Elizabeth T. Gray Jr. and Arden Levine Poetry Reading

About the Book: Elizabeth T. Gray Jr.'s After the Operation reports from the No Man's Land she wandered following eight hours of surgery to remove a brain tumor. What does the mind feel like after something has been taken out of your skull? "An uninhabited coast," or "all shatter and thoroughfare?" These spare poems interweave medical documents, journal entries, and memories, assembling a polyvocal chorus to document the surgery itself and the recuperation process. The decentralized perspective of After the Operation allows the reader to see the procedure holistically--medically, from the doctor's perspective; subjectively, from the author's; and vicariously, from her caretakers', family's, and friends'--while approximating the disassociation the patient feels as she navigates unexpected cognitive and emotional side effects. Sometimes bleak but always gorgeous, After the Operation does us a great service in illuminating and articulating the complexities of a serious medical event. This tangible chronicle of Gray's terror, isolation, bafflement, desolation, love, loss, relief and gratitude serves as a beacon for all of us who will one day, as Susan Sontag says, find ourselves dwelling in "the kingdom of the sick." Gray makes valiant use of her citizenship there, asking, "When they come for you, when the unfamiliar roar comes, and a sudden opening, and light pours in, when what had kept you safe, what had always been, is breached, pried open, and light pours in, what do you want to have been writing then?" After the Operation is her triumphant answer.

About the Author: Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. is a poet, translator, critic, and corporate consultant. Previous collections of poetry include Salient (New Directions, 2020) and Series | India (Four Way Books, 2015). Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season (New Directions, 2022), her translations of Iran’s major modern woman poet, Forough Farrokhzad (1937-1962), were a finalist for the 2023 PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation. The Green Sea of Heaven, a 30th Anniversary Edition of her translations of Iran’s major medieval mystic poet, Hafiz (d. 1389), appeared from Monkfish Publishing in 2024. She currently serves on the Boards of Kimbilio Fiction, The Beloit Poetry Journal Foundation, Friends of Writers, and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran. She was a Founder and Managing Partner/CEO of Conflict Management, Inc. and Alliance Management Partners, LLC, boutique corporate consulting firms. She holds a BA and JD from Harvard University and an MFA from Warren Wilson and lives in New York City.

About the Book: An abecedary, or alphabet book, teaches letters, the primary pieces of language and of story-making. In Ladies' Abecedary, each letter is a woman, each woman is a poem, and each poem is a narrative of female identity. These micro-biographies-in-verse present a series of anonymous characters (historical and mythological, contemporary and composite, unique and universal) in a collection that reveals "the diverse and complex nature of women's interior and external lives." Letter by letter, Ladies' Abecedary "exemplifies the importance of the project to reclaim voice, agency, and equality for women," and raises a remark about how a woman's story is told.

About the Author: Arden Levine is the author of Spoke (finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series; forthcoming in 2026 from Washington D.C.-based press The Word Works) and Ladies’ Abecedary (Harbor Editions, 2021). Her writing has been featured by the Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Foundation, and WNYC's Radiolab, and has appeared in Barrow Street, Harvard Review,The Missouri Review’s Poem-of-the-Week, and elsewhere. A New York City municipal employee, Arden's daily work focuses on housing affordability, homelessness prevention, and equitable community development.