Memory sits at the core of both literature and lives. Yet forgetting is also a part of our brains’ daily working, bringing its own human truths and a necessary path for moving forward. Lewis Hyde’s new _A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past_, provides inspiration for a deep-dive discussion of memory’s other side, with this august panel of writers and neuroscientists: poets Jane Hirshfield and Margaret Gibson, author Lewis Hyde, and UCSF neuroscientists Aimee Kao, Bruce Miller, and Virginia Sturm.
Co-hosted by Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival
Jane Hirshfield’s ninth poetry collection, Ledger (Knopf), appears in 2020. Chancellor emerita of the Academy of American Poets and recently elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, she works frequently at the intersection of poetry and science. Her work appears in The New Yorker, Atlantic, Poetry, et al.
Listen to Poet and Professor Margaret Gibson below:
Margaret Gibson, current Connecticut Poet Laureate, is the author of 12 books of poetry, including Not Hearing the Wood Thrush (2018) and Broken Cup (2014), centered on memory loss from Alzheimer’s disease and the gifts of sustaining presence through lament, acceptance, and love. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Connecticut.
Listen to author Lewis Hyde below:
Lewis Hyde’s recent book, A Primer for Forgetting (FSG, 2019), explores the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory—in myth, personal psychology, politics, art and spiritual life. A MacArthur Fellow, Hyde taught for many years at Kenyon College.
Jessie Kanelos Weiner is a Franco-American illustrator, author and food stylist based in Paris and New York. Born and raised in Chicago, she was a costume designer in a previous life when picking up watercolor for the first time, developing her highly detailed, whimsical and instantly recognizable style. She is the coauthor of “Paris In Stride” (Rizzoli), author of “Edible Paradise”: A Coloring Book of Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables” (Universe) and 8 cookbooks published by Editions Marabout.
She is currently working on the next book in the “In Stride” series.
Located in Bordeaux’s former submarine base, the BASSINS DE LUMIÈRES will present monumental immersive digital exhibitions devoted to the major artists in the history of art and contemporary art. The submarine base’s surface area is three times the size of that of the Carrières de Lumières in Les Baux-de-Provence and five times that of the Atelier des Lumières in Paris.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the world’s most loved artists. His paintings, drawings and letters inspire people of all ages. His work can be admired in numerous museums around the world. Many places where the artist lived and worked can be visited, from the Netherlands to the South of France. About 25 organisations and museums in the Netherlands, Belgium and France have joined forces under the name Van Gogh Europe. Together they are actively engaged in maintaining and promoting Van Gogh’s heritage.
The Surrealist eye informed everything Miller did, and her work presents the world in a way that encourages us to view it in a different manner. Written and collected by her son Antony, Surrealist Lee Miller amasses more than one hundred full-page images from throughout the artist’s life as an attestation to her wonderful way of seeing.
In the 2000s, California-based painter Wayne Thiebaud began focusing on a series of mountain paintings, a subject he had first addressed in the 1960s and 1970s. Rendered in his signature confectionary palette, these colorful works combine memories of mountains he had seen in childhood and observations of the summits of the Sierra Nevada Range in Yosemite. With their heroic, exaggerated proportions and unusual perspectives, these paintings seem to combine fiction and reality. Conveying a sense of the sublime and the vast magnitude of our surroundings, they draw upon the history of landscape painting of the American West.
Boomers Daily 