February 4, 2015 Poet Laureate Selects 2015 Witter Bynner Fellows

The 20th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, Charles Wright, has selected poets Emily Fragos and Bobby C. Rogers for the the 2015 Witter Bynner Fellowships.

Wright will introduce a program celebrating the fellows at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 12, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave., S.E., Washington, D.C. 20540. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets are needed.

Fragos and Rogers each will receive a $10,000 fellowship. This is the 18th year that the fellowship has been awarded.

Commenting on his selections, Wright said, “Their work is so different from each other. Bobby C. Rogers is a very narrative poet, and tells stories about memory and pieces of memory—how they fit together or don’t always fit, and what that means for the language’s inability to say what we want it to say. By contrast, Emily Fragos writes more imagistically. Her subjects are less tangible and tactile, but strong and deep and very close to the nerve ends. She writes as though she’s speaking only to me, because she knows what I want to know.”

Fragos is the author of two books of poems, including “Hostage: New & Selected Poems” (2011) and “Little Savage” (2004). Her other honors include a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and a 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award. Fragos is the editor of five poetry anthologies from Everyman’s Pocket Library/Knopf: “Art and Artists,” “The Great Cat,” “The Dance,” “Music’s Spell” and “Letters: Emily Dickinson." She teaches at New York University, where she is a part-time professor of poetry in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Rogers is the author of “Paper Anniversary” (2010), winner of the 2009 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. He is the recipient of the Greensboro Review Literary Prize in Poetry and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Southern Review, Georgia Review and Shenandoah, among others. Rogers is professor of English at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

The Witter Bynner fellowships support the writing of poetry. Only two things are asked of the fellows: that they organize a reading in their hometowns and participate in reading and recording sessions at the Library of Congress. Applications are not taken for the fellowships; the Poet Laureate makes the selection.

The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry was incorporated in 1972 in New Mexico to provide grant support for programs through non-profit organizations. Witter Bynner was an influential early-20th century poet and translator of the Chinese Classic “Tao Te Ching,” which he named “The Way of Life According to Laotzu.” He travelled with D.H. Lawrence and Frieda Lawrence and proposed to Edna St. Vincent Millay (she accepted, but then they changed their minds). He worked at McClure’s Magazine, where he published A .E. Housman for the first time in the United States, and was one of O. Henry’s early fans.

Previous Witter Bynner fellows include Carol Muske-Dukes and Carl Phillips (1998), David Gewanter, Heather McHugh and Campbell McGrath (1999), and Naomi Shihab Nye and Joshua Weiner (2000), all appointed by Robert Pinsky; the late Tory Dent and Nick Flynn (2001), appointed by Stanley Kunitz; George Bilgere and Katia Kapovich (2002), and Major Jackson and Rebecca Wee (2003), appointed by Billy Collins; Dana Levin and Spencer Reece (2004), appointed by Louise Gluck; Claudia Emerson and Martin Walls (2005), and Joseph Stroud and Connie Wanek (2006), appointed by Ted Kooser; Laurie Lamon and David Tucker (2007), appointed by Donald Hall; Matthew Thorburn and Monica Youn (2008), appointed by Charles Simic; Christina Davis and Mary Szybist (2009) and Jill McDonough and Atsuro Riley (2010), appointed by Kay Ryan; Forrest Gander and Robert Bringhurst (2011), appointed by W.S. Merwin; L. S. Asekoff and Sheila Black (2012) appointed by Philip Levine; and Sharon Dolin and Shara McCallum (2013) and Honorée Fannone Jeffers and Jake Adam York (2014), appointed by Natasha Trethewey.

The Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center fosters and enhances the public's appreciation of literature. To this end, the Center administers the endowed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry position, coordinates an annual season of readings, performances, lectures, conferences, and symposia, and sponsors prizes and fellowships for literary writers. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/poetry/.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.