April 9, 2000
POETRY AND THE HOLOCAUST, A SPECIAL DAY-LONG PROGRAM AT UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
Featuring Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum presents a special day-long program on Holocaust-related poetry to be held at the Museum on April 9, 2000, from 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. The program will feature readings by internationally known poets including Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, Ira Sadoff, Irena Klepfisz, and Marge Piercy. The Museum’s Director of Oral History, Joan Ringelheim, will also lead conversations with author Paul Felstiner and Czeslaw Milosz. The program may be attended in part or in full. Admission is free and open to the public, but reservations are suggested. Please contact tickets.com at (800) 400-9373. Tickets.com service fees apply.
The program will begin with a panel discussion on the cultural role of poetry since the Holocaust and its use in documenting and memorializing the Holocaust. Moderated by Ira Sadoff, panelists will include Irena Klepfisz, Marge Piercy and Gerald Stern. The audience will be invited to ask questions. It will be followed by a series of readings by Ira Sadoff, Abraham Brumberg, Anh-Thu Ngo, and Marge Piercy.
The afternoon session will include a conversation between Joan Ringelheim and author and professor John Felstiner on his award-winning book, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew, which won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. The audience will then be invited to participate in a short question-and-answer session. Readings by Irena Klepfisz, Marguerite M. Striar, Jason Sommer, Miriam Morsel Nathan, Karl Kirchwey and Gerald Stern will follow. The afternoon’s program will close with a reading by and dialogue with Czeslaw Milosz.
The program schedule is as follows:
10:00 a.m. Welcome;
10:15 a.m. Panel Discussion with Ira Sadoff, Irena Klepfisz, Marge Piercy, and Gerald Stern;
11:45-12:30 p.m. Readings by Ira Sadoff, Abraham Brumberg, Anh-Thu Ngo, and Marge Piercy;
12:30-1:30 p.m. Break;
1:30-2:30 p.m. A Conversation with John Felstiner;
2:30-2:45 p.m. Break;
2:45-3:45 p.m. Readings by Irena Klepfisz, Marguerite M. Striar, Jason Sommer, Miriam Morsel Nathan, Karl Kirchwey, and Gerald Stern;
3:45-4:00 p.m. Break;
4:00-5:00 p.m. Interview with and reading by Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz.
Developed in conjunction with the Academy of American Poets, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, the Poetry Society of America, and the 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, this is the first day-long program held by the Museum devoted exclusively to poetry inspired by the Holocaust.
A unique public-private partnership, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has welcomed more than 13.5 million visitors since it opened in April 1993. This May, it will mark two decades of its founders’ visionary leadership with the opening of its newest exhibition, Flight and Rescue, the national Days of Remembrance ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, and an evening honoring the work of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and its successor, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
For more information regarding the program or to arrange an interview with the program’s participants, please contact the Media Relations Department at the Holocaust Memorial Museum: Andy Hollinger at (202) 488-6133 or ahollinger@ushmm.org.
