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)