Wheeling Poetry Series Presents CJ Farnsworth & Frank Lehner

July 08, 2025
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Please Note: The program originally scheduled for this day and time, The Wheeling Poetry Series featuring Zeina Azzam, has been postponed due to health reasons and will be rescheduled.
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CJ Farnsworth has an MFA from Vermont College. Her poems have appeared in "I-70 Review," "Backbone Mountain Review," "Appalachian Review," "Kenning," "Kestrel," "Rattle," "Women Speak," "IMPOST," and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first poetry collection, "If You Keep Making That Shameface…" is available from Sheila-Na-Gig Inc.

Frank Lehner is a poet, award-winning book designer, folk artist, and playwright out of Pittsburgh, Pa. His poetry has appeared in diverse periodicals, and his plays have been staged in Pittsburgh and New York City. His full-length book of poems, "Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey," is from Bottom Dog Press (2025).

Featured Books

The poems in If You Keep Making that Shameface. . . explore how shame shapes women. These poems, by a WV poet, travel the backroads of female identity to unearth the social, cultural, geographic, and personal landscapes where women lose themselves. With brash, heartache, and hunger, this debut collection unearths a time capsule that lays bare the tangled roots and deep rot shame breeds, while discovering some of the vulnerability, savvy, and resilience needed to reclaim the self by dropping the weight of shame.

Frank Lehner’s new book, Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey, is a Pittsburgh pastoral.  It is a love poem and a field guide to the unknown landscape that exists beneath and beyond the truisms about blue collar, industrial cities in America. Here, Lehner is the Whitman of his city. “I dress in the sacred garment of streets,” he writes.  And he drenches those streets in tenderness, generosity, and a welter of unexpected detail ” Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey is a tribute to the unknownness of place, of the many surprising places this industrial city represents. This book is an eloquent revision.  A revelation. -Lynn Emanuel, author of Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing: Poems

Lunch With Books Livestream starts at noon on Facebook and YouTube.

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to the Library Auditorium or your computer), feed your brain!