February 21, 2001 Poet Peter Davison to Read His Poems at the Library of Congress

On Thursday evening, March 8, poet Peter Davison will read his poems at the Library of Congress. The program, presented under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, will be at 6:45 p.m. in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building. Tickets are not required.

Peter Davison, whose most recent collection of poetry, Breathing Room, was published last year, has worked as a literary editor for many years, most notably at the Atlantic Monthly Press, where he served in various capacities, most recently as its editor-in-chief and director. He also has a long association with The Atlantic Monthly as poetry editor and as a frequent contributor.

Mr. Davison is the author of 11 volumes of poetry, including The Breaking of the Day, which won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1965, Pretending to Be Asleep, Dark Houses, Barn Fever, Walking the Boundaries, A Voice in the Mountain, Praying Wrong and The Great Ledge.

His new collection, Breathing Room, has been characterized as a departure from earlier work. It is described by critic David Barber as "a shapely cycle of lyric poems in a tenor of burnished rumination distinct from anything that's come before it." Poet W. S. Merwin writes that the "poems of this new collection look at the same world with surprise and speak of it with a startled and startling freedom ... a freedom that brings with it the old clarity and eloquence."

Mr. Davison has also written a memoir, a book of literary essays, and a narrative of literary history. He resides in Boston and Gloucester, Massachusetts, and is married to the noted architect Joan E. Goody.