Kate Daniels Slow Fuse of the Possible

Friday, June 24 from 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Join us for an evening with author and poet Kate Daniels, in conversation with poet Daniel Becker.

Please note that this event, originally scheduled for late January, has been postponed to June 24.

Join us for an evening with author and poet Kate Daniels, who will read from her debut memoir, Slow Fuse of the Possible: A Memoir of Poetry and Psychoanalysis. A conversation with poet Daniel Becker will follow. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.

About the Book: Slow Fuse of the Possible is a poet’s narrative of a troubled psychoanalysis, a lyric memoir, and a meditation on the powers of language, for good and ill. Throughout, the story is filtered through the mind of Emily Dickinson, whose poetry Daniels uses as a fulcrum for the interpretation of her own experience. The book is saturated with Dickinson’s verse, and Dickinson is an increasingly haunting presence as crises emerge and the author unravels. Psychoanalyst Michael Eigen has described Slow Fuse as a “searching, scorching account of psyche, psychoanalysis, and life [which allows readers to] appreciate the gift of poetic creation in the midst of destructive moments.”

About the Author: Kate Daniels is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently In the Months of My Son’s Recovery. A Guggenheim Fellow, professor emerita of English, and former director of creative writing at Vanderbilt University, she has deep ties to Charlottesville and UVA, having been an undergraduate, graduate student, and faculty member at UVA in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2019, she was a visiting scholar at the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics, pursuing research interests in the convergences of poetry and psychoanalysis, and the therapeutic uses of narrative writing in medical training and treatment.

About the Moderator: Daniel Becker practiced and taught internal medicine at UVA School of Medicine until he retired in July 2018. He now practices and teaches internal medicine part time. His first book of poems, 2nd Chance, was chosen by Jericho Brown for the first book prize at New Issues Press. He published a chapbook of poems, Chance, in 2005. “Last Chance” is not a good name for the next book.

Slow Fuse of the Possible will be released on January 1. To order the book, please see below for the New Dominion Bookshop book order form or call the shop at 434-295-2552. 

"Daniels is a keen observer of visceral moments and powerful emotions."

—Kirkus Reviews

New Dominion Bookshop Book Order Form

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