Hosted by the Benicia Public Library

Online: us02web.zoom.us

Monday, April 5, 2021 at 7 PM PDT

Price: Free

Public  · Anyone on or off Facebook

Celebrate National Poetry Month and National Library Week with poets Jane Hirshfield and Lynn Ungar, as they read from and talk about their work.

(Please note: Zoom attendance is limited, so if you are unable to log on to Zoom, the event will be made available Live on Facebook, on the Benicia Public Library page.)

Jane Hirshfield, in poems described by The Washington Post as belonging “among the modern masters” and by The New York Times as “passionate and radiant,” addresses the urgent immediacies of our time. Ranging from the political, ecological, and scientific to the metaphysical, personal, and passionate, Hirshfield praises the radiance of particularity and reckons the consequence of the daily. Her poems and essays traverse the crises of the biosphere and of social justice. Her work lives in the intersections of facts and imagination, desire and loss, impermanence and beauty— all the dimensions of our shared existence within what one poem calls “the pure democracy of being.” Her most recent book, published in 2020, is "Ledger."

Lynn Ungar’s first book of poetry, Blessing the Bread, earned her fans around the world. In March of 2020 her poem “Pandemic” went viral, and in the following days she has been writing and sharing poetry in response to these strange times we live in. Lynn is a Unitarian Universalist minister (and available as a guest speaker). She also trains dogs for competition in obedience, agility and canine musical freestyle (dancing with dogs). She looks forward to the time when she can go back to being an avid choral singer and contra dancer. Lynn lives in Vancouver, Washington with her two Australian Shepherds.

~Sponsored by the Benicia Public Library and Bookshop Benicia