BOOKS & COFFEE: A MONTHLY REVIEW OF BOOKS

This year's first meeting of Books & Coffee, a forum for public discussion,
will be
held Tuesday, September 16 at 7:30 PM, at Club Fathom, located at 412 Market
Street in downtown Chattanooga.

We are pleased to be joined once by Sewanee poet Wilmer Mills, who spent a
memorable evening with us last March. On this occasion, Mills will offer his
reflections on the state of contemporary poetry through a consideration of
Dana Gioia's controversial book CAN POETRY MATTER?, which has just been
reissued in a tenth anniversary edition. Mills will also read and sing his
own work and that of others.

Wilmer Mills's poems have appeared in Poetry, The Hudson Review, The New
Republic, among other publications. Much of his work concerns itself with
the subject of loss, particularly as reflected in the disappearance of the
agrarian way of life that he came to know growing up in his native
Louisiana. Accordingly, his poems tend to have an
uncommonly strong narrative dimension, as glimpses into the colorful, and
often bittersweet, lives of vanishing human types.

Ray Waddles describes LIGHT FOR THE ORPHANS as "mostly stories of unsung
people, usually Southerners coming quietly to terms with themselves or their
faith." Rachel Hadas writes that "Mills's poems lovingly ponder and give
voice to territory (the seasons; the work of hands; respected elders) that
sometimes seems to have dropped out of American poetry. The solemn
deliberation of his language and his melodious diction give the poems the
feel of a caress. His work has a richness and sonority, like dark wood, or a
cello; a wistful undertow."

In addition to his literary pursuits, Mills works as a carpenter and
operates a sawmill, spending much of his spare time restoring a formerly
condemned 1940s bungalow where he has made a home for himself and his
family.

 Please join us for this unusual and rewarding evening. Books & Coffee is
cosponsored by UTC's SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities and by
Covenant College. The event is free---and so is the Greyfriar's coffee! The
general public is warmly invited.


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Books & Coffee Schedule for the remainder of 2003:

October 14
Michael Woodward of the McCallie School on David Halberstam's THE TEAMMATES

November 4
Lucien Ellington of UTC on Diane Ravitch's THE LANGUAGE POLICE: HOW PRESSURE
GROUPS RESTRICT WHAT STUDENTS LEARN

All meetings are at 7:30 PM, at Club Fathom, 412 Market Street, Chattanooga
Hosted by Covenant College and the SunTrust Chair of the Humanities at UTC