April 2006

In Praise of Poetry

“In this nadir of poetic repute, when the only verse that most people read from one year’s end to the next is what appears on greetings cards, it is well for us to stop and consider our poets. . . . Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization.”

—Elizabeth Janeway, distinguished writer, critic, lecturer, and former MacDowell Colony board member

If it is the job of the poet to use words to lighten the spiritual load of the soul, the MacDowell Colony has been carrying its fair share by supporting the work of poets for 95 years. Since Edwin Arlington Robinson — the first poet to ever win the Pulitzer Prize — worked at the Colony in 1911, more than 600 poets have come to MacDowell, including other such notables as National Book Award-winner Galway Kinnell and National Medal of Arts recipient Anthony Hecht.

Numerous MacDowell Fellows have been appointed poets laureate in states across the country; the current New Hampshire poet laureate, Patricia Fargnoli, is a MacDowell Fellow, as was her predecessor, Cynthia Huntington. In addition, the Library of Congress has elected nine MacDowell poets to the national post, including Louise Bogan, Louis Untermeyer, and Stanley Kunitz.

Many MacDowell poets claim that the bucolic setting and solitude offered at the Colony have had a significant impact on their work and their lives. “I’ve been coming to MacDowell for half my life, and it has been indispensable to my confidence, my hopes, and my development as a writer,” says Mary Jo Salter, who worked at the Colony in 2002 and 2003 on her fifth book of prose, Open Shutters, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Ten years ago, the Academy of American Poets named April “National Poetry Month” as a way to encourage cultural and literary organizations around the country to “celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture.” In honor of this endeavor — and to continue the long-standing tradition of supporting poets and their work — MacDowell will present a free poetry reading by two of its artists-in-residence — Eduardo Corral and Serena Fox — as part of its continuing monthly community outreach program, MacDowell Downtown.

Eduardo Corral holds degrees from Arizona State University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West, and The Nation, and his work has recently been honored with a “Discovery”/The Nation Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize. He is currently in the midst of a four-week residency at MacDowell, where he is working on his first full-length collection of poems, Asleep Inside an Old Guitar.

Serena Fox is a poet and physician. She has a medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, and Bachelor of Arts degrees in both biology and history from Yale University. She is a first-reader for poetry and fiction for the Bellevue Literary Review, and her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Western Humanities Review. She has just begun an eight-week residency at MacDowell, during which she plans to work on revising her poetry manuscript Night Shift, which focuses on her experiences in the intensive care unit and emergency room. She is also working on completing a new book of poetry that revolves around understanding the relationship between perception and creativity.

In addition to April’s MacDowell Downtown presentation, the Colony will also honor National Poetry Month by offering a poetry reading at the Peterborough Town Library on April 18th by artists-in-residence Emily Raabe and Sean Hill.