'Transcendental Marginalia' topic of talk Nov. 4 at UMF

FARMINGTON — Kristen Case, poet, author, teacher and collector, will give a talk about “Transcendental Marginalia” at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4, in the North Dining Hall of the Olsen Student Center at 111 South St., on the campus of the University of Maine at Farmington.

Case will give an overview on her changing thought on Thoreau and other American poets as it is revealed in the mysterious notes found in the margins of her collection: books as both objects of personal use and meeting places for minds, ways of talking intimately to people across space and time.

Henry David Thoreau was an American poet, essayist, historian and philosopher, as well as a surveyor, naturalist, tax resister and abolitionist. His best-known book “Walden” is a reflection on the value of living simply in a natural environment.

Case teaches American literature, philosophy and writing at UMF. She has published widely on American poetry. Her first poetry collection, “Little Arias” (2015), won the Maine Literary Award for Poetry, and a second volume is forthcoming. She is the director of the New Commons Project, a public humanities initiative sponsored by the Mellon Foundation.

This is the first in a series of lectures this year on the collections of members of The Shiretown Bookers, the Community Friends of Mantor Library.

For more information, contact Reid Byers at [email protected] or 609-306-1002.