Edward Hirsch, poet, critic and president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, will speak at a Society of Midland Authors event on Tuesday, April 16, at the Cliff Dwellers Club in Chicago. Booklist senior editor Donna Seaman will introduce Hirsch.

A native of Chicago, Hirsch has published several books of poems since 1981, including 1986’s “Wild Gratitude,” winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent book is “The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems,” published in 2011 by Alfred A. Knopf.

His prose books include the 1999 best-seller “How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry” and “Poet’s Choice,” a 2007 collection of essay-letters from the Washington Post Book World.

“It takes a brave poet to follow Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton into the abyss,” poet Dana Goodyear wrote about Hirsch in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. “Hirsch’s poems (are) compassionate, reverential, sometimes relievingly ruthless.”

Hirsch, who has a doctorate in folklore, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.

7 p.m. Tuesday, April 16, at the Cliff Dwellers Club, 200 S. Michigan Ave., 22nd floor, Chicago. A social hour, with complimentary snacks and a cash bar, begins at 6 p.m. Reservations are not required. Admission is free, but the Society will accept donations to defray the cost of programs.

The Society of Midland Authors was established in 1915 as an organization for published authors in the Midwest. For details on the group, visit www.midlandauthors.com.