ANN ARBOR ?Four celebrated writers will read at the University of Michigan’s visiting writers series in January.

Helen Vendler, a Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University, author and poetry critic for the New Yorker since 1978, will give a lecture titled Robert Lowell and Depressive Form” at Rackham Amphitheater at 5 p.m. Jan. 12. Her talk is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities, and is this year’s Marc and Constance Jacobson Lecture.

Vendler has published more than 300 essays and reviews in the New York Times, New York’s Review of Books, London’s Review of Books, and other journals. Her many works include writing and editing Seamus Heaney,” and The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets in addition to books on Yeats, Wallace Stevens, George Herbert, and Keats.

Thomas Lynch, author and poet, will read from his works at the Rackham Amphitheater, at 5 p.m. Jan. 14. He has published three volumes of poetry and his nonfiction book, “The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade,” was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the American Book Award.

“Thomas Lynch, a canny disciple of the non-elite, speaks against the spirit’s extinguishment in the face of sorrow,” says poet Alice Fulton. “His beautifully wrought verse sings the folkways of place and people in cadences that linger long after the tale is told, the book closed. Whether he’s moving us to tears or laughter, telling stories or hitting the high lyric notes, Lynch is an uncompromising and deeply engaging poet.”

Eileen Pollack, director of the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at U-M, will read from her works at Rackham Amphitheater at 5 p.m. Jan. 19.

Pollack has published three books of fiction including “Whisper Whisper Jesse, Whisper Whisper Josh: A Story about AIDS,” a children’s book published in 1992. “The Rabbi in the Attic and Other Stories,” published in 1991, was selected by the Washington Post’s Book World as one of its favorite books of the last 25 years. Her latest novel is “Paradise, New York.” In July 1998, she was awarded the LS&A Excellence in Education Teaching Award for her work with undergraduate and graduate students. Among her many other honors and awards she has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.

Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and professor of creative writing at Princeton University, will read at the Hopwood Underclassmen Awards Ceremony at Rackham Amphitheater at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 27.

His work, “Neon Venacular,” received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 1994. The collection reveals the influence of jazz on his poetry and documented his struggles to define his status as an African-American man and a Vietnam veteran. His other works include “Magic City,” “Dien Cai Dau,” “I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head,” and his most recent, “Thieves of Paradise.” His other honors include the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award given to writers of “progressive and experimental tendencies.”

The visiting writers series is co-sponsored by the U-M Department of English and the U-M Office of the Provost, and features prominent writers and poets from within and without the University. These readings are free and open to the public.

E-mail: [email protected]

Alice FultonUndergraduate Creative Writing ProgramWhisper Whisper Jesse, Whisper Whisper Josh: A Story about AIDSYusef KomunyakaaNeon Venacular