The Art of Looking: Wallace Stevens and Karen Bondarchuk

About this event

What is in a day? And how can we notice the moment we are in and what the passage of time means? Artist Karen Bondarchuk’s Ergo Sum: A Crow a Day presents an intimate, moving meditation on these questions, as does Wallace Stevens’ poetry, which took inspiration from his daily walks to work in Hartford. Join former and current West Hartford poet laureates Dennis Barone and Clare Rossini, as they bring the exhibit’s themes of time and memory to life. Barone channels Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” accompanied by Aidan Levy’s saxophone improvisations, and teases out the poem’s meanings in a short presentation. Rossini recites her own bird-inspired poems, including from her volume Winter Morning with Crow, inviting us all to experience the resonance between art and poetry.

Event includes cocktail reception and exhibition entry/viewing.

Tickets: $15 members | $20 non-members https://hillstead.org/event/wallace-stevens-art-of-noticing/

Performer Biographies

Dennis Barone is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, Connecticut. He is the editor of several poetry anthologies and essay collections as well as the author of many books of fiction, literary history, and poetry. A graduate of Bard College, he received his Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he held the Thomas Jefferson Chair, a distinguished Fulbright lecturing award, in the Netherlands, and in 1997 he received the America Award for fiction. He is the poetry editor for the Wallace Stevens Journal.

Clare Rossini has published three books–her first won the Akron Poetry Prize—and she co-edited an anthology titled The Poetry of Capital(University of Wisconsin, 2020). Her poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies. Rossini’s teaching career includes appointments at Carleton College, Trinity College, and the low-residency MFA Program at Vermont College. In April, Rossini was appointed Poet Laureate of West Hartford, CT. She plans to use her position to create events that bring together poetry and birds. Rossini notes, “Birds and poets have long been connected in our cultural tradition, but my motive is more urgent: due to climate change, bird populations in the northeast have dropped by forty percent. Time for us to step up for our winged friends.”

Aidan Levy is the author of Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins and Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed, and editor of Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters. He is an assistant professor of English at the University of Saint Joseph. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, JazzTimes, The Village Voice, and other publications. For ten years, he was the baritone saxophonist in the Stan Rubin Orchestra. He currently performs with Allegra Levy and Friends.