Patty Seyburn & Dean Rader

Patty Seyburn and Dean Rader read from their new poetry collections, Threshold Delivery and Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry

About Threshold Delivery

Threshold Delivery takes a lyrical look at how we approach the death of our loved ones – and how we confront the various thresholds in our lives. These poems guide the reader through ritual, tradition, and mystical interpretations of how and why we mourn, and how we conduct our lives after knowing grief. Though referencing Jewish tradition, these poems ask the reader to confront their own strategies and observance. They call upon pathos, personal history and humor, confronting the everyday with no shortage of joy, irony, and bafflement. Poems range from short personal meditations and anecdotal narratives to associative flights of imagination and winding explorations, replete with historical oddities and popular culture. Densely musical and voice driven, poems take the reader on journeys through personal and family history, mapping the movement of the heart and mind through life’s most challenging moments. A series of poems, on the surface about Mah Jongg, look at interweaving cultural histories and how the social world affects our behavior, while asking us to consider what we inherit, what we bring with, and what we pass down, as we “draw and discard.”

About Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry

Wikipedia articles are never finalized. In Dean Rader’s energized and inventive new book, the poet considers identity of self and society as a Wikipedia page–sculpted and transformed by the ever-present push and pull of politics, culture, and unseen forces. And, in the case of Rader, how identity can be affected by the likes of Paul Klee’s paintings and the characters from the children’s stories about Frog and Toad. Rader’s cagey voice is full of humor and inquiry, warmly inviting readers to fully participate in the creation.