Sharing in creativity and community

Dan Beachy-Quick, interim chair of the English department and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar, recently gave a public lecture on Orpheus, titled “The Road Up is the Road Down,” at Boise State University, as part of the Hemingway Center Reading Series.

Co-presented by the student-run Literary Translation Society, the lecture was followed by a Q&A and book signing.

Described by Beachy-Quick as “a somewhat bewildered meditation on Orpheus as archetypal lyric poet” the lecture expanded toward the practice and promise of lyric poetry now.

“I’m curious about what happens when we treat our originary myths as primary ethical demands about the art we practice, and not just a quaint story,” he said.

On returning to Boise, Beachy-Quick noted the joy of being back in community with so many cherished colleagues and peers.

“Boise State in many ways has become a second poetic home for me, faculty who are dear friends, former students getting their graduate degrees who now are dear friends, too, and home to Free Poetry, one of my favorite presses, who just published pastel covered chapbooks of my translation of the first three books of The Iliad.”

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Faculty Bio

Dan Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, and translator whose most recent book is How to Draw a Circle: On Reading and Writing (Michigan UP Poets on Poetry Series, 2023). His work has been supported by the Monfort, Lannan, and Guggenheim Foundation. He is currently Interim Chair of the English Department at CSU, where he is a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar.