens.blogspot.com/2012/03/love-and-work.html.

Zen Buddhist priest and poet Norman Fischer's brand new book of poems is There was a clattering as…. Maged Zaher says, "Can you write about the plague without this writing being situational and somehow banal? Yes you can, There was a clattering as… is a poem about the plague, human condition, world materiality, soul fertility, and the mutual creation of God and human…This book is magnificent and as human as it could get." His other 2021 poetry title is Nature, "(a fractured re-do of Emerson) …about nature but also about thinking, language, identity, consciousness, science, idealism, economics, religion, and, in general, about the unsettling (in case you haven't noticed) paradox of being human in a human, non-human world." His other poetry books include any would be if, Untitled Series: Life As It Is, and On a Train At Night. His latest Buddhist books are The World Could be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path and When You Greet Me I Bow: notes and reflections from a life in Zen. His 2002 translation of the Hebrew psalms, Opening to You, is read by both Jews and Christians, and Experience: Essays on Thinking, Writing, Language, and Religion was published in 2016.