Year: 2026

2026 WALLACE STEVENS BIRTHDAY BASH

The Thirty-first Annual
WALLACE STEVENS BIRTHDAY BASH
Saturday, November 7, 2026, 2:00pm
Center for Contemporary Culture
Hartford Public Library

Featuring guest speaker—

APRIL BERNARD

Farewell to an Idea

One of Stevens’s persistent “ideas” concerned the aesthetics of the human-made, in contrast with what nature has made. If we look at the late (magnificent) poem “Auroras of Autumn,” we can see him change his mind about a central tenant of his long-held Aestheticism.

April Bernard’s The World Behind the World, her sixth book of poems, was published in 2023 by W.W. Norton; previous collections are Brawl & Jag, Romanticism, Swan Electric, Psalms, and Blackbird Bye Bye, which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her novel Miss Fuller was short-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award;she has also published short fiction in Little Star, Electric Literature, and The Southampton Review, and is a contributor of reviews and essays to The New York Review of Books and Book Post, among other journals. She teaches at Skidmore College and is currently at work on a volume of new and selected poems.

Program: This festive and illuminating event will begin with a reception of wine and hors d’oeuvres, followed by April Bernard’s presentation, and will conclude with a book signing, birthday cake and champagne!  

Suggested donation $10* per person to benefit…

Hartford Public Library

500 Main Street

Hartford, CT 06103

RSVP—

Jim Finnegan

jforjames@aol.com

860.508.2810

*Completely optional; no one turned away.


This event is presented by—

Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens (stevenspoetry.org)

and Hartford Public Library (hplct.org)

2 Min Reading

Wallace Stevens Bridge

Wallace Stevens Bridge project recently completed
by Daniel Kelman

It all started with a broken sidewalk.


Back in 2021, I became increasingly concerned with the condition of the sidewalk on the bridge connecting Hartford’s Asylum Hill with the West End, located between Stones VII and VIII on the Wallace Stevens Walk.

I had heard about Hartford Decide$, which promotes participatory budgeting in the City of Hartford (www.hartforddecides.org), and submitted a proposal to repair the damaged sidewalks and install a plaque in Stevens’ honor. This Asylum Avenue bridge, over the North Branch of the Park River, forms a critical pathway along the Wallace Stevens Walk, which follows Stevens’ daily route from his workplace at the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Company (“The Hartford”) to his home on Westerly Terrace. Hundreds of pedestrians, runners, dog-walkers, and students at the nearby Classical Magnet School traverse both sides of this bridge each day. My proposed cost (a wild guess!) was $19,000, well under that year’s $40,000 total budget. Hartford residents voted to approve the project, which clearly addressed a local need. I received a strong endorsement from Dennis Barone on behalf of the Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens, who supplied a bridge-related excerpt from Stevens’ poem “Metaphors of a Magnifico” for the plaque.

The project proved to be much more difficult than expected, due to utility lines and conduits running under the bridge. It took five years, but the sidewalk repair and plaque installation were finally completed in June 2026. A formal dedication ceremony is planned.

2 Min Reading

2026 Rose Garden Reading – June 20, 6PM

2026 ROSE GARDEN READING
Saturday, June 20, 6PM

This annual poetry reading features Connecticut-based poets—

Pat Hale and Debora Kuan

The Bandstand, Elizabeth Park, Hartford CT

Come to Elizabeth Park for a poetry reading and a stroll through the renowned rose garden.

NOTE: You should bring a lawn chair or blanket (no seating is provided)

Anita Durkin will give the introductions...

Debora Kuan is the author of three poetry collections, Women on the Moon (The Word Works), Lunch Portraits (Brooklyn Arts Press), and XING (Saturnalia). She has received a US Fulbright fellowship and residencies at Yaddo, Macdowell, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and other publications, and her writing has appeared in Time, Artforum, Art in America, Modern Painters, Paper Monument, and other magazines. She has been anthologized in the Brooklyn Poets Anthology, What Things Cost, and Advanced Language and Literature, and she was the former poet laureate of Wallingford, CT. She is currently the head of copywriting at the MIT Press.

Pat Hale is happily retired from a wide-spanning work life that includes bee disease research, information technology, and teaching English. Her poetry publications include Dry Lightning (Kelsay Books), Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed (Grayson Books), and Composition and Flight (the Hill-Stead Museum). Her prize-winning poems appear in CALYX, Naugatuck River Review, Lily, Third Wednesday and other journals, and have been anthologized in Forgotten Women, Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, and elsewhere. Her short fiction piece, “A Book of Matches,” was performed by the East Haddam Stage Company in its series, “Plays with Poetry.” She lives in West Hartford in a little house surrounded by tall trees, serves as an associate editor of the Connecticut River Review and on the board of directors for the long-running Riverwood Poetry Series.

This reading is sponsored by the Friends & Enemies of Wallace Stevens (stevenspoetry.org)

with the support of the Elizabeth Park Conservancy (elizabethparkct.org).

For more info, contact: Jim Finnegan – JforJames@aol.com – 860-508-2810

2 Min Reading