Bruce Weigl is one of the finest contemporary American poets. Born in Ohio, he enlisted in the army in 1967 and ended up in Vietnam. His experiences there still inform and motivate his poetry. He received his BA at Oberlin (1974), and his PhD at the University of Utah (1979). His poetry collections include Like a Sack Full of Old Quarrels (1976), Executioner (1977), A Romance (1979), The Monkey Wars (1984), Song of Napalm (1988), What Saves Us (1992), Sweet Lorain (1996), Angel Riding a Beast (1998), Archaeology of the Circle (1999), After the Others (1999), and The Unraveling Strangeness (2002). As well, Weigl has edited and co-edited poetry volumes and anthologies including Charles Simic: Essays on the Poetry (1997) and Writing Between the Lines: An Anthology on War and Its Social Consequences (1997). Weigl has visited Vietnam many times -- first as a veteran revisiting the past and then as a writer and translator of Vietnamese poetry. His co-translated work Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993 (1998) is a collection of poems written by North Vietnamese soldiers.

The poetry reading is free and open to the public.
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The Esther Frank Memorial Poetry Reading is made possible by a generous gift from Dorothy and Alvin Kirsner in memory of Mrs. Kirsner's sister Esther Frank who studied Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Sponsored by the ASU Department of English and the ASU Creative Writing Program. For more information, please contact: Karla Elling, 480-965-3528.