On Tuesday, Jan. 20, Louisiana Tech’s Department of English will sponsor a poetry reading by H.R. Stoneback from 7-8:30 p.m. in the Adams Hall parlor.

Stoneback will be reading from his recently published volumes of poetry. The event is free and open to the public.

The distinguished professor of English and director of graduate studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz has received numerous awards and honors for criticism, poetry and teaching and has served as visiting professor at the University of Paris, Fulbright Professor at Peking University and director of the American Center for Students and Artists in Paris.

A leading scholar of international reputation on Ernest Hemingway, Stoneback is a widely published literary critic, poet and author or editor of 15 volumes of criticism and poetry and more than 150 essays on American and world literature.

Stoneback’s poetry has been well-received by critics:

“When you read – or hear him read – these songs and legends you know you are in the presence of a compelling, original, profound, and truly remarkable voice.” – W. Evans Benton, poet, critic, Paris.

“These poems spring and sing right out of the earth – then suddenly they soar and the reader feels as if she were on the Concorde. . . There are spring-songs from all over the world here, from France and China and the States. And, as with the many poems of Provence found here, the reader is led to feel deeply that if ever we are to reconnect with and renew the roots, the myths and traditions and songs that make us what we are – the time is now, through these poems. . .I hug these songs to my heart.” – Catherine Aldington, poet, translator, Paris.

“H.R. Stoneback’s narrative poems cut to the hearts of their own mythologies as outer landscapes become inner.” – Donald Junkins, U. of Massachusetts.

Some of Stoneback’s other publications include: “Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises,” “Hemingway’s Paris: Our Paris” and “Singing the Springs and Other Poems.” He is considered an expert on Hemingway and modernism, and on William Faulkner and the Southern Renaissance.

Stoneback is the founding editor and co-editor of ‘The Shawangunk Review’ and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Hemingway Society.

By Scott Boatright, News Bureau writer

Written by Judith Roberts