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Red Emma’s

Terese Svoboda Presents - "Anything That Burns You"

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Sunday, February 7th 2016

7:30 pm

Red Emma's

Anything That Burns You is the first full-length biography of Lola Ridge, a trailblazer for women, poetry, and human rights far ahead of her time. Author Terese Svoboda takes the reader on a fascinating journey from Ridge's childhood as an Irish immigrant in the mining towns of New Zealand to her years as a budding poet and artist in Sydney, Australia, and then to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. By the 1920s, she was at the center of Mo-dernism, and good friends with William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore, while promoting the careers of Hart Crane and Jean Toomer and editing Others and Broom, in addition to writing brilliant socially incisive poems. Considered one of the most popular poets of her day, Ridge later fell out of critical favor due to her impas-sioned verse that looked head on at the major social woes of society, infused with a radical belief in freedom gleaned from her mentors Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. Certain to revive the legacy of a singular artistic figure–– as unforgettable as Virginia Woolf or Frida Kahlo–– this lively portrait gives a who's who of all the key players in the arts, literature, and radical politics of the time, in which Lola Ridge stood front and center.

Early praise for Anything That Burns You: “Radical, modernist, fiery, glamorous, feminist— adjectives and categories can only gesture toward the endurin-gly significant life and works of the poet Lola Ridge, whose story has been gracefully told, with her poems lucidly understood, by Terese Svoboda.” —Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress “Anything That Burns You tells the riveting story of Lola Ridge, a revolutionary and influential poet of her time, now (like so many female artists) lost to history. Terese Svoboda has written a brilliant biography, as original as it is compelling, and a fascinating exploration of literary legacy. Why don't more people read Lola Ridge? She was talen-ted and driven, well-published, outrageously brave, boldly feminist, and caught at the center of major 20th-century political and artistic movements. A poet herself, Svoboda's insights are startling and apt, and she constructs a color-ful, well-researched background for re-considering Ridge's considerable achievements. We need more books like this one.” ––Rene Steinke, author of Friendswood and National Book Award finalist, Holy Skirts

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