Rita Dove and Robin Coste Lewis read from their work, introduced by Elizabeth Alexander.
Rita Dove’s newly published Collected Poems is “an absolutely astounding body of work,” wrote the Los Angeles Times. “The lyric beauty of her poems makes them unforgettable; their deep knowledge of history and its ongoing consequences makes them permanent.”
Robin Coste Lewis won the 2015 National Book Award for Voyage of the Sable Venus, her first collection of poetry. “Altogether new, open, experimental and ground-breaking, Lewis privileges real life in all its complications,” wrote Claudia Rankine.