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Friday, October 5, 2012

Books / Genius Rebels, Riff-Raff, and Rarities Tonight at Hugo House, Hosted by Heather McHugh

Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:25 PM

Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a perfectly rhymed and metered anagram of a sonnet?

Brian Taylor
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a perfectly rhymed and metered anagram of a sonnet?

This post has been bumped up from earlier in the week since the event is tonight.

You know who Heather McHugh is, right? She's the intimidatingly brilliant (and wickedly funny) poet, teacher, and translator who's won every prize out there, from a Stranger Genius Award to a MacArthur "genius" grant. And after she won her MacArthur, what did she do with that dough? An inspired, selfless, beautiful thing. She used it to start a nonprofit called Caregifted, which provides week-long retreats for full-time caregivers of severely disabled family members.

When she's not writing poetry, running Caregifted, or teaching MFA students, McHugh is the poetry editor of A&P, The Stranger's quarterly arts magazine. For the current issue, she chose three perfectly rhymed and metered anagrams of Shakespeare sonnets by K. Silem Mohammad, "the best anagrammarian I've ever run across," McHugh writes in her introduction. She goes on to say:

If I hadn't attempted a Shakespeare anagram myself, at painful length, by hand—endlessly missing one letter or adding an extra—having to correct—losing count—wasting hours—I'd never have known how thorny a job it is to compose the damned things.

Tonight, McHugh is hosting a reading of K. Silem Mohammad's at Hugo House called The Wildcard Bard. You don't want to miss it. Starts at 7 pm. McHugh will read and talk, too, as will Brian Reed. The event is a Caregifted fundraiser, and there will be an auction of one-of-a-kind literary rarities, including a signed Samuel Beckett novel and the opportunity to play basketball with Sherman Alexie.

Get your tickets and tell your friends.