Hobart and William Smith graduate Claire Tranchino has helped assemble a new collection of poet Tyrone Williams' reviews, drawing on nearly five decades of criticism. The book, Ludic Pleasures: Reviews on Poetry, Poetics, and Culture, is due from SUNY Press in November.
Tranchino, a 2018 HWS graduate and English doctoral candidate at the University at Buffalo, co-edited the nearly 250-page volume with UB professors and scholars Cristanne Miller and Aaron VanSteinberg, according to an HWS profile.
Williams, who died in 2024, published nearly 150 reviews between 1975 and 2023. His criticism explored poetry, African American writing, experimental literature and the ways writers and musicians address gender, class and race.
He wrote eight poetry collections and taught for decades at Xavier University before becoming the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters at UB. His critical work moved increasingly from music toward literature and poetry over his career.
The editors searched archival material, newspapers, literary journals and online publications, working with UB Special Collections curators to bring the reviews together. Tranchino said that work deepened her interest in connecting material held in archives with a wider reading public.
Book-launch events begin November 18 at 4:30 p.m. in Buffalo with short presentations by the editors and a pop-up exhibit. A celebration with readings follows November 19 at 7 p.m. HWS links to additional event information in its announcement.
Tranchino is a Presidential Fellow whose research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century American literature, particularly poetry and contemporary Black poets. She has also conducted archival research on poet Norma Cole, producing an essay published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2025.
At HWS, she majored in English and gender studies. She credits courses with Geoffrey Babbitt, Kathryn Cowles and Stephen Cope, along with the Trias Residency for Writers, with helping her see literature as an active community of writers and readers.
She said she hopes the new collection gives readers an introduction to the range of contemporary American poetry.
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