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Saturday in L.A.: Peter Gizzi and the Poetic Research Bureau

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On Saturday, art and poetry meet in Los Angeles at the Charlie James Gallery, where the Poetic Research Bureau and Siglio Press presents poet Peter Gizzi. Gizzi will read his work in a gallery full of art by Richard Kraft: The exhibit, ‘Something With Birds in It,’ takes its title from Gizzi’s poem ‘Analemma.’

Of Gizzi’s work, Bookforum writes, ‘Peter Gizzi’s poems have always walked a line between stylized opacity and friendly, if melancholy, accessibility, enacting an argument about whether language is esoteric or generic, personal or public, our salvation from commerce or hopelessly commodified. This argument is at the heart of much contemporary poetry, but for Gizzi it also represents an interior struggle between the need to disclose emotion with words and the need to hide it behind words. The interplay between these two ideas has never been stronger than in his new collection, ‘Threshold Songs.’ ‘

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Gizzi has taught at Brown University, University of Massachusetts, Amherst College and UC Santa Cruz but recently has been at the University of Cambridge in England. On Saturday, doors open at 7 p.m., and the reading will begin at 7:30. Signed copies of ‘Threshold Songs’ will be on sale at the event.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

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