EVENT: Reading by poet Carl Phillips as part of the Plutzik Memorial Series

Carl Phillips, the acclaimed author of six books of poems, most recently Rock Harbor and The Tether, will read from his work as part of the Plutzik Memorial Series at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30, in the Welles-Brown Room in Rush Rhees Library on the University of Rochester's River Campus.

Phillips writes of a contradictory world of dreams and desires "in which everything," he says, "seems to contain its opposite in some distressing way." Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States, said, "Carl is a wonderful teacher, a learned man, and a tremendously gifted poet who already has established an unmistakable voice and subject, rhythm and cadence." Phillips is the recipient of the 2002 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize, the Morse Poetry Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Pushcart Prize, and has received honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Academy of American Poets. He is professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

One of the country's oldest and most prestigious literary series, the Plutzik Memorial Series was established in 1962 to honor the work of Hyam Plutzik, a distinguished poet and Deane Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the University of Rochester. It is administered by the Department of English. Admission to the readings is free. For more information, call (585) 275-4092.