THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009
NEWS
5A
ARTS
Poems and paintings: Spencer Museum hosts reading
BY ZACH WHITE
zwhite@kansan.com
The exhibits of the Spencer Museum of Art will set the scene for a reading of three of the University's preeminent poets this afternoon.
The reading will feature the works of three English professors: William J. Harris, Kenneth Irby and Joseph Harrington.
The same three professors held a poetry reading at the museum two years ago, which drew about 40 people, nearly filling the court.
"We had a great time a couple of years ago," Harris said. "A lot of people came out. Now a couple of years have passed and we all have written new things."
POETRY READING
Each of the poets has produced new work since the past reading.
Harris is working on a pocket-sized booklet, called a chapbook, which will be published in Italy. The chapbook, which is in both English and Italian, is part of a series meant to introduce Italian audiences to American poetry. Harris said he would focus on poems produced during his year-long sabbatical in Brooklyn this afternoon.
**WHO:** English professors William J. Harris, Kenneth Irby and Joseph Harrington
**WHAT:** Poetry reading
**WHEN:** 4:30 p.m.
**WHERE:** Spencer Museum of Art
collected works, which he has written over the past 40 years. Irby said he plans on reading some older works from his collection this afternoon.
English professors Kenneth Irby, Joseph Harrington and William J. Harris will read new works this afternoon at the Spencer Art Museum. The group held a similar reading two years ago.
Irby is currently compiling his
Harrington has continued to work on a collection about his mother's life, which details her battle with cancer in the mid-1970s.
During the last reading, Joseph Harrington read with an accompanying PowerPoint slideshow, presenting pieces about mother's life in a multimedia format.
This time, Harrington will again use PowerPoint to accompany his
"I thought 'I will be reading in an art museum, I should include some kind of visual element,'" Harrington said.
presentation. He plans to focus on a piece about his mother's battle against cancer, which occurred during the Watergate hearings. The poem highlights the turmoil happening in both the country and his family at that time.
According to Bill Woodard, Public Information Officer for the museum, these and other readings are a part of the museum's effort to be more than just a gallery, but also a performance space.
"We welcome a wide variety of art forms into the museum," Woodard said. "Poetry readings are something that is right in that wheelhouse."
Chance Dibben/KANSAN
Though reluctant to say that their work is similar, all three poets agreed that they come from the "New American" tradition. This style, born after World War II, is characterized by an informal style, and is less focused on the strict structural rules of other forms.
Robert Knapp, 2009 graduate, said he was excited for the reading. Knapp said that during his time in the English department, he found each of the three writers very influential.
"The faculty at KU rarely perform
their own work, so it's a treat," Knapp said.
Knapp attended the reading two years ago and said it was "fantastic." He said he was excited to see
what the poets had been doms since then. He further said that he thought anyone with an interest in writing should be excited about the reading, too.
The event will being at 4:30 p.m in the central court of the museum.
— Edited by Brenna M. T. Daldorph
SCIENCE
Dino discovery may be missing link
BY CELEAN JACOBSON
Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG — A newly discovered dinosaur species that roamed the Earth about 200 million years ago may help explain how the creatures evolved into the largest animals on land, scientists in South Africa said Wednesday.
The Aardonyx celestae was a 23-toot-long small-headed herbivore with a huge barrel of a chest. It walked on its hind legs but also could drop to all fours, and scientists told reporters that could prove to be a missing evolutionary link.
This is a species "that no one has seen before and one that has a very significant position in the family tree of dinosaurs," said Australian paleontologist Adam Yates.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A camera man and photographer record images of fossilized bones of a new dinosaur species during an announcement of the discovery in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Their findings were published Wednesday in the Proceedings of The Royal Society B, a Londonbased peer-reviewed journal.
Yates, who is based at the University of the Witwatersrand's Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research, led the research with a number of other local and international scientists.
The Aardonyx celestae species dates back to the early Jurassic period. Yates said the creature found in South Africa stood nearly 6 feet high at the hip and weighed about 1,100 pounds. It was about 10 years old when it died, and its death may have been caused by drought.
The newly discovered species shares many characteristics with the plant-eating herbivores that walked on two legs, Yates said. But the new species also has similar attributes to dinosaurs known as sauropods, or brontosaurs, that grew to massive sizes and went about on all fours with long necks and whip-like tails.
"The discovery of Aardonyx helps to fill a marked gap in our knowledge of sauropod evolution, showing how a primarily two-legged animal could start to acquire the specific features necessary for a life spent on all-fours," said Paul Barrett, a paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum who assisted on the dig that led to the finding but was not directly involved in the research.
Walking on all fours allowed animals to carry more weight, and size was often their only defense against sharp-toothed carnivores, said one of the report's co-authors, Matthew Bonnan of Western Illinois University, by video conference from the United States.
Why and how dinosaurs grew into such massive creatures is a question that scientists have been trying to answer for a long time.
The discovery of the new species was made by postgraduate student Marc Blackbeard, who was excavating two sites in central South
Africa about five years ago.
It was a site that had been largely ignored by scientists who felt the bone fragments found there would prove to be a common dinosaur species found across the country. On the first day of excavation, a bone too large to belong to this ordinary species was found.
"We knew we had something new, something very, very exciting," Yates said.
They were pleased with how much of the skeleton they could reconstruct and especially that a large part of the skull was found.
The scattered bones were collected and cleaned of the heavy cement-like rock that clung to them. Scientists then began the slow process of studying the bones and trying to order them.
ARTS
Film screening adds to museum's current exhibit
The Spencer Museum of Art is hosting a screening of the Senegalese film "Moolaade." The film tells the story of one woman protecting a village's girls from female circumcision and the controversy her stand causes.
The screening, tonight at 6:00 p.m. is a supplement to the museum's current exhibit "Earthly Vessels," a collection of pottery from across Africa. Some of the pots are from Burkina Faso, where the movie takes place.
Some of the pieces show the recent use of plastic and other materials instead of clay.
Nancy Mahaney, curator for arts and culture of the Americas, Africa and Oceania, said the introduction of these new methods, and the controversy around them, are shown in the film as metaphor for cultural change.
"Bringing this film is an effort to bring recognition to some of the cultural issues that people are dealing with in Africa," Mahaney said. "The film focuses on female circumcision and the controversy surrounding it. If you watch the film carefully you'll see some of the ways the pottery is a subtle underlying theme, how it represents the traditional culture."
Zach White
CRIME Charges dropped in city council fist fight
Frederick Dudley and Ronald Deaton were arrested in October after the two began throwing punches during an argument regarding a decision to privatize a public sidewalk.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Prosecutors have decided to drop charges against two men who got into a raucous fist fight at a St. Petersburg City Council meeting.
The men, ages 76 and 61, respectively, were both charged with disorderly conduct.
Associated Press
HPV Fact #11:
You don't have to actually have sex to get HPV—the virus that causes cervical cancer.
There 's something you can do. Visit your campus health center.