Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Maine in Four Seasons 20 Poets Celebrate the Turning Year by Wesley McNair Wesley McNair. Wesley McNair (born 1941) is an American poet, writer, editor, and professor. He has authored 10 volumes of poetry, most recently, Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems (Godine, 2010), The Lost Child: Ozark Poems (Godine, 2014), and The Unfastening (Godine, 2017). He has also written three books of prose, including a memoir, The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry (Carnegie Mellon "Poets in Prose" Series, 2013). In addition, he has edited several anthologies of Maine writing, and served as a guest editor in poetry for the 2010 Pushcart Prize Annual. According to United States Artists, McNair's poetry often deals with "the struggles of the economic misfits of his native New England, often with humor and through the use of telling details." [1] In The Words I Chose , McNair refers to the region of his poetry as "a place of farmers under threat, ethnic shop workers, traders, and misfits at the margins" and his exploration of "their American dreams, failures, self-doubts, and restlessness." [2] He adds to these themes, love and its absence, loss and disability, and the precarious bonds of family and community. At the center of McNair's poems and his memoir is his family and extended family, whose conflicts recur throughout his several collections, forming a narrative of their own. His literary family, underprivileged and post-industrial, is at odds with those of earlier New England poets. He explains in his essay "Placing Myself" that whereas "a poet like Robert Lowell features a New England family of pedigree connected to the history of high culture. my own poetry family is lower class, consisting of mongrels whose history is largely unknown." He continues: "Where Donald Hall skips a generation to write about his grandfather and the agrarian tradition he represents, I write about a broken family with no real patriarch and no clear tradition." [3] The struggles of his family poems and others often link with national themes, as in his long narrative piece "My Brother Running," in which he links his younger brother's fatal heart attack, following months of desperate running, with the tragic explosion of NASA's Challenger shuttle. In his recent collection, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems , he moves from New England to the Ozarks of southern Missouri, where his mother grew up, though he does not leave behind his earlier concerns about family, community, and America. The core characters of the book, derived from his mother and her siblings, are part of a forgotten American generation who grew up in the poverty and hardship of the Dust Bowl period. Wesley McNair's ten volumes of poetry, inspired by region, American popular culture, and the broad human experience, include a wide range of meditations, lyrics and narratives. As critics and interviewers have remarked, his poems are attuned to the cadences and suggestions of American speech. A New Hampshire native who has lived for many years in Mercer, Maine, McNair received his undergraduate degree from Keene State College and has earned two degrees from Middlebury College, an MA in English, and an M.Litt. in American literature. He has also studied American literature, art, and history at Dartmouth College, sponsored by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. As of 2018, McNair is professor emeritus and writer in residence at the University of Maine at Farmington. [4] From 2011 to 2016 he served as the Poet Laureate of Maine, sponsoring five statewide poetry initiatives. According to Meg Haskell in the Bangor Daily News on September 30, 2017, his goal was "to demystify poetry and make it more accessible to all Maine people." Quoting McNair, Haskell continues: "The best poems are after insights into the shared human life. They tell us what life is about. What's in it," and "What matters in it." McNair adds that poetry's insights come from intuition, the "truest part of you. The smartest part." [5] Contents. Honors and awards. McNair has received two Rockefeller Fellowships for creative work at the Bellagio Center in Italy, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Among his other honors are the Theodore Roethke Prize, The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry, the Devins Award for Poetry, the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, and the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal [6] for his "distinguished contribution to the world of letters." McNair has served five times on the jury for the Pulitzer Price in Poetry. In 2006, he was selected for a United States Artists Fellowship and in 2015, he was the recipient of the PEN New England Award for Literary Excellence in Poetry, given for The Lost Child: Ozark Poems . Publishing history. McNair's poems have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines including AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The Gettysburg Review, Green Mountain Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, The New Criterion, New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Slate, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Witness, and Yankee Magazine. [7] Featured more than 20 times on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, and on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition (Saturday and Sunday programs), McNair's work has also appeared in the Pushcart Prize Annual, two editions of The Best American Poetry, and over sixty anthologies and textbooks. [8] A selection of 25 of his poems are featured on the website of the Poetry Foundation.[1] Critical praise. In an extensive review of McNair's new and selected poems, Lovers of the Lost , in The Harvard Review Kevin T. O'Connor said the book demonstrated "a defining imagination," comparing his poems favorably to the poetry of Robert Lowell, James Wright, Robert Frost, and Seamus Heaney. Robin Becker, writing the judge's citation for McNair's 2015 collection, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems , which won the PEN New England Award for poetry, said: "Wesley McNair harnesses the timeless power of the epic poem to tell the necessary stories of our human tribe. The colloquial music in these poems will move readers to laughter and tears." Writing on McNair's collection The Ghosts of You and Me for the literary journal Ploughshares in the winter of 2009-2007, the Pulitzer Prize- winning poet Philip Levine called McNair "one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry." In the same journal in the fall of 2002, Maxine Kumin, the United States Poet Laureate from 1981 to 1982, called McNair "a master craftsman, with a remarkable ear." In a 1989 review that appeared in the Harvard Review, Donald Hall, who served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2007, remarked, "Because he is a true poet, his New England is unlimited. Whole lives fill small lines, real to this poet, therefore to us." In the summer of 2002, the Ruminator Review wrote of McNair's book Fire that the poet has created "one of the most individual and original bodies of work by a poet of his generation." Collected papers. McNair's extensive papers were purchased by Colby College in 2006. Taking up approximately 100 linear feet in the college library's Special Collections, the Wesley McNair Papers include: Scrapbooks, photographs, family letters, clippings and ephemera Early writings (elementary through high school) Notebooks with graduate school writings, teaching notes and poem drafts Manuscript drafts, first appearances and audio/visual recordings Extensive correspondence ( Maine Times colleagues, Donald Hall, literary peers) A video of McNair giving a slide presentation and talk about his papers, entitled My Life as a Poet . In 2010, Colby College's Special Collections Librarian Patricia Burdick launched an innovative new Web site that utilities McNair's poetry to increase understanding of and appreciation for the making of poetry. The interactive site includes audio recordings and manuscript samples to show the development of selected poems. The site is accompanied by teaching and learning tools. In 2014, McNair's site at Colby launched Letters Between Poets , featuring his correspondence with a mentor, Donald Hall, during his early struggles as a poet. The online correspondence may be accessed by chapters, themes, poems in progress, and a keyword search. Wesley McNair. Wesley McNair (born 1941) is an American poet, writer, editor, and professor. He has authored 10 volumes of poetry, most recently, Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems (Godine, 2010), The Lost Child: Ozark Poems (Godine, 2014), The Unfastening (Godine, 2017), and Dwellers in the House of the Lord (Godine, 2020). He has also written three books of prose, including a memoir, The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry (Carnegie Mellon "Poets in Prose" Series, 2013). In addition, he has edited several anthologies of Maine writing, and served as a guest editor in poetry for the 2010 Pushcart Prize Annual. Contents. Work Honors and awards Publishing history Critical praise Collected papers Bibliography References Sources External links McNair Online Features at Colby College. A New Hampshire native who has lived for many years in Mercer, Maine, McNair received his undergraduate degree from Keene State College and has earned two degrees from Middlebury College, an MA in English, and an M.Litt. in American literature. He has also studied American literature, art, and history at Dartmouth College, sponsored by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. As of 2018, McNair is professor emeritus and writer in residence at the University of Maine at Farmington. [1] According to United States Artists, Wesley McNair's poetry often deals with "the struggles of the economic misfits of his native New England, often with humor and through the use of telling details." [2] In his memoir The Words I Chose , McNair refers to the region of his poetry as "a place of farmers under threat, ethnic shop workers, traders, and misfits at the margins" and his exploration of "their American dreams, failures, self- doubts, and restlessness." [3] He adds to these themes, love and its absence, loss and disability, and the precarious bonds of family and community. At the center of McNair's poems and his memoir is his family and extended family, whose conflicts recur throughout his several collections, forming a narrative of their own. His literary family, underprivileged and post-industrial, is at odds with those of earlier New England poets. He explains in his essay "Placing Myself" that whereas "a poet like Robert Lowell features a New England family of pedigree connected to the history of high culture. my own poetry family is lower class, consisting of mongrels whose history is largely unknown." He continues: "Where Donald Hall skips a generation to write about his grandfather and the agrarian tradition he represents, I write about a broken family with no real patriarch and no clear tradition." [4] The struggles of his family poems and others often link with national themes, as in his long narrative poem "My Brother Running," in which he links his younger brother's fatal heart attack, following months of desperate running, with the tragic explosion of NASA's Challenger shuttle. In his recent collection, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems (Godine, 2014), he moves from New England to the Ozarks of southern Missouri, where his mother grew up, though he does not leave behind his earlier concerns about family, community, and America. The core characters of the book, derived from his mother and her siblings, are part of a forgotten American generation who grew up in the poverty and hardship of the Dust Bowl period. In Dwellers in the House of the Lord (Godine, 2020)—McNair's tenth poetry collection—he writes about rural Virginia, where his sister Aimee struggles with a failing marriage to Mike, the owner of an off-the-grid gun shop. The book-length narrative poem explores his family's immigrant origins and links Aimee's story with the ugly politics of the Trump era. McNair's ten volumes of poetry, inspired by region, American popular culture, and the broad human experience, include a wide range of meditations, lyrics and narratives. As critics and interviewers have remarked, his poems are attuned to the cadences and suggestions of American speech. Honors and awards. McNair has received two Rockefeller Fellowships for creative work at the Bellagio Center in Italy, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Among his other honors are the Theodore Roethke Prize, The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry, the Devins Award for Poetry, the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, and the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal [5] for his "distinguished contribution to the world of letters." McNair has served five times on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. In 2006, McNair was selected for a United States Artists Fellowship. From 2011 to 2016 McNair served as the Poet Laureate of Maine, sponsoring five statewide poetry initiatives. According to Meg Haskell in the Bangor Daily News on September 30, 2017, his goal was "to demystify poetry and make it more accessible to all Maine people." Quoting McNair, Haskell continues: "The best poems are after insights into the shared human life. They tell us what life is about. What's in it," and "What matters in it." McNair adds that poetry's insights come from intuition, the "truest part of you. The smartest part." [6] Publishing history. McNair's poems have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines including AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The Gettysburg Review, Green Mountain Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, The New Criterion, New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Slate, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Witness, and Yankee Magazine. [7] Featured more than 20 times on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, and on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition (Saturday and Sunday programs), McNair's work has also appeared in the Pushcart Prize Annual, two editions of The Best American Poetry, and over sixty anthologies and textbooks. [8] A selection of 25 of his poems are featured on the website of the Poetry Foundation. Critical praise. In an extensive review of McNair's new and selected poems, Lovers of the Lost , in The Harvard Review Kevin T. O'Connor said the book demonstrated "a defining imagination," comparing his poems favorably to the poetry of Robert Lowell, James Wright, Robert Frost, and Seamus Heaney. Robin Becker, writing the judge's citation for McNair's 2015 collection, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems , which won the PEN New England Award for poetry, said: "Wesley McNair harnesses the timeless power of the epic poem to tell the necessary stories of our human tribe. The colloquial music in these poems will move readers to laughter and tears." Writing on McNair's collection The Ghosts of You and Me for the literary journal Ploughshares in the winter of 2009–2007, the Pulitzer Prize- winning poet Philip Levine called McNair "one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry." In the same journal in the fall of 2002, Maxine Kumin, the United States Poet Laureate from 1981 to 1982, called McNair "a master craftsman, with a remarkable ear." In a 1989 review that appeared in the Harvard Review, Donald Hall, who served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2007, remarked, "Because he is a true poet, his New England is unlimited. Whole lives fill small lines, real to this poet, therefore to us." In the summer of 2002, the Ruminator Review wrote of McNair's book Fire that the poet has created "one of the most individual and original bodies of work by a poet of his generation." Collected papers. McNair's extensive papers were purchased by Colby College in 2006. Taking up approximately 100 linear feet in the college library's Special Collections, the Wesley McNair Papers include: Scrapbooks, photographs, family letters, clippings and ephemera Early writings (elementary through high school) Notebooks with graduate school writings, teaching notes and poem drafts Manuscript drafts, first appearances and audio/visual recordings Extensive correspondence ( Maine Times colleagues, Donald Hall, literary peers) A video of McNair giving a slide presentation and talk about his papers, entitled My Life as a Poet . In 2010, Colby College's Special Collections Librarian Patricia Burdick launched an innovative new Web site that utilizes McNair's poetry to increase understanding of and appreciation for the making of poetry. The interactive site includes audio recordings and manuscript samples to show the development of selected poems. The site is accompanied by teaching and learning tools. In 2014, McNair's site at Colby launched Letters Between Poets , featuring his correspondence with a mentor, Donald Hall, during his early struggles as a poet. The online correspondence may be accessed by chapters, themes, poems in progress, and a keyword search. Bibliography. Poetry collections. Dwellers in the House of the Lord (David R. Godine, 2020) The Unfastening (David R. Godine, 2017) The Lost Child: Ozark Poems (David R. Godine, 2014) Lovers of the Lost: New and Selected Poems (David R. Godine, 2010) The Ghosts of You and Me (David R. Godine, 2006) Fire (David R. Godine, 2002) The Faces of Americans of 1853 (Carnegie Mellon University Press, Classic Contemporaries Series reissue, 2001) Talking in the Dark (David R. Godine, 1998) The Dissonant Heart (Limited Edition, Romulus Editions, 1995, with photo collages by Dozier Bell) The Town of No and My Brother Running (David R. Godine, dual reprint, 1997) My Brother Running (David R. Godine, 1994) Twelve Journeys in Maine (Limited Edition, Romulus Editions, 1992, with prints by Marjorie Moore) The Town of No (David R. Godine, 1989) The Faces of Americans of 1853 (University of Missouri Press, 1983) Essay collections. The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012) A Place On Water (with Bill Roorbach and Robert Kimber, Tilbury House, 2004) Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002) Anthologies edited. Take Heart: More Poems from Maine (Down East Books, 2016) Take Heart: Poems from Maine (Down East Books, 2013) Maine in Four Seasons: 20 Poets Celebrate the Turning Year (Down East Books, 2010) 2010 Pushcart Prize Annual Guest editor in poetry (Pushcart Press, 2010) A place called Maine: 24 authors on the Maine experience (Down East Books, 2008) Contemporary Maine Fiction (Down East Books, 2005) The Maine Poets: A Verse Anthology (Down East Books, 2003) The Quotable Moose: A Contemporary Maine Reader (University Press of New England, 1994) Related Research Articles. Daniel Gerard Hoffman was an American poet, essayist, and academic. He was appointed the twenty-second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1973. Marvin Hartley Bell was an American poet and teacher who was the first Poet Laureate of the state of Iowa. Mary Ruefle is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She has published many collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Dunce , was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Ruefle's debut collection of prose, The Most Of It , appeared in 2008 and her collected lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey , was published in August 2012, both published by Wave Books. She has also published a book of erasures, A Little White Shadow (2006). Leo Connellan was an American poet of the Beat Generation born in Portland, Maine, who served as Connecticut's Poet Laureate from 1996 until his death in 2001. Gillian Conoley is an American poet. Conoley serves as a professor and poet-in-residence at Sonoma State University. Kay Ryan is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named a MacArthur Fellow and she won the Pulitzer Prize. 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Thomas and Beulah is a book of poems by African American poet Rita Dove that tells the semi-fictionalized chronological story of her maternal grandparents, the focus being on her grandfather in the first half and her grandmother in the second. It won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Terrance Hayes is an American poet and educator who has published seven poetry collections. His 2010 collection, Lighthead , won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010. In September 2014, he was one of 21 recipients of the prestigious MacArthur fellowships awarded to individuals who show outstanding creativity in their work. Maurice English was a poet, journalist, and author who is noted for having headed the presses of the University of Chicago, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Tim Seibles is an American poet, professor and the former Poet Laureate of Virginia. He is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Fast Animal . His honors include an Open Voice Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. In 2012 he was nominated for a National Book Award, for Fast Animal . Arthur Smith was an American poet whose work appeared in The New Yorker, "The Georgia Review," "Northwest Review," "Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts," "Crazyhorse," "Southern Poetry Review," Hunger Mountain , and The Nation . He was a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee and lived in Knoxville, Tennessee with his three Keeshonden. James Reiss was an American poet and novelist. James Richardson is an American poet. Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Ukrainian American poet, translator, editor, and teacher. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She is author of six poetry collections including Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones for which she received a Sheila Motton Book Award, and Silvertone (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013) for which she was named Ohio Poetry Day Association's 2014 Co-Poet of the Year. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees , was reprinted in 2009 as a Carnegie Mellon University Classic Contemporary. Her sixth, Bad Harvest , was published in fall of 2018 and was named a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry. Richard Katrovas is the founding director of the Prague Summer Program for Writers and the author of eight books of poetry, two novels, two collections of stories and three memoirs. Maureen Seaton is an American LGBTQ poet, activist, and professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Miami. She is the author of fourteen solo books of poetry, thirteen co-authored books of poetry, and her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls . Throughout her writing career, Seaton has often collaborated with fellow poets Denise Duhamel, Neil de la Flor, Kristine Snodgrass, and Samuel Ace. Books in Boothbay. He is a regular contributor to Art New England and Art in America , where he was formerly associate editor. He has written essays for museum and gallery exhibitions and lectures widely. Little’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review , New Directions in Poetry and Prose and The Hudson Review , as well as in the new anthology, Maine in Four Seasons: 20 Poets Celebrate the Turning Yea r, edited by Wesley McNair. Little directed the Ethel H. Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic; he currently is director of communications and marketing at the Maine Community Foundation. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Columbia University and Middlebury College. A native New Yorker, Little lives on Mount Desert Island. Author # 6: Dean Bennett. Dean Bennett writes and illustrates books about nature and wilderness. He has authored and illustrated five published trade books for the general public. His latest book is Nature and Renewal: Wild River Valley and Beyond , 2009, Tilbury House Publishers. Other books are Maine’s Natural Heritage: Rare Species and Unique Natural Features , Allagash: Maine’s Wild and Scenic River , The Forgotten Nature of New England: A Search for Traces of the Original Wilderness , and The Wilderness from Chamberlain Farm: A Story of Hope for the American Wild . He has written and illustrated three children’s books: Everybody Needs a Hideaway , Finding a Friend in the Forest , and The Late Loon , all published by Down East Books. Another Author Announced: Lea Wait. Maine author Lea Wait writes acclaimed historical novels for ages 7 and up set on the coast of Maine. STOPPING TO HOME was named a "notable children's book of 2001" by Smithsonian Magazine and a “best of the best” by Bank Street College. In FINEST KIND (2006,) a family moves to Maine after the Panic of 1837 so the father can work in a lumber mill. Jake, age 13, must prepare his family for the winter – and keep the family secret they brought with them from Boston. Kirkus called it "a story that will linger in the hearts of readers." She is also the author of Scribner's Shadows Antique Print Mystery series, traditional mysteries for adults. SHADOWS AT THE FAIR was a finalist for a "best first mystery" Agatha in 2002; SHADOWS ON THE COAST OF MAINE was a Mystery Guild "Editor's Choice" in 2003. SHADOWS ON THE IVY (2004) was also a Mystery Guild selection. Fourth author announced: Sandra Dutton. Third author announced: Gerry Boyle. Books in Boothbay is excited to announce our third confirmed author, mystery writer Gerry Boyle! Gerry Boyle is the author of 10 mystery novels, including the acclaimed Jack McMorrow mystery series, featuring an ex-New York Times reporter transplanted to Maine. A second Boyle series, featured Portland boat bum turned rookie cop Brandon Blake, launched in 2009 with publication of PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN. The ninth Jack McMorrow mystery, DAMAGED GOODS, was published in May. DAMAGED GOODS is set in the fictional Maine coast town of Galway, where McMorrow rescues an injured "escort" named Mandi, and his wife, social worker Roxanne, is stalked by a crazed Satanist after taking his abused children into custody. Boyle is a former newspaper reporter and columnist. In addition to writing mystery novels, he is editor of Colby College magazine (his alma mater) and a freelance writer. Boyle lives with his wife Mary by a lake in a small town in central Maine. Look for our next author announcement later this week! Second author announced: Christopher Mills. Books in Boothbay: Maine's Summer Book Fair is excited to announce our second confirmed author, Christopher Mills. Christopher Mills is a freelance writer, editor and graphic artist with decades of experience in the publishing industry, working primarily for newspapers and comic book publishers. A professional writer for twenty years, he has scripted numerous independent comic books in a variety of genres, including Leonard Nimoy's Primortals , Shadow House , Kolchak Tales (based on the much-beloved TV show, Kolchak the Night Stalker), The Night Driver , Captain Midnight , the Spinetingler Award-winning Femme Noir: The Dark City Diaries and the critically-acclaimed crime thriller, Gravedigger: The Scavengers . He has also authored a number of published short stories, including contributions to Moonstone Books' The Spider Chronicles , Captain Midnight Chronicles and Werewolves: Dead Moon Rising . He lives in an old farmhouse in Central Maine with his wife, dog, cat, and thousands of books and videos. First author announced: Maureen Heffernan. Books in Boothbay: Maine's Summer Book Fair is happy to announce our first author for 2010. Maureen Heffernan is the Executive Director of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens where she has worked since 2004 helping to create Maine first major botanical garden in Boothbay, Maine. Her books include: Native Plants for Maine Gardens and Fairy Houses of the Maine Coast , both published by Downeast Press. Wesley McNair. Wesley McNair reads from The Words I Chose . An author reading/signing. Wesley is the current Poet Laureate for Maine, and is a New Hampshire favorite. His poetry is very descriptive of New Hampshire. At this event he will be presenting The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry, his story of being New England poet and teacher as he recalls finding his voice amid a rural New Hampshire childhood deeply scarred by divorce and discipline. (GibsonsB) … (more) Donald Hall reads from White Apples and the Taste of Stone .; Maxine Kumin reads from Where I Live .; Wesley McNair reads from Lovers of the Lost . "One More Time" gathers three of the region's (and, we would argue, the country's) finest poets for an evening of poetry, camaraderie, and reminiscence. Don't miss it! Tickets will be on sale at Gibson's and at the Audi box office. Gibson's will provide the poets' books if you'd like to buy them and have them signed by the poets. (bookconscious) … (more) Wesley McNair. Wesley McNair (born 1941) is an American poet, writer, editor, and academic. Contents. Life [ edit | edit source ] McNair is a New Hampshire native who has lived for many years in Mercer, Maine. He has earned 2 degrees from Middlebury College, an M.A. in English, and an M.Litt. in American literature. He has also studied American literature, art, and history at Dartmouth College, sponsored by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. As of 2011, McNair is professor emeritus and writer in residence at the University of Maine at Farmington. [1] In March 2011 he became Poet Laureate of Maine. [2] He has authored 9 collections of poetry, including Lovers of the Lost: New and selected poems (David R. Godine, 2010). In addition, McNair has written 3 books of prose, including a memoir, The Words I Chose . He has edited several anthologies of Maine writing, and served as guest editor of the 2010 Pushcart Prize Annual. McNair’s poems have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines including AGNI, The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Green Mountain Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, The New Criterion, New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, Witness , and Yankee Magazine . Featured on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor and National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition , McNair's work has also appeared in the Pushcart Prize Annual , two editions of The Best American Poetry , and over 50 anthologies and textbooks. Writing [ edit | edit source ] According to United States Artists, an important theme in McNair’s poetry reveals "the struggles of the economic misfits of northern New England, often with humor and through the use of telling details." [3] McNair writes autobiographical poems that explore the difficulty of family bonds and critique American culture, sometimes mixing the two themes together, as in his long narrative piece “My Brother Running,” in which he links his brother’s fatal heart attack after months of desperate running with the explosion of NASA’s Challenger shuttle. Writing on McNair's collection The Ghosts of You and Me for the literary journal Ploughshares in the winter of 2009-2007, the Pulitzer Prize- winning poet Philip Levine called McNair "one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry." In the same journal in the fall of 2002, Maxine Kumin, the United States Poet Laureate from 1981 to 1982, called McNair "a master craftsman." In a 1989 review that appeared in the Harvard Review, Donald Hall, who served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2007, remarked, "Because he is a true poet, his New England is unlimited. Whole lives fill small lines, real to this poet, therefore to us." In the summer of 2002, the Ruminator Review wrote of McNair's book Fire that the poet has created “one of the most individual and original bodies of work by a poet of his generation.” Recognition [ edit | edit source ] McNair has received 2 Rockefeller Fellowships for creative work at the Bellagio Center in Italy, 2 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Among his other honors are the Theodore Roethke Prize, The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry, the Devins Award for Poetry, the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, and the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal for his “distinguished contribution to the world of letters.” [4] In 2006, he was selected for a United States Artists Fellowship. On March 11, 2011, the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance created an office of Maine Poet Laureate, and appointed McNair the 4th Maine Poet Laureate. [5] Papers [ edit | edit source ] Publications [ edit | edit source ] Poetry [ edit | edit source ] The Faces of Americans of 1853: Poems . Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983; Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press (Classic Contemporaries Series), 2001. The Town of No . Boston: Godine, 1989. Twelve Journeys in Maine (with prints by Marjorie Moore). Portland, ME: Romulus Editions, 1992. My Brother Running . Boston: Godine, 1993. The Town of No and My Brother Running . David R. Godine, dual reprint, 1997. The Dissonant Heart: A love poem (with photo collages by Dozier Bell). Portland, ME: Coyote Love Press, 1995. Talking in the Dark: Poems . Boston: Godine, 1998. Fire: Poems . Boston: Godine, 2002. The Ghosts of You and Me: Poems . Boston: Godine, 2006. Lovers of the Lost: New and selected poems . Jaffrey, NH: Godine, 2010. The Lost Child: Ozark poems . Jaffrey, NH: Godine, 2014. Non-fiction [ edit | edit source ] Mapping the Heart: Reflections on place and poetry . Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003. A Place On Water (essays; with Bill Roorbach & Robert Kimber. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 2004. The Words I Choose: A memoir of family and poetry . Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012. Edited [ edit | edit source ] The Quotable Moose: A contemporary Maine reader . Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994. The Maine Poets: A verse anthology , Camden, ME: Down East, 2003. Contemporary Maine Fiction: An anthology of short stories . Camden, ME: Down East, 2005 also published as Today's Best Maine Fiction . Camden, ME: Down East, 2005. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat . [6] See also [ edit | edit source ] Growing Lettuce, read by Wes McNair. Maine Poet Laureate Wesley McNair in Belgrade. Goodbye To The Old Life (Wesley McNair Poem) References [ edit | edit source ] Fonds [ edit | edit source ] McNair’s extensive papers were purchased by Colby College in 2006. Taking up approximately 100 linear feet in the college library’s Special Collections, the Wesley McNair Papers include: Scrapbooks, photographs, family letters, clippings and ephemera Early writings (elementary through high school) Notebooks with graduate school writings, teaching notes and poem drafts Manuscript drafts, first appearances and audio/visual recordings Extensive correspondence ( Maine Times colleagues, Donald Hall, literary peers) A video of McNair giving a slide presentation and talk about his papers, entitled My Life as a Poet . In 2010, Colby College’s Special Collections Librarian Patricia Burdick launched an innovative new Web site that utilities McNair’s poetry to increase understanding of and appreciation for the making of poetry. The interactive site includes scanned and transcribed notebook pages showing the development of selected poems, and presents them with final published texts, as well as related audio recordings. The site is accompanied by teaching and learning tools. Click here to visit Colby College’s interactive McNair archive and teaching tools.