Poet Christian Schlegel will read from his new book of poetry.  Schlegel’s Ryman consists of three “talk poems,” in the tradition of the artist David Antin. The first talk was conducted at the author’s desk in the Hudson Valley, the second over Zoom, and the third, in two parts, while he paced a cemetery in Ithaca and a businessperson’s hotel room in Albany. Topics include the painter Robert Ryman and his contemporaries, Romantic poetry, avant-garde film, obsessive-compulsive rumination, and friendship. These pieces were composed ex tempore, recorded, and mostly faithfully transcribed, for an effect very close to speech, or thought in action. Something like poetry.

Christian Schlegel is the author of the poetry collection Honest James (The Song Cave, 2015). He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a doctorate in English from Harvard, teaches English and creative writing at Pierrepont School in Connecticut, and lives in New Haven.

To subscribe to a weekly emailing list of Writers' Workshop events, please email iww@uiowa.edu with “Events Mailing List Subscribe” in the subject line.