Saturday, March 31, 2007


Today I just want to bring attention to the work of Baron Wormser, one of our finest poets.

I was talking to an otherwise literate friend the other day, and I mentioned Wormser’s work to him. Who? he said, which is evidence of a wrong worth righting. Wormser has been a “poet’s poet” for a long time, a remarkable and brave example of how to live the poet’s calling with integrity, intelligence, anger, tenderness, wholeness. Here is a site devoted to his work:

http://www.teachpoetry.com/

And this essay is a chapter of Wormser’s memoir The Road Washes Out in Spring:

http://www.bu.edu/agni/essays-reviews/print/2005/61-wormser.html

You can read several of Wormser’s “Carthage” poems here, along with the stunning and acerbic poem “The Torture Channel”:

http://www.nthposition.com/author.php?authid=493

And another “Carthage” poem can be read here, at The Manhatttan Review site:

http://www.themanhattanreview.com/archive/11-2_carthage.html

2 comments:

Kurt Brown said...

Richard, congratulations on the new blog! Put me down as a fan of Baron Wormer's poetry. Definitely an under-recognized figure, and one whose work deserves to be more widely known. His recent books are available from Sarabande. I recommend them to anyone who cares about American poetry, and who admires work of the highest order. Keep up the good work! Kurt

Kurt Brown said...

“I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
- Richard Pryor