I don’t usually write about prose, but Sweet Marjoram is an exception. In part, it’s because DeWitt Henry is a dear friend whose work I’ve read for decades. It’s also because so much of this book of lyric essays is inspired by, or works like, poetry. Shakespeare is Henry’s presiding muse, from title to end-note—best […]
This month brought the death of two enduring figures in Boston’s literary landscape–first Bill Corbett and now Sam Cornish. I don’t remember when Sam and I first met—possibly at Book Affair in 1980, where I was promoting Green House or Alice James Books. When Sam was literature director of the Massachusetts Council on Arts and […]
In case you haven’t read Anders Carlson-Wee’s poem and the editors’ apology at the center of debate that led to Grace Schulman’s op-ed in the New York Times, here’s a link. In his dramatic monologue, the poet uses the persona of a homeless man giving advice to someone begging on the streets. The dialect suggests […]
If the title of Sam Cha’s new book echoes Donald Trump’s inaugural address, it reveals the murderous heart of a nation in the way actual photos of the event show the emptiness of Trump’s imagined spectacle. American Carnage uses a dramatic, multi-genre, intertextual structure to investigate histories that shape what it means to be American […]
FOR DONALD HALL, 1928-2018 Donald Hall died Saturday night, full of years and full of honors. He had been diagnosed with sinus cancer in May and declined treatment. He kept writing through his last weeks, if only for twenty minutes at a time. He lived his life through poetry, and although he stopped writing […]
This May I turned 70. I spend my time in three communities—the two in SW Florida and in Massachusetts not over-55 age-restricted, but in fact made up mostly of retirees. The third is in Maine, the state with the oldest median age in the nation. Since I don’t teach at UMB anymore, I rely on […]
Next week, April 26 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. I wrote this a few years ago and thought I’d remind everyone of the chance to participate this year: The Academy of American Poets sent an email encouraging me to print a poem, carry it around, and share it with those I meet. How […]
When Nobel laureate Derek Walcott died in March 2017, The New York Times ran a 2,000 word obituary highlighting the brilliance of his imagination as a poet and dramatist. After the quotations and citations, including one from the Nobel committee, were the following two paragraphs: “In 2009, Mr. Walcott was proposed for the honorary post […]
Elizabeth Alexander chose “Visiting Amber at Lowell Correctional” for an honorable mention when she came to judge UMass Boston’s Academy of American Poets Prize in 2008. Of course she didn’t know Tara Skurtu, but none of us on the creative writing faculty did either—surprising, since I liked to think we could identify every student […]