Word Domination

On most people’s desirability scale, listening to poetry ranks somewhere between doing 10 loads of laundry and spending a weekend alone in the wilderness with your mother-in-law. Still, we hold out hope for poet and author Stephen Dobyns, who’ll be reading and signing books at ASU’s Memorial Union. Dobyns, who’s...

By Wynter Holden

September 17, 2009

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On most people’s desirability scale, listening to poetry ranks somewhere between doing 10 loads of laundry and spending a weekend alone in the wilderness with your mother-in-law. Still, we hold out hope for poet and author Stephen Dobyns, who’ll be reading and signing books at ASU’s Memorial Union. Dobyns, who’s launching the 2009/10 Piper Center Distinguished Visiting Writers Series, has published a dozen poetry volumes and 20 novels, for which he’s scored three NEA grants and a Guggenheim fellowship. If his poetry tends toward standard fare – falling leaves and thrashing wings, blah, blah – Dobyns’ “Saratoga” detective novels have that old-school noir feel that makes hardboiled hero Charlie Bradshaw almost as endearing as Sam Spade. Plus, Dobyns wrote a collection of short stories called Eating Naked -- how could you go wrong with that?
Thu., Sept. 17, 7:30 p.m., 2009

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