Joseph Somoza Book Launch with Ash Smith & Kyle Schlesinger

When:
October 29, 2016 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
2016-10-29T19:00:00-05:00
2016-10-29T20:00:00-05:00
Cost:
Free

Join us in celebrating the recent release of Joseph Somoza’s poetry collection, As Far As I Know (Cinco Puntos). With readings from Joseph Somoza, Ash Smith, and Kyle Schlesinger.

As Far As I KnowAs Far As I Know is a beautiful book. A wise book. For Joseph Somoza, language, and the world around, is like a river, forever changing and flowing toward the sea, going this way and that, according to the geography. He allows the poem to follow along, he says, “to build itself, allow(s) words to call up other words through aural and memory associations and syntactic demands, and see where it will lead.” The seasons change, his mother dies, his wife Jill and he share coffee and make love, and crows begin to populate his city. Somoza transforms this stuff of life into a wonderful music of poetry. It’s a poetry of intimacy and celebration of being human.


Joseph Somoza was born in Asturias, Spain in 1940, and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey; and Chicago. After studying pre-med and English and teaching college in Texas and Puerto Rico, he received an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa in 1973 and moved to New Mexico the same year. He taught creative writing and literature at New Mexico State University for twenty-two years, and was poetry editor of Puerto del Sol and a founder and poetry editor of Sin Fronteras Journal. He has published five pamphlets and five full books of poetry, most recently, As Far As I Know (Cinco Puntos Press), and he has an online chapbook (Broadside #38, with paintings by Jill Somoza). He has done readings of his poetry in venues throughout the United States and in Mexico, and has had poems in over 200 hard-copy and on-line magazines, journals, and anthologies. He took early retirement from teaching and editing to have more time for writing mornings in his back yard and taking part in the poetry community in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he lives with wife Jill, a painter. They have three children and six grandchildren.


Ash SmithAsh Smith (Keyfitz) is the author of the chapbooks Water Shed, Come Such Frequency, Pigeon of Tears, and most recently Park of Unwired Asking. She lives in Austin where she works as a web designer for the government.


Kyle SKyle Schlesinger is a poet living in Austin, Texas. Recent books of poetry include: Sydney Omarr’s Wild Children, with the artist Flynn Maria Bergann (Planned Obsolescence Press, 2016); Far & Away (Textile Series, 2016); Keep the Change, with Deborah Poe (Great Fainting Spells, 2015); and Parts of Speech (Chax Press, 2014). Scholarly works include Poetry & Typography (Ugly Ducking Presse, 2016) and Threads Talks, with Steve Clay (Cuneiform/Granary Books, 2016). He is proprietor of Cuneiform Press, a nonprofit literary organization specializing in poetry, typography, artists’ books, and music, and the Director of the Graduate School of Publishing at the University of Houston.

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