Making and Breaking the Lyric: Four Poets Engage the Polis

Making and Breaking the Lyric: Four Poets Engage the Polis

Readings and Discussion

Bay Area poets Rolando André López, Denise Newman, Dean Rader, and Sarah Rosenthal read inventive new work that probes issues from the environmental crisis to the precarity of embodiment. This event celebrates three recently published books: Newman’s The Redesignation of Paradise (Kelsey Street Press), Rader’s Before the Borderless (Copper Canyon Press), and Rosenthal’s Estelle Meaning Star (Chax Press). Ranging in age from 30s to 60s, representing different poetry communities from spoken word to academic to performance these poets share a drive for transforming the lyric to speak to our moment.

Rolando André López, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, is an educator, writer, and translator. His work appears in Passages North, ORCA, and more, with citations in Best American Essays. A 2023 Puerto Rican Artist Fellow at MASSMOCA, he writes hybrid fiction, poetry, and essays. López lives in Oakland, California.

Sarah Rosenthal's books include Estelle Meaning Star (Chax, 2024) and, with Valerie Witte, One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (punctum, forthcoming). Her films are We Agree on the Sun (2019) and Lizard Song (2024).

Denise Newman has published five poetry collections, most recently The Redesignation of Paradise (Kelsey Street, 2024) and four translations, plus the forthcoming novella Natalja’s Stories by the late Danish poet, Inger Christensen (New Directions, 2025). For her translation work, she’s received two NEA fellowships and two PEN Awards.

Dean Rader has authored or co-edited twelve books, including the poetry collection Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and Works & Days, which won the T. S. Eliot Prize. Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, appeared in 2023 from Copper Canyon. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.

This event made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation

Host or Publisher City Lights Booksellers & Publishers