American Poet F. D. Reeve and Brazilian Poet Astrid Cabral to Read at the NYS Writers Institute

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Poet F. D. Reeve

• Brazilian Poet Astrid Cabral
• Translator Alexis Levitin

ALBANY, NY (09/24/2008)(readMedia)-- Award-winning Poet F. D. Reeve to Appear With the Three Blue Cats Jazz Band, October 7, 2008

The Three Blue Cats jazz band will present a musical setting for a reading by award-winning poet F. D. Reeve, father of late Superman actor and disability activist Christopher Reeve, on Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. [Note change to earlier start time to avoid conflict with televised Presidential debate] in Page Hall on the University at Albany's downtown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m. Reeve will present an informal seminar in Science Library 340 on the uptown campus. The events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and are free and open to the public.

F. D. Reeve will read from his new poetry volume, "The Blue Cat Walks the Earth" (2008). The book is a sequel to the widely-admired collections, "The Blue Cat" (1972) and "The Return of the Blue Cat" (2005). The new volume presents twenty-four poems ranging from the sassy and saucy to the passionate, the profoundly serious, and the elegiac.

A novelist, poet, critic, and noted translator of Russian literature, the 80-year-old Reeve is a two-time winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, as well as the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Golden Rose Award of the New England Poetry Society, the May Sarton Award and the Allen Tate Award. He is a Professor Emeritus of Letters at Wesleyan University where he taught for forty years.

Other recent books include the novel, "My Sister Life" (2005), and the poetry collection, "The Toy Soldier and Other Poems" (2007). Writing in the "Contemporary Poetry Review," John Drexel said of "Toy Soldier," "F.D. Reeve is one of the finest, most underappreciated poets now at work in this country. For thirty-some-odd years he has been producing work of stunning power and relevance, work that reminds one all at once of the prophetic voice of Yeats, the piercing, crystalline sensibilities of Stevens, and the wild winds and fur pelts of a Siberian shaman."

Reeve has published ten volumes of poetry, seven books of fiction, twelve books of translations, three books of literary criticism, four libretti, and countless uncollected essays, articles, stories, poems, reviews, and translations in journals across the country His work has appeared in the "Atlantic," "American Scholar," "New Yorker," "New York Times Book Review," "New Criterion," "Times Literary Supplement," "Washington Post Book World," "Antioch Review," "Sewanee Review," and UAlbany's own "Little Magazine."

Outside the literary community, Reeve is better known as the father of the late Superman actor and disability activist, Christopher Reeve.

"The Three Blue Cats" band members include Don Davis, saxophone, flute, reed and fife player, and Shakuhachi percussionist, who performs annually at the Portsmouth Jazz Festival and who has played and/or recorded with The Microscopic Septet, NY Gang, and NY Composers Orchestra; and Joe Deleault, composer and pianist, who has cut CDs and DVDs with Jon Bon Jovi and Mighty Sam McLain.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

Astrid Cabral, Brazilian Poet, Inspired by Animals of the Amazon Region, and Alexis Levitin, American Translator, to Appear October 8, 2008

Astrid Cabral, poet and environmentalist from the Amazonian region of Brazil, and Alexis Levitin, award-winning translator, will discuss "Cage" (2008), Cabral's poetry collection about the animals of the Amazon, both real and imaginary, Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 4:15 p.m. in the Standish Room, Science Library on the uptown campus. The event is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and is free and open to the public.

One of Brazil's leading contemporary poets, Astrid Cabral is a native of Manaus, the capital city of Amazonas State, and a key figure in the Amazonian cultural identity and recovery movement. She is the product of a city in which "nature in an exuberant manner coexisted with urban sophistication." Her poems are firmly rooted in an Amazonian childhood populated by parrots, monkeys, turtles, bats, pink river dolphins, boa constrictors and other rainforest creatures. "Cage" is her first collection to appear in English.

Regarding "Cage," she says, "The core of the book is the closeness I maintain with the animal world. I put myself on their level, seeing them within me, and when I do view them from the outside, I still am aware that there is something wild or savage in us humans, that we too are predators, and thus I restore our fellowship."

In 1984, Cabral published well-received Portuguese translations of Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and "Walden." Her poems have appeared in "Pleiades," "Runes," "Sirena," "Amazonian Literary Review," "Calque," and the 2003 anthology, "Fourteen Female Voices from Brazil."

A past member of her country's diplomatic corps, Cabral served for years at the Brazilian Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and at the Brazilian Consulate in Chicago. A mother of five, she is a professor emeritus of Portuguese Language and Brazilian Literature at the University of Brasilia, and currently makes her home in Rio de Janeiro.

Alexis Levitin, translator of "Cage" and Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh, has translated 25 Portuguese literary works into English, including poetry volumes by Eugénio de Andrade, Egito Gonçalves, Carlos de Oliveira, and the story collection "Soulstorm" by Clarice Lispector.

Levitin is the past recipient of numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Witter Bynner Foundation, and a past winner of the Fernando Pessoa Prize. It is worth noting, in connection with the new book's preoccupation with animal life, that Levitin holds a B.A. in Zoology from Columbia University.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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