Hayden Carruth – författare

Hayden Carruth, one of the most acclaimed poets of our age, lives his music—finding the perfect low tones of terrible loss and high riffs of family and friendship.

"Carruth keeps getting better."—The New Yorker

"Carruth's new poems are, essentially, songs of praise and celebrations of beauty; for all the real anguish and pain they record, they remain enactments of a fundamental attitude of faith and wonder."—Times Literary Supplement (London)

"The elegiac gravity of 'Dearest M—,' on a daughter's death, refuses to release us until its final syllable."—Library Journal (starred review)

“Carruth [is] one of the lasting literary signatures of our time.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Carruth...contains multitudes.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Carruth is a people’s poet... a virtuoso of form.”—The Nation

This “portable Carruth” gathers new poems with the essential works from a major American poet. Included are lyrics, short narratives, comic, meditative, and erotic poems that engage politics, music, rural poverty, and the cultural responsibility of artists. As Sam Hamill writes in the introduction:

“Carruth’s great body of work is a world... Like the jazz he so loves, his poetry ranges from the formal to the spontaneous, from local vernacular to righteous oratory, from beautiful complexity to elegant understatement.”

From “A Few Dilapidated Arias”

“Our crumbling civilization”–a phrase I have used often during recent years, in letters to friends, even in words for public print. And what does it mean? Can a civilization crumble? At once appears the image of an old slice of bread, stale and hard, green with mold, shaped roughly like the northeastern United States, years old or more, so hard and foul that even my pal Maxie, the shepherd/husky cross who eats everything, won’t touch it. And it is crumbling, turning literally into crumbs, as the millions of infinitesimal internal connecting fibers sever and loosen. The dust trickles and seeps away.

Hayden Carruth, a longtime resident of Vermont, currently lives in upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. His many honors include the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Praise for Hayden Carruth:

"Something Hayden Carruth does as well as any writer is to treat the reader as a friend, and to provide, through his poetry, hours of good company."—The New York Times Book Review

"One of the lasting literary signatures of our time."—Library Journal, starred review

"Carruth, like Whitman, like Chaucer, is large—he contains multitudes. Dip into his work anywhere, and there is life—and death—as stirringly felt and cogitated as in some vast, Tolstoyan novel."—Booklist, starred review

Hayden Carruth's Last Poems is a triumph—a morally engaged, tender, and fearless volume that combines the last poems of his life with the concluding poems from each of his previous volumes. Introduced by Stephen Dobyns, Last Poems is a moving tribute to a towering and beloved figure in American poetry.

From "Father's Day":

I don't know what fathers areSupposed to do, although the calendar saysThis is "Father's Day." But the day is gloomyAnd not at all conducive to visiting orCelebrating. I know the best thing fathers inTheir prime can do is to make daughters andMore daughters; we can never have enough.Daughters are our best protection againstLoneliness and the absurd atrocities ofForeign policy . . .

Hayden Carruth (1921–2008) lived for many years in northern Vermont, then moved to upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. He won the National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, and his Collected Shorter Poems received the National Book Critics Circle Award.