Nathaniel Mackey.

This Wednesday, April 20, join us at 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, where Cathy Park Hong will interview Nathaniel Mackey. Their talk will appear in a future issue of The Paris Review, but you can hear it here first. 

Over the years, the Poetry Center has teamed with The Paris Reviewto present numerous onstage conversations—with Chinua Achebe, Norman Mailer, Iris Murdoch, Maya Angelou, Günter Grass, Tony Kushner, Denise Levertov, Salman Rushdie, Czesław Miłosz, Arthur Miller, and many others—that have led to Writers at Work interviews in the magazine. You can listen to some of them here.

On Wednesday, Mackey will read some of his poems and talk about his work with Cathy Park Hong. Mackey was born in Miami, Florida, in 1947, and grew up, from age four, in California. He’s the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently BlueFasa; five works of fiction, two books of criticism, and an anthology on jazz in poetry and prose. “His poetry ambitiously continues an American bardic line that unfolds from Leaves of Grassto Pound’s Cantos to H.D.’s Trilogyto Olson’s The Maximus Poems, winds through the whole of Robert Duncan’s work and extends beyond all of these,” wrote Don Share. “Mackey’s own rare combinations create an astonishing and resounding effect: his words go where music goes.”

We’re giving away five pairs of tickets. For a chance to win, retweet our announcement below before nine A.M.EST tomorrow morning (April 19). We’ll select the winners at random. Bonne chance!

Retweet for a chance to win free tickets: Nathaniel Mackey and Cathy Park Hong at @92YPoetry https://t.co/bohJ5z3qkg pic.twitter.com/46xO8O6bCG

— The Paris Review (@parisreview) April 18, 2016