The Temple of Zeus café used to host a weekly open mic reading at which students and faculty shared their work with enthusiastic listeners. Among the regular attendees was the late Archie Ammons, Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry in the College of Arts & Sciences (A&S), whose presence told student writers that their work merited the attention of Cornell’s most honored poet. The novelist Richard Price told an audience at Cornell’s sesquicentennial celebration that he recalled seeing Ammons in the Temple of Zeus audience: “He’d be laughing every time I read, and it was thrilling.”

Now, over two decades since Ammons’s passing, this open mic tradition is being revived thanks to a generous gift from his student Beverly Tanenhaus ’70.

The inaugural open mic Ammons Reading will focus on poetry and will take place on Thursday, Nov. 9 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Groos Family Atrium in Klarman Hall.

Tanenhaus said her goal is to help current students appreciate both Ammons’s legacy at Cornell and the power of transformative teaching more generally.

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.