Today’s Google Doodle honoring Maurice Sendak’s birthday reminds us of the 80th birthday celebration at 92Y in 2008, an enchanted evening with a surprised Maurice in attendance. Watch the full program.

Order of presenters:

—Eleanor Reissa
—Eyal Danieli
—Linda Emond
—Stephen Greenblatt
—Stephen Gosling & Elizabeth Keusch
—James Gandolfini
—Dave Eggers
—Chuck Cooper, Aisha de Haas, Kimberly Grigsby, Denis O’Hare & Alice Playten
—Meryl Streep
—Catherine Keener
—Vince Landay, Spike Jonze and Max Records
—Tony Kushner
—Christine Quinn
—Maurice Sendak

Here’s a picture of Maurice at 92Y in 1967 as he prepares do his own live doodle on stage.

unbornwhiskey:

She asked Bumps Trigger to get her a drink, and he brought her back a glass of dark bourbon. She felt a profound nostalgia, a longing for some emotional island or peninsula that she had not even discerned in her dreams. She seemed to know something about its character—it was not a paradise—but its elevating possibilities of emotional richness and freedom stirred her. It was the stupendous feeling that one could do much better than this; that the reality was not Mrs. Wishing’s dance; that the world was not divided into rigid parliaments of good an evil but was ruled by the absolute authority and range of her desire

John Cheever, The Wapshot Scandal

You can listen to Cheever read from The Wapshot Scandal at 92Y in 1964.

From the Poetry Center Archive—Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood

To begin at the beginning …

It was sixty years ago today—May 14, 1953—that Dylan Thomas’s play Under Milk Wood had its premiere on the stage of 92Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall, with Thomas himself reading a number of roles (1st Voice and Reverend Eli Jenkins, among them). To celebrate the anniversary, we’d like to share this recording of Thomas reading the play’s opening monologue.

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“I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t
you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write”

—W. S. Merwin from “Berryman”

Upon the publication of his Collected Poems by the Library of America, Merwin is making a rare New York appearance and will be coming out on stage at the 92Y Poetry Center any minute. (8 pm!)  We’ll be live tweeting. Merwin will be interviewed by J. D. McClatchy and also read from his work.

Julia Guez, Eileen Myles, Raena Shirali, Timothy Donnelly, Erika L Sanchez and Catherine Blauvelt, at the 2013 “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Contest Reading at 92Y on Mon, May 6.

Congratulations to winners Julia Guez, Raena Shirali, Erika L Sanchez and Catherine Blauvelt. Beer for the evening lovingly provided by The Brooklyn Brewery. 

(Photos by Nancy Crampton) 

From the 92Y Poetry Center Archive: W. S. Merwin and John Ashbery

“The two most distinctive and influential voices by which American poetry has spoken in the last twenty years.” That is how J. D. McClatchy introduced an evening of readings by W. S. Merwin and John Ashbery here at 92Y on November 21, 1983—the first such occasion on which the two poets shared a stage. “Each has his own special slant of vision, his own richness of language,” McClatchy went on to say.

Merwin opens with “After a Storm”—a poem that deals both with the evening’s ostensible theme (autobiographical poetry) and McClatchy’s earlier reference “to the program which some of us saw last night and that was an understatement of what we all expect.” He was referring to “The Day After”—an ABC-television film about the consequences of nuclear war—that aired on Sunday, November 20, and was viewed by more than 100 million Americans.

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Sam Waterston, Charlotte Rampling and Robie Porter in James Salter’s lost film, “Three” (1969).

Susan Sontag introduced James Salter at a 92Y reading in 1997 with “If he can be described as a writer’s writer, then I think it’s just as true to say he’s a reader’s writer; that is, he’s a writer who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure and something that is a bit of an addiction. I myself put James Salter among the very few North American writers all of whose work I want to read and whose as yet unpublished books I wait for impatiently.”

Salter returns to 92Y on Monday night (Apr 29) with Richard Ford.

Pop quiz! Is this a photo of:

1. The German James Dean
2. The German playwright Bertolt Brecht
3. The German Michael J. Fox

Answer below and one correct entrant will be awarded two tickets to Brecht in the 21st Century reading and talk at 92Y on Mon. Apr 22.

Who is pictured above?

Almost famous?

James Salter is 87. He’s written his first novel in 30 years – and The New Yorker wonders whether he’s finally about to become a “Famous Writer.”

Salter gives the only NYC reading of his new book at 92Y on Apr 29.

The New Yorker piece got us thinking. Are there other writers who should be household names, but aren’t? Let us know below. We’ll do a round up of your answers in a later post. And we’ll randomly select one entry and award them two tickets to the reading!

What other writers do you think should be famously known, but aren’t?

Poetry at 100: An Anniversary Reading - Live Webcast

Watch live online tonight at 8:15 pm ET as Poetry magazine celebrates its centenary with readings from The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years by Frank Bidart, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Don Share, Atsuro Riley, Christian Wiman and Charles Wright at 92Y.

If you’re in New York and want to attend, there are still some tickets available.