About this Event
Sara Cahill Marron and Arden Levine discuss their books of poetry Call Me Spes and Ladies Abecedary
About Call Me Spes:
What a beguiling, intriguing, and evocative book is Sara Marron’s Call Me Spes. It entails a Virgilian journey undertaken by its disembodied narrator, an iOS device who gradually becomes aware of the nature of its User’s needs and increasingly cognizant of our ubiquitous human longing for connection. Simultaneously, this elusive narrator overhears a diverse chorus of plaintive voices, and thereby struggles to expand its understanding of people’s complexity and pathos. With an eloquent power, Call Me Spes charts how our suffering, pain, and loss may be relieved through our hopefulness and yearning for love. Marron’s highly original book offers us a memorable exploration into the impulses, obsessions, and durability of the human heart.
—Maurya Simon, author of The Wilderness, 2019 Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal in Poetry
About Ladies Abecedary:
Like a deck of playing cards, shuffled, fanned, dealt and swept away with a flourish, Arden Levine’s Ladies' Abecedary delights and dazzles. In this alphabetic parade, portraits of women’s lives flash past our eyes. Designated by only a letter and the “glittering shrapnel” and “high-heeled balancing acts” of Levine’s descriptions, we can’t be certain who or where or when these women live. Yet each life, each poem, feels vivid and energetic, bristling in forms that range from pantoums to prose poems. So we lean in closer to the mystery, keen to catch a fuller glimpse of each sharp life and not to miss the “twisting silver” sleight-of-hand taking place on the page.
—Kirun Kapur, author of Women in the Waiting Room, finalist for the National Poetry Series
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Sara Cahill Marron, native Virginian and Long Island resident, is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018), Nothing You Build Here, Belongs Here (Kelsay Books 2021), and Call Me Spes (MadHat Press 2022). She is the Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and publisher at Beltway Editions. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals, a full list is available here. Sara hosts virtual readings for Beltway Poetry Quarterly with Indran Amirthanayagam and teaches poetry in modern discourse programs for teens at the public library in Patchogue, NY. She periodically is available for editing projects and specializes in creative fiction and poetry.
Arden Levine’s poetry, essays, and reviews have been featured in American Life in Poetry (selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser), Harvard Review, The Missouri Review’s Poem-of-the-Week, Poetry Society of America’s Song Cycle series, and WNYC’s Radiolab. Her debut poetry collection, Ladies’ Abecedary (Harbor Editions, 2021), was included in the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' 2022 Reading List for Women’s History Month. Arden is a Beloit Poetry Journal Foundation Board Member, a National Book Critics Circle Member, and a Best of the Net nominee. Raised in Washington, DC, her daily work as an NYC municipal employee focuses on housing affordability, homelessness prevention, and equitable community development. www.ardenlevine.com
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Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. This event will be simultaneously live streamed on our YouTube page!
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
2467 18th St NW, 2467 18th Street Northwest, Washington, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 21.95