The NYU Creative Writing Program, which provided me with years of heady education, a passel of new friends, and a closeness with Sallie Mae the likes of which I could never have dreamed, is celebrating one of its longtime jewels—let's say platinum. Galway Kinnell, who's known to cause mass swooning from across a continent, is leaving the school after decades of true and wholehearted service to young poets. His reading on March 24 will be a dilly:

Beloved Writing Program faculty member, program founder and former program director, Galway Kinnell will retire from NYU in 2005. He will join us tonight to read from his work. Kinnell is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other honors. His books of poetry include: When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone, Imperfect Thirst and A New Selected Poems. He currently holds the Erich Maria Remarque Chair in Creative Writing at NYU.

Thursday, March 24
Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall
40 Washington Square South

There is simply no reason to miss this. One syllable from him and you'll forget where you lived, or how.

School of the Arts [1971 Letter to the Editor, NYRB]
"When the Towers Fell" [New Yorker]
Writing for the Dead [GK interviewed by Alice Quinn, New Yorker]
On Galway Kinnell as a teacher/poet, something to be grateful for [Jeffrey Ethan Lee blog]
"After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" [audio, GK reads; Academy of American Poets]
Philip Levine Reads Galway Kinnell [audio, "The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ Into the New World," WNYC]