Zinc Bar Reading Series:
Philippe Beck, Serge Gavronsky & Michael Heller
Friday, April 22
at 5:30 PM
at Zinc Bar
82 W 3rd St
NYC
Philippe Beck, Ph.D, is a contemporary French poet, writer, and philosopher. In 1994, Mr. Beck received his Doctor of Philosophy at l'Ecole des hautes études en sciences socials in Paris under the direction of Jacques Derrida. Along with 14 published books of poetry, Beck has produced an intellectual biography titled Beck l'impersonnage (Beck the Impersonality, 2006) and a book of prose with the pithy title A Journal (Un Journal, 2008). To date, only two of Philippe Beck's books have been translated into English: Crude Marivaux: Critical Texts (Textes critiques, 1999) and Vault of the Dissolvable Novel (Chambre à roman fusible, 2002). Beck has received widespread recognition as a poet, philosopher, and writer in France and in literary communities throughout the world. Many of his poetic works have been translated into German, Chinese, Korean, Dutch, Flemish, and Galacian.
Serge Gavronsky was born in Paris in 1932 and fled Hitler in 1941. He is Professor of French at Barnard College. A renowned author and translator, Gavronsky has published many books, including Lectures et compte-rendu (1973), Je le suis (1995) and many others. Amongst his translations are French renderings of Louis Zukofsky's A (1994, 2001) and of Joyce Mansour's Essential Poems and Writings (2008).
Michael Heller has published twenty volumes of poetry, essays and memoir. His most recent books are Eschaton (2009), a book of poems, and Beckmann Variations & Other Poems, a work in prose and poetry (2010). His collection of essays on George Oppen, Speaking the Estranged, was published in 2008. Uncertain Poetries: Selected Essays on Poets, Poetry and Poetics,appeared in 2006. Exigent Futures: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2003. His memoir, Living Root, was published by the State University of New York Press in the Fall of 2000. Two Novellas: Marble Snows & The Study, a collection of fiction, was published in 2009. His libretto for the opera, "Constellations of Waking," based on the life of the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, has been set to music by the composer Ellen Fishman Johnson and performed at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His critical study, Conviction's Net of Branches: Essays on the Objectivist Poets and Poetry, was published by Southern Illinois University Press. For many years, he was on the faculty of New York University and has taught at The Naropa University, The New School, San Francisco State, Notre Dame and other universities.
