October 6, 1995

Contact: Craig D'Ooge (202) 707-9189

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Media Advisory: Poet Laureate Robert Hass to Hold Press Conference

Robert Hass, the poet laureate of the United States, will hold a press conference on Friday, October 13 at 3:30 p.m. in the Poetry Room of Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Room LJ320. (Use N.E. entrance and follow signs.)

Mr. Hass will open the Library's 1995-96 literary season with a reading from his work on Thursday, October 12 at 6:45 p.m. in the Montpelier Room, sixth floor, James Madison Memorial Building.

Robert Hass, who succeeds Rita Dove as Poet Laureate, was born in San Francisco in 1941. He received his B.A. degree from St. Mary's College, Moraga, California, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. His first collection of poetry, Field Guide (1973), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His second collection, Praise (1979), took the William Carlos Williams Award. His other works include Twentieth Century Pleasures (1984), a collection of essays which won the National Book Critics Award for criticism in 1985; Human Wishes, a book of poetry and short prose pieces (1989); and The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (1994). He has worked with poet Czeslaw Milosz as a translator on many of Mr. Milosz's poems in his Collected Poems and in Mr. Milosz's books Provinces (1993) and Facing the River (1995).

Among Mr. Hass's other awards and honors are a Danforth fellowship (1963-67) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1984-89). He is on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he is teaching two courses this fall.

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PR 95-137
10/6/95
ISSN 0731-3527