News Release| CSULA; Cal State L.A.; Los Angeles; CSU; Jean Burden Poetry Reading

                Note to reporters and journalists: To arrange an interview with Victor Hernandez Cruz, please contact the CSULA Public Affairs office in advance at (323) 343-3050. 

Maraca, The Mountain: A New York-Puerto Rico blend of poetry

Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
at Cal State L.A. April 7

Los Angeles, CA – Internationally renowned poet Victor Hernández Cruz will be featured as this year’s Jean Burden Poetry Reader at California State University, Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 7, 6:30 p.m., in Cal State L.A.’s Golden Eagle Ballroom.

The first Latino poet to be honored in the Jean Burden Poetry Series, Cruz has been described as “the defining poet of that complex bridge between the Latino and mainland cultures of the U.S.” He was elected as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2008.

Cruz will read from his published works Maraca: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2000 and The Mountain in the Sea, and he will discuss a range of new and selected poems from throughout his career. A reception and book-signing will follow.

Cruz was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, and moved to New York City with his family when he was five years old. By the time he became a teenager, he had already completed a collection of poetry, Papo Got His Gun, and, at the age of 20, published Snaps. He has taught at San Francisco State University, the University of Michigan, and the Universities of California at Berkeley and San Diego. 

He has also written Mainland, Tropicalization, By Lingual Wholes, Red Beans (a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year), and, most recently, The Mountain in the Sea. Together with Virgil Suarez and Leroy Quintana, Cruz edited the anthology Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets.  

Featured on Bill Moyers’ “Language of Life” series, Cruz has received numerous awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the New York Poetry Foundation Award. Cruz’s Maraca: New & Selected Poems was a finalist for both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize. For Cruz’s web site, go to www.victorhernandezcruz.com/main.htm.

This event is sponsored by the CSULA Center for Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Department of English, College of Arts and Letters and Department of Chicano Studies; National Endowment for the Arts; Coffee House Press; The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens; and Yankee Magazine.

Jean Burden Annual Poetry Series

This series, one of the longest running and most prestigious in the U.S., was established in 1986 by friends and supporters of Jean Burden to honor her achievements as a poet, essayist, editor, teacher and scholar. An Illinois native, University of Chicago alumna, and Altadena resident, Burden served as poetry editor of Yankee Magazine for 47 years, and published her poetry in prominent magazines including Poetry, Saturday Review, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review and American Scholar. She authored two poetry collections, Naked as the Glass (October House, 1963) and Taking Light from Each Other (University Press of Florida, 1992). Her poetry was praised by figures such as James Dickey who called “[h]er voice unforced and lovely, saying the right un-heard-of-things with naturalness,” and Mary Oliver who described her poems as “silky, meditative, purposeful...filled with the deft cadences of reason.” Burden wrote six bestsellers on animal welfare, and an essay collection, Journey Toward Poetry (October House, 1966), lauded by May Sarton as “a key to a way of looking and a way of being.” The Jean Burden Series also honors and celebrates Burden’s decades of commitment to sustaining poetry’s presence at Cal State L.A. Burden died in April 2008 at age 93.

This increasingly popular event features an annual reading by a major poet. Noted poets, Pulitzer Prize winners and poets laureate have been guest readers since the inception of this series at Cal State L.A., including Adrienne Rich, Andrew Motion, Rita Dove, Anthony Hecht, Maxine Kumin, Mary Oliver, Harryette Mullen, Lucille Clifton, Galway Kinnell, Carolyn Kizer, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Richard Wilbur, Linda Pastan, and Mark Strand.

The University is located at the Eastern Avenue exit, San Bernardino Freeway, at the interchange of the 10 and 710 Freeways. Public (permit dispensers) parking is available on the top level of Parking Structure C. Cost is $.50 per hour for parking. For more on the poetry reading, call Lauri Ramey, Cal State L.A. English Department, at (323) 343-4165.