Place and baggage and physicality run riot in all three books and I love the degree of sexuality that pervades everything in each of the books. Considerate the phobia poems in Following Fred Astaire, The Insects, and also The Realms of Magic in Crawlers and most recently, I'm particularly swayed by Bias poems about Bias and Quiver.
Students in Nat's poetry workshops take great delight in the weeks when she steers them through obsessive forms, and I think that her own work repeatedly turns both public and private obsessions into rich, elegant earthy resource. Each and every one of her poems, I think, demands from its readers a keen visual eye. These are all only the most explicit recognitions of visuality in Nat's work. That last piece, Early Herbal, appears in its purely verbal form at the front of Nat's new book Quiver and is a beautiful piece to play with. She also has a piece in Enid Marx's Artist Press Book, Our Spotanica. She has pieces commissioned for Olster Museum's Collection of Visual Art and Poetry in Penn's Institute for Contemporary Arts, Retrospective Exhibition Catalog Sarah Macanemy. Then, there's Nat's work on the borders of the visual arts. Just think about the thematic and tonal range that this operatic pair is engaged in. Nat has seven musical collaborations to her name, three operas, we have our own Tom Whitman ranging from Thomas Mann's Black Swan through Sookie in the Dark, a retelling of the psyche story to Arthur Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia. If you follow her poetry, you also know her work as a librettist. Staying on top of that listserv is itself a full time job. If you're a Swarthmore colleague, you may or may not know that Nat serves as a kind of one woman clearing house for all things literary in the greater Philadelphia area. She bears the respect and admiration of her colleagues across the college. If you've come from outside the college, for instance, you might be interested to know that Nat has served on all of the major powerhouse committees of the college not once, but multiple times. You might know one Nat, but do you know the whole herd? Let me introduce you to some of those members. "Nat did it," I said and Abby said, "Yes, but did you read Nat's file, her promotion file? A herd of Nats galloped through that file." A herd of Nats. When I was thinking about this, I cast my mind back about a decade to the year after Nat first was promoted to full professor and I was talking with Abby Blum and trying to persuade Abby to come up for promotion to full professor. The challenge comes in because as far as I can see, Nat knows everyone and therefore everyone knows Nat and there's no introduction needed. It's a great honor and also a bit of a challenge to introduce Nat Anderson this afternoon. This evening we will start with Natalie Anderson from the English department, who will be introduced by her colleague in the English department, Betsy Bolton.īetsy Bolton: Applause already. I'm Patricia Riley and on behalf of the provost office, I'd like to welcome you all to the beginning of the Fall Faculty Lecture Series. What a great, great way to start this faculty lecture series. Anderson is introduced by Professor of English Literature Elizabeth Bolton. A 1993 Pew Fellow, she currently serves as Poet in Residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. She has also collaborated on three operas with composer and Professor of Music Thomas Whitman '82 - The Black Swan Sukey in the Dark and an operatic version of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia. The author of two previous volumes of poetry – Following Fred Astaire, which won the 1998 Washington Prize from The Word Works, and Crawlers, which received the 2005 McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press. "I think of this one as balanced between loss and consolation," she says, "between the devastations that shake us, the stabilities that ground us, and the unanticipated moments of transcendence that lift us beyond ourselves." Anderson teaches courses in Victorian, modern, and contemporary poetry and directs the College's creative writing program. Here, she reads (5:10) from Quiver, her latest collection. "I think every book of poems tells a story," says Professor of English Literature Nathalie Anderson. Swarthmore, PA 328-8533 Old Quiver, New Arrows
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