Award-winning poet Anthony Butts, whose debut collection, "Fifth Season," was published in 1997, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, to open the 1998-99 Reading Series sponsored by the International Writers Center in Arts and Sciences. The reading will take place at the West Campus Conference Center.
The seventh of nine children, Butts grew up in a southwest neighborhood of Detroit. Afflicted by child- hood blindness, he was educated in classes for visually and mentally impaired students before entering Detroit Senior Renaissance High School.
Butts, now pursuing a doctorate in poetry and critical theory at the University of Missouri-Columbia, chronicles his physical and intellectual coming of age in "Fifth Season." The volume is divided into three poem cycles: "Detroit, City of Straits," which centers on his impoverished childhood; "Writing the Body," which follows him through early experiences with violence and burgeoning sexuality; and "The Imaginary Gods," in which the increasingly confident author muses on his own journey while pondering the classical myth of Orpheus, who attempts to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades.
"At first, it was very difficult to put classical allusions in my poems because I was so intent on finding my own way, of creating new forms," Butts said. "I was very distrustful of other people's systems as a child. I would learn things, but not by rote -- I'd want to find my own way of doing them."
"I kind of latched onto the Orpheus myth as an undergraduate, though with 'The Imaginary Gods' I didn't realize that I actually was writing about it until the fifth or sixth poem," Butts admitted. "For me, it's been the clearest example of the unconscious at work."
"First Season" won a Small Press Award the year it was published. Poet Sherod Santos praised the work as "both proof and exemplar of Chekhov's claim that art exists to prepare the soul for tenderness. ... The greatest accomplishment of this book is the way it manages to preserve, however brutal its subject matter, a raw susceptibility to the most mute and ineffable moments of wonder. ... That any first book can manage such a feat is, in itself, remarkable."
Butts holds degrees from Wayne State University in Detroit and Western Michigan University. He currently is working on another poem cycle, "Evolution," for Fine Press.
Butts will be introduced by James E. McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University. A book signing will follow the reading.
The Reading Series continues Dec. 8 with novelist Ben Marcus, a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, and Feb. 9, 1999, with Lydia Davis, an award-winning novelist, short-story writer and translator. The season concludes April 6, 1999, with poet Sarah Lindsay, whose first book, "Primate Behavior," was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award.
Now in its sixth season, the Reading Series is underwritten by the Arts and Education Council, the Lannan Foundation, the Missouri Arts Council, the Regional Arts Commission and Mary and Max Wisgerhof. A season subscription is $15. Individual readings are $5 and free for students and senior citizens. Arts and Education Council cardholders receive a two-for-one discount.
For more information, call 935-5576.
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