David Baker responds to Boris Pasternak's provocative statement as he discusses the relationship between poets and their environment. Baker will talk about the language, idiom, and work of a place, as well as the limitations that arise from artistic alignments with particular geographical regions, artistic schools or movements, and unconventional modes of composition. The discussion will feature excerpts from the work of Stanley Plumly, G. C. Waldrep, and Carl Phillips as Baker examines issues of the "heartland."

David Baker's first collection of poems, Laws of the Land, was published in 1981, followed by Haunts in 1985. Since then, Baker has published several collections of poetry, including Never-Ending Birds, Treatise on Touch: Selected Poems, Midwest Eclogue, Changeable Thunder, The Truth about Small Towns, After the Reunion, and Sweet Home, Saturday Night. He is also the author of three books of criticism: Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry, Heresy and the Ideal: On Contemporary Poetry, and Meter in English: A Critical Engagement. Baker currently resides in Granville, Ohio, where he serves as Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review.

This event is being produced in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets as part of their Poets Forum series.

This program is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.