Jim Lenfestey To Lead Summer Poetry Series at Grand Hotel

Island cottager and poet Jim Lenfestey will lead Wednesday morning discussions on the works of poets each week.

A poetry course at Grand Hotel will be taught by Island cottager and poet Jim Lenfestey. Mr. Lenfestey will lead Wednesday morning discussions on the work of a poet each week for eight weeks, beginning July 12. The series is free and open to the public and people able to attend only one or several sessions are welcome.

Handouts of poems will be available at each class.

The schedule is as follows:

 July 12 William Butler Yeats (Anglo-Irish, 18651939), widely considered the most important poet writing in English in the 20th century.

 July 19 Gerard Manley Hopkins, (English, 1845-89), the greatest rhythmic innovator in English poetry.

 July 26 Han-shan (Chinese, T'ang Dynasty 800900), the Zen Buddhistinspired hermit famous throughout Asia who inspired many modern American poets.

 August 2 William Stafford (American, 1914-33), an early Poet Laureate who wrote a poem every day.

 August 9 Wislawa Szymborska (Polish, 1923-), the word's greatest poet of uncertainty. She won the Nobel Prize in 1996.

 August 16 Robert Bly (American, 1926-), master of the Persian ghazal form. His 1962 book, "Silence in the Snowy Fields," permanently altered the American poetic landscape.

 August 23 Mary Oliver (American, 1935-). With nature as her muse, she has won virtually every American poetry award, including the Pulitzer.

 August 30 favorite poems and poets of the members of the class.

In the tradition established by John McCabe, who taught Shakespeare at Grand Hotel for many years, the course will take place in the Audubon Bar every Wednesday from 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Mr. Lenfestey is the author of three collections of poems, many small chapbooks ,and numerous poems published in literary magazines. He is the founding director of the Ojai Poetry Festival in California and of the Mackinac Island

Poetry Festival, which opens this summer July 28 and 29 at the Little Stone Church. He also chairs the Literary Witnesses reading series in Minneapolis.