Join us on March 13th for "Hemingway the Hunter: On Safari", an illustrated talk by John Barr, president emeritus of the Poetry Foundation. 7 p.m., Hemingway Museum, Oak Park.
Hemingway wrote big game hunting into the American experience. Out of the traditions of a safari literature that started with Teddy Roosevelt, Hemingway crafted some of his most powerful stories and novels, including "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," The Green Hills of Africaand True at First Light.
Mr Barr served for ten years as president of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago and has published eight volumes of poetry. In Hemingway the Hunter: On Safari he will discuss how the hardships and dangers of African hunting served the writer's purpose to make great art out of the most intense human experience.
A big game hunter himself, with experience of four safaris in East Africa where Hemingway hunted, Mr Barr will address the different attitudes to hunting in East Africa and America, then and now. He will talk about contemporary licensed sports hunting, conservation issues and the illegal poaching threat to game animals for hides and ivory.
Hemingway wrote in The Green Hills of Africa: "To hunt something that you want very much over a long period of time, being outwitted, out-maneuvered, and failing at the end of each day, but having the hunt and knowing every time you are out that sooner or later, your luck will change and that you will get the chance that you are seeking."
Admission is free; donations to The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park gratefully accepted.
Photograph: Ernest Hemingway on safari, Africa. January, 1934. Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Recent Comments