What Light Can Do: Writing as Attention

Robert Hass’s books of poetry include Time and Materials, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and the National Book Award in 2008; Sun Under Wood: New Poems, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996, Human Wishes; Praise; and Field Guide. He has worked with Czeslaw Milosz to translate dozen volumes of Milosz’s poetry, including, most recently, A Second Space. His translations of Japanese haiku masters have been collected in The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa. From 1995 to 1997 he served as Poet Laureate of the United States.

Carol Muske-Dukes is the author of poetry, novels, essay collections and co-editor of two anthologies. She teaches English/Creative Writing at the University of Southern California where she founded the PhD program in Creative Writing/Literature. She writes for the Huffington Post, NY Times and LA Times (former poetry columnist at the LATimes) and has been a National Book Award finalist, Guggenheim and NEA fellow. She recently finished her term as Poet Laureate of California