Pills, Portraits, Pessoa (with Lynn Emanuel / pt. 1)

The ladies pop a poetry pill with guest Lynn Emanuel in part one of the interview.

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Lynn Emanuel is the author of six books of poetry: Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, Suddenly—, Noose and Hook, The Nerve of It:  New and Selected Poems, and most recently Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing. She is Profosser Emerita of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work has been featured many times in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Poetry and is included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  She has been a poetry editor for the Pushcart Prize Anthology, a member of the Literature Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a judge for the National Book Awards.  She has been, as well,  the recipient of numerous awards including the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a fellowship from the Ranieri Foundation and the National Poetry Series. 

When Fernando Pessoa died in 1935, he left a huge body of work under his own name and under the name of other poets--men he not only invented but provided with separate and distinct personalities, personal histories and biographies, religious beliefs, political points of view, and aesthetic styles. There were three major heteronyms: Alberto Cairo, Alvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. Pessoa explained: “Pseudonymous works are by the author in his own person, except in the name he signs; heteronymous works are by the author outside his own person. They proceed from a full-fledged individual created by him, like the lines spoken by a character in a drama he might write.” For more about Pessoa and his heteronyms, read this fabulous essay in Lit Hub or watch this 30-min BBC Radio 3 profile of the author here. 

 Read this interview with Lynn conducted by Mathias Svalina in Blackbird.

Watch Lynn Emanuel read with Lucia LoTempio and Lauren Russell for the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (90 min).