A Gathering of Poets - Softcover

Maggie Anderson is professor of English emerita at Kent State University. She is the former director of the Wick Poetry Center and founding editor of the Wick Poetry Series of the Kent State University Press. She is the author of Windfall: New and Selected Poems, Cold Comfort, and A Space Filled with Moving and is coeditor of two anthologies, After the Bell: Contemporary American Prose about School and Learning By Heart: Contemporary American Poetry about School. Alex Gildzen is a poet, mail artist, and blogger who is best known for his autobiography Alex in Movieland. An experiment in list poems, the work has been appearing for years in installments. Raymond A. Craig is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs, College of Arts and Sciences, Kent State University.

Twenty years after the tragic events at Kent State University, a group of more than 300 poets gathered on the campus to pay tribute to the four students killed by Ohio National Guard Troops on May 4, 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War protests. Politics and poetry do not often mix, but this book is a uniquely successful blending of social rage and literary art. Among the 147 poems collected here are such memorable pieces as Donald Hall's "Tomorrow," Shinkichi Takahashi's "Burning Oneself to Death" (translated by Lucien Stryk), Sharon Olds's "The Protestor," Lucille Clifton's "after Kent State," and Lisel Mueller's "Bedtime Story." A significant, well-edited collection of historical and literary value, this book will help readers come to terms with Vietnam because "one of the ancient functions of poetry is to remember and to heal." Recommended for all poetry collections.
- Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.
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