BANGOR – The long Fourth of July weekend will end with a literary bang this evening when poets Gerald Stern and Anne Marie Macari will read from their works at Borders Books, Music and Cafe.

Stern is among the most widely known and respected poets on contemporary American literary scenes. He won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1998 for “This Time,” his selected poems, and has received National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim grants as well as other prominent national awards such as the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, given by the Modern Poetry Association. His books include “Last Blue,” “American Sonnets,” “Love Sick” and most recently “What I Can’t Bear Losing: Notes from a Life” (Norton 2004).

Stern also was the first poet laureate of New Jersey in 2000-02, and the only one to complete a term, as controversial remarks by his successor, Amiri Baraka, about the Sept. 11 attacks prompted the New Jersey Legislature to abolish the post while Baraka still occupied it in 2003.

Stern, nonetheless, has been quoted as saying that “poetry should be passionate and outrageous and political and most of all revolutionary,” and as Troy Casa, the organizer of Borders’ reading series, points out, Stern combines this sense of purpose with topics and language that can be readily understood and felt – not always the case with contemporary poetry.

Casa also notes that Macari’s poetry is similarly accessible, and he recommends the striking, almost religious clarity of her verse. Macari’s book “Ivory Cradle” (Copper Canyon Press) was selected by Robert Creeley to receive the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in 2000, and her next

book, “Gloryland,” is scheduled to be published in September 2005 by Alice James Books, an affiliate of the University of Maine in Farmington.

Both poets teach in the Master of Fine Arts in Poetry Program at New England College in Henniker, N.H.

Stern and Macari, who have given readings together previously, will begin at 7 tonight in the Borders cafe. Casa says he expects upward of 60 people to attend the event, and he sees Stern’s presence, in particular, as an important occasion for central Maine’s poetry scene. Casa says he hopes Borders can become a center of literary activities in the area, providing a venue that brings together local writers, including those from the university community.

Borders’ reading series will include poets Kurt Brown and UMF professor Wesley McNair, scheduled to read July 28, and David Brainerd and Husson professor Leon Raikes, scheduled Sept. 23. Previous readings have featured Maine poets such as Constance Hunting and Betsy Sholl.

Borders is located at 116 Bangor Mall Blvd. For more information contact Troy Michael Casa at 990-3300. Dana Wilde can be reached at dana.wilde@umit.maine.edu.