This winter the new Hoot season at Cafe Azteca will feature area poets who are making books.   All this is followed by one of the longest running and most respected open mics anywhere.

The February Hoot on February 14 will feature Robin Linn, reading from a new chapbook, Fairytale Ending Machine (www.foothillspublishing.com)  and Mark Schorr, reading from a new edition of Heart’s Ladder (http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/frostfoundation)

The Foundation will raffle off copies of the new books by Knowles, Linn, and Schorr.

The March Hoot will again feature the students faculty, and staff of Andover High School, mc’d by Lawrence’s Harry Durso and sponsored by Don’s Auto Care. 

Earlier this fall, the foundation sponsored two theatre trips for Lawrence students to view a live theatre production of “This Verse Business” starring NYPD Blue veteran Gordon Clapp as Robert Frost in a one-man virtuoso production.

On December 10 the ribbon  cutting for the first poetry staircase at Union Crossing marked another poetry milestone.  More poetry on Lawrence staircases will be coming this winter.

Community Access videos capture the highlights of the 2010 Robert Frost Festival. 

The featured speakers included George Kalogeris (left), David Ferry (right), and Megan Grumbling (below).

Poet David Ferry, the 2010 Frost Festival lead
off speaker, who brought us an appreciation of
the classical poetry that Frost first discovered
at Lawrence High School,  has just received the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from
the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. 

In his festival talk last October Ferry showed the audience what must have appealed to Frost in the poems discovered at Lawrence High School. 
Here are some highlights.

Ferry: [Frost’s] ways of working with the  human voice within the constraints in the case of Horace with his meter, within his stanzas, and in the case of Virgil within his meter and his stanzas.  It is the play of the voice that Frost is interested in.

Poet George Kalogeris brought another view of Frost and his affinities to the classical Greek,  a new and most interesing perspective on Frost’s language as music: 

Poet Megan Grumbling, at her third appearance at the Robert Frost Festival, presented “The Pauper Witch of Grafton,” a poem that first appeared in Frost’s 1923 volume New Hampshire:

We’ll end as we began, reminding you that the Robert Frost Foundation is a partner of the Mass Poetry Festival coming to Salem, Mass on April 20-22, 2012 where we will present a special edition of the Robert Frost poetry hoot, featuring Sally Albiso, winner of the 2011 Robert Frost Award, and  followed by many discoveries from Lawrence at our open mic.

Looking forward,

Mark Schorr

Executive Director

Robert Frost Foundation