Poets @ MoMA for Demoiselles' 100th
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
6:30 p.m.Modern Poets
Concerts, Readings & Performances
1907/2007: Poets on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
The Celeste Bartos Theater, mezzanine, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
Three times a year, poets read historical works and their own work that reflects on modern and contemporary art.
In conjunction with the one hundredth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, May’s installment of Modern Poets reflects upon Picasso’s masterpiece, other works in the Museum’s collection made in 1907, and the year 1907 itself. Readings include works written by Picasso’s friends and acquaintances—such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Gelett Burgess, André Salmon, and Gertrude Stein—who saw and responded to Les Demoiselles, as well as other literature from this cultural and artistic milieu. Following in the tradition of the MoMA Members Magazine, which commissioned poets to respond to works in the collection and then published the results, the Museum also offers contemporary poets the opportunity to write new poetry about art from all curatorial departments made one hundred years ago. Participants include Mary Jo Bang, poet and Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program, Washington University, St. Louis; Mary Ann Caws, author, translator and Distinguished Professor of English, French, Comparative Literature, and Film Studies, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York; Pierre Joris, poet, translator, essayist, and Professor of Poetry and Poetics, State University of New York, Albany; Jerome Rothenberg poet and professor of visual arts and literature, University of California, San Diego; and others.
This event is held in conjunction with the exhibition Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon at 100
Tickets ($10; members $8; students, seniors, and staff of other museums $5) can be purchased at the lobby information desk, the Film desk, the Cullman Building lobby, or online at www.ticketweb.com.
Learn more about Adult Programs at MoMA
View all upcoming Modern Poets

Poasis II: Selected Poems 2000-2024
“Todesguge/Deathfugue”
“Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021)”
“Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello”
“Conversations in the Pyrenees”
“A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly.” Edited by Pierre Joris & Peter Cockelbergh
“An American Suite” (Poems) —Inpatient Press
“Arabia (not so) Deserta” : Essays on Maghrebi & Mashreqi Writing & Culture
“Barzakh” (Poems 2000-2012)
“Fox-trails, -tales & -trots”
“The Agony of I.B.” — A play. Editions PHI & TNL 2016
“The Book of U / Le livre des cormorans”
“Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan”
“Paul Celan, Microliths They Are, Little Stones”
“Paul Celan: Breathturn into Timestead-The Collected Later Poetry.” Translated & with commentary by Pierre Joris. Farrar, Straus & Giroux