CANCELLED, TO BE RESCHEDULED Saturday, January 31, 5 PM: CANCELLED, TO BE RESCHEDULED Author Event with Barbara Mossberg, Professor Emeritus at the U of O Who Will Read from Her Latest Book of Poetry “Clown Cantos.”

———————————

Publishing and performing since age 12, poet, actor, dramaturg, dramatist, radio host, critic, arts advocate, Dr. Mossberg is Professor, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, Fulbrighter, and President Emerita Goddard College. Clown Cantos and Here for the Present describe her Poet Residency.

“We need Clowns to speak the truth.” Barbara Mossberg

Barbara Says:

Who’s up for Dante? Down with him into hell, singing? Cantos to find the good in everything?  As Shakespeare says in As You Like It: sweet are the uses of adversity…where trees have tongues, there are sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything. Who wants to see this world,  like Emily Dickinson’s artist Clown, who ponders “ this tremendous scene, this whole experiment in green, as if it were his own, and sing with Dolly Parton, who says everything is beautiful in its own way. And Ian Chillag, his Radiotopia’s Everything Is Alive, whose can of off- brand cola makes me cry, you, too, when he says, “ any existence at all is a gift,” and Emerson who says in the meanest, darkest things, the muck, there is always music. Things must be sung, he says, and sing themselves. So that’s what I try to do here in Clown Cantos, Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way, SINGING. So on Nicolino’s birthday, born today 45 years ago, in these last five years without him, I have been learning, what he meant when he said, if he would die, I would still be alive, just differently. He brought me Ian Chillag’s program, and infinite ongoing learning. So to my music man, in the starlight, frolicking, I dedicate this reading. And this next stage of, as Dante says, this our life. You n me. Having you here to tell, in these cantos, stories of strange encounters with all that appears alive and beautiful in its own way, helps me see the good, in everything, the love, forgiveness, and the hope.