Grand Hotel Poetry Series To Begin July 11

Grand Hotel will offer a poetry series again this year, "Poets at the Grand Hotel: from My Favorite Poets to Yours," an eight-week program exploring the works of various poets and styles that begins July 11.

Cottager James Lenfestey will lead the Wednesday programs, to be held from 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. at the hotel's Audubon Bar. The classes are free to the public.

Mr. Lenfestey says no background in poetry is required, and all necessary materials are available at each class. He submits the following schedule:

July 11: Recent discoveries in ancient China, from 2400 BC to 1200. Including poems and tales from Mr. Lenfestey's recent travels through literary China, this class is dedicated to Mackinac Island resident Alice Martin, who was born in China.

July 18: Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273). How did a 13th century mystic from a small religious commune in what is now central Turkey, brought to us in American translation by a 20th century Tennessean, become the most popular poet in English in the world today?

July 25: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). The class will recite together "Kubla Kahn" and make the case that this famously "interrupted dream" poem is perfect as it is, plus read and discuss some of Coleridge's other mysterious poems.

August 1: Emily Dickinson

1830-1886). Few knew her then and it can be difficult to know her now, this monkish angel of Amherst, widely considered "America's first great lyric poet." She was essentially unpublished in her lifetime, and not seriously appreciated until after 1955.

August 8: Robert Service

1874-1958). Service was Mr. Lenfestey's father's favorite poet. His poems are still recited by heart around campfires and over barstools. The class will recite together the long ballad, "The Cremation of Sam McGee," and at least one other, for the fun and story of it.

August 15: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). Mr. Lenfestey's mother's favorite poet, Millay willfully burned her candle "at both ends," harnessing the rigorous sonnet form to a wild life whose motto is inscribed in Poet's Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York: "Take up the song: forget the epitaph." She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.

August 22: Gary Snyder (1930- ). Mr. Lenfestey will make the case that Gary Snyder is his generation's greatest philosopher, with crucial essay collections from "Earth Household" to "Back on the Fire." His poems, deeply influenced by the ancient artistic and spiritual traditions of Asia and native America, have won the Pulitzer among many other prizes and awards.

On August 29, the class will read, recite, and discuss the favorite poems suggested by the class.

Mr. Lenfestey is a teacher and writer in Minneapolis and on Mackinac Island. After careers in academia, advertising, and journalism, he has published articles, essays, and poems in books and magazines, including two poetry collections released in 2006 and two forthcoming this year. He runs a poetry festival in Ojai, California, and a poetry reading series in Minneapolis.