Wesley McNair
Wesley McNair | |
---|---|
Born | 1941 |
Known for | Poet |
Website | www |
Wesley McNair (born 1941) is an American
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]
Work
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
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
In 2006, McNair was selected for a United States Artists Fellowship.
From 2011 to 2016 McNair served as the
In 2015, McNair 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
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
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)
References
- ^ USA Fellows 2006 > Wesley McNair Bio
- ^ USA Fellows 2006 > Wesley McNair Bio
- ^ The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry (Carnegie Mellon University Press), page 58
- ^ Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry (Carnegie Mellon University Press), page 5.
- ^ Poetry Foundation > Poet: Wesley McNair (1941 -- )
- ^ "Maine". The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
- ^ "Poet Laureate History". Maine Arts Commission. Retrieved 5 August 2022.
- ^ "In a new collection, poet Wesley McNair celebrates a life that arcs toward openness". Bangor Daily News. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
- ^ Author Website
- ^ AGNI Online Wesley McNair Bio & Poem Bibliography
Sources
- Library of Congress Online Catalog > Wesley McNair
- Author Website > Biography
- University of Maine at Farmington > Humanities Faculty: Wesley McNair Bio
External links
- Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor featured poems
- American Life in Poetry
- Poetry Magazine Profile
- AGNI Magazine
- Slate Magazine Poems
- McNair at 2011 National Book Festival
- McNair on National Public Radio
- Reading at the Library of Congress with Maxine Kumin
- NH Author's Conversation
- NHPR Inspired Lives Feature
- Maine Humanities Council: A Reading
- First address as Maine Poet Laureate at the Blaine House
- Blog Entry by McNair about His First Four Initiatives as Maine Poet Laureate
- Video: Bill Green's Maine Interview