Modes of Love & Reason: A Bernadette Mayer Symposium
April 1, 2011
University at Buffalo

Although arguably the most wildly influential USAmerican poet of the past forty years, Bernadette Mayer's work has seldom taken center stage in scholarship and literary histories of the period. This long-overdue celebration of Mayer's life and work will begin to redress this situation, and will consist in equal measures of devoted fandom and rigorous study &ndash of "love" and of "reason." Approaching Mayer as a poet, teacher, Conceptual artist, and small-press impresario, the symposium program brings together a diverse ensemble of contemporary poets, scholars, archivists, and editors to investigate and honor the many dimensions of Mayer's relentless and virtuosic practice. The symposium will crescendo in the evening with a performance by Mayer herself.

Gallery Thank you to all who made the symposium a fabulous success! Enjoy these photographs of the proceedings, all taken by Elissa Tobin.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Symposium Schedule All events free and open to the public

9 a.m. Coffee Hour at UB Poetry Collection (420 Capen Hall, North Campus) Opening Remarks: Poetics Program Director Myung Mi Kim, & Robert Dewhurst 10 a.m. Critical Panel Sam Truitt (Station Hill Press): "Studying, Studying, Studying" Joey Yearous-Algozin (SUNY-Buffalo): "'Keep going is a pose': Performing Exhaustion in Bernadette Mayer's Memory" Deborah Poe (Pace University): "Bernadette Mayer: Sound, Narrative, and The Urge of Language" 11:15 a.m. Critical Panel Stephen Cope (Bard College): "Genre Sui Generis: Bernadette Mayer and the Formal Fields of Dailiness." Caitlin Newcomer (Florida State University): "'This Love is a Recognized Occasion': Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day and the Re-figuration of the Mother Poet" Lee Ann Brown (St. John's University): "PLEASE ADD TO THIS LIST: Bernadette Mayer as Generative Teacher" 12:30 p.m. Recess for Lunch 1:30 p.m. Poets' Roundtable CAConrad (Wave Books) Dorothea Lasky (Wave Books) Brenda Coultas (Coffee House Press) 2:45 p.m. Keynote Address: Liz Kotz (UC Riverside) 4 p.m. Day program concludes 8 p.m. Bernadette Mayer at Karpeles Manuscript Museum (453 Porter Ave) Introduction by Sean Reynolds 10 p.m. Reception, 359 Lafayette Ave This event is sponsored by the UB Poetics Program, the Graduate Student Association, the English Graduate Student Association, the Graduate Poetics Group, and the Poetry Collection. Direct all inquires to Robert Dewhurst: dewhurst at buffalo dot edu.