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The Cantos, by 1905 Hamilton alumnus Ezra Pound, is an 800-page, unfinished epic poem that is divided into 120 sections, or cantos. The work is widely regarded as controversial due to its experimental style, being loosely structured and arcane, and Pound’s publicized fascist sympathies. “A good deal of the political and economic material in the Cantos is [infamously] wrong-headed,” John Rufo ’16 stated, “but the poetic method and forms are not inherently fascist or anything like that.”

Hamilton College will celebrate the life and work of poet Agha Shahid Ali on Tuesday, Feb. 4, at 7 p.m., in the Burke Library Commons.  One of Kashmir’s most celebrated poets, Shahid taught at Hamilton in the early 1990s.  Burke Library has an extensive archive of his work in its Special Collections. The event will feature community poetry readings, reminiscences, music and birthday refreshments.

Naomi Guttman, professor of English and creative writing, published four poems in the fall issue of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture.

Red Weather hosted a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” on Oct. 12 in Root Glen. Published in 1955 as part of Howl and Other Poems, it became one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than 22 languages.

David Baker, professor of English at Denison University, will read from his work on Tuesday, Oct. 15, at 8 p.m., in the Fillius Events Barn.  Baker holds the Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing at Denison.  His lecture is as part of the English and Creative Writing Department’s Reading Series and is free and open to the public.

Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Jane Springer has been awarded a prestigious  MacDowell Fellowship for a residency at the Colony in Peterborough, N.H. , from Sept. 19 – Oct.  17.  The MacDowell Colony is the nation’s leading artist colony; it nurtures the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of the imagination.

Assistant Professor of English Jane Springer will read at the Poetry Society of America’s New York City Poetry Festival on Saturday, July 27.

Poet Agha Shahid Ali taught at Hamilton for only five years, but in that short time he established lasting connections and friendships at the college. For this reason, the Agha Shahid Ali Literary Trust donated his collection of manuscripts, letters, and other writings to Hamilton after his death in 2001. This summer, Will Newman ’14 is working with Burke Library’s Special Collections to organize the materials so that they are accessible to scholars, ensuring that Shahid’s legacy at Hamilton lives on.

With hundreds of Walmarts and large malls spreading across the United States, shoppers can enjoy more convenient, sometimes cheaper goods, from groceries to car tires. While smooth highways bridge millions of Americans to glossy new shopping opportunities every year, the nation places less value on the quiet pastoral state that it once treasured. Marty Cain ’13 is exploring this dichotomy of lifestyles for his senior fellowship, The Poetic Art of Rural Decay: Reinterpreting the Pastoral with a Surreal Sense of Place.

Creative writing concentrator Martin Cain’s poetry has already appeared in a number of literary journals, so his award of an Emerson Foundation Summer Research Grant to pursue a study focused on “pastoral” poetry should come as no surprise. Cain ’13 was also the youngest writer to attend Middlebury College’s prestigious Bread Loaf Conference in 2011.