Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Now in its fifth year, the Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival continues to attract big, and up-and-coming names. I have read Brenda Shaughnessy's book, Human Dark with Sugar , winner of the AAP's James Laughlin award for a second book of poetry, but did not like it much. Not enough dark and too little sugar, it belongs to the School of Clever. Hearing her read at SLC only confirmed the impression. Lynn Emanuel read a few of her dog poems. The one written after Kafka's Metamorphosis remained too close to the master, but I liked her poem about the dog-catcher's interrogation of the dog. Faculty members, and, husband and wife, Kurt Brown and Laure-Anne Bosselaar read from their new books. After hearing Shaughnessy, I was grateful for their passionate modesty and quiet wit. Brown's poems titled after fellow poets (Sharon Olds, Tom Lux, Gerald Stern, Carolyn Forche, Mary Oliver, among others) paid tribute to their subjects and styles. His poems were not intended to ...

Grace Paley joined Sarah Lawrence College in 1966, and from that beginning had been closely associated with its creative writing program. By the time I enrolled in the graduate course in 2003, she had not been teaching there for some time, but still could be seen at college events and readings. I read her short story "Wants" not long ago, and was impressed by the economy of her prose, especially her adroit use of a short verbal exchange to convey an entire marriage and its breakdown. The NYT obituary mentions her first ambition was to be a poet, and she studied with Auden for a while at The New School. I googled and found this: Here Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to th...