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ALL AUTHOR PHOTOS: Brad Fowler – Song of Myself
Praise
“Mary Maxwell has a very good ear, a discriminating eye, and that most indispensable quality a poet must have, if she really is a poet: an original way of looking at things, a definite stance.”
James Dickey
“Mary Maxwell’s criticism is so beautifully done, so alive, informed and intelligent that I’m envious of her craft. Each paragraph has something new, while charmingly continuing… She is literary — admirably — without any hint of being a Literary Scholar.”
Guy Davenport
“Mary Maxwell’s subject is the canon, both literary and social, the received forms of love and literature. In her work, the personal realm of the romantic and the public realm of literature are joined by a myriad of deft stitches. Her poems to other writers have aspects of love poetry, and yet the poems are not set pieces of admiration. They are dialogues with the masters… A kind of wonderful bravura moves through these poems in the guise of self-deprecation as this writer simultaneously celebrates and undermines the canons of thinking and feeling.”
Lynn Emanuel
“Mary Maxwell’s work as a poet is curious and original; and her work as a translator and critic is dedicated, precise and inventive.”
Richard Howard
Bio
Mary Maxwell has been a winner of the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, the recipient of a residential fellowship from the Camargo Foundation, and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Five poetry collections, as well as several books of prose, have been published by LongNookBooks. A translator and independent scholar, her essays appear regularly in various literary periodicals.
Mary Maxwell is the author of five poetry collections, An Imaginary Hellas, Emporia, Cultural Tourism, Nine Over Sixes and Oral Lake, as well as the audio chapbook, Trail. As a translator and independent scholar, she has published in periodicals such as Literary Imagination, Partisan Review and Threepenny Review. She has been the winner of the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, the recipient of a residential fellowship from the Camargo Foundation, and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Most recently, she collaborated with Phoebe Carrai on Word Suite, poems written to accompany movements from Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello.
Mary Maxwell is the author of five poetry collections, An Imaginary Hellas, Emporia, Cultural Tourism, Nine Over Sixes and Oral Lake, as well as the audio chapbook, Trail. She has been the winner of the “Discovery”/ The Nation Award, the recipient of a residential fellowship from the Camargo Foundation, and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. The composer Jessica Krash set her translations from Latin into the song cycle, Sulpicia’s Songs. More recently, she collaborated with Phoebe Carrai on Word Suite, poems written to accompany movements from Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello.
As an independent scholar, she’s published reviews and essays on the subject of poetry, poetic translation, as well as on the visual arts. A selection of her prose is forthcoming in the collection Push and Pull; these pieces originally appeared in periodicals such as Arion, PNReview, Raritan, Salmagundi and Yale Review. A member of the Ezra Pound Society and the Ford Madox Ford Society, she’s participated in the National Book Critics Circle, the Network for New York School Studies, and the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers. Mary is an ardent supporter of PEN America, Author’s Guild, Poet’s House and Writers for Democratic Action.
Press
Selected Interviews/Reviews
The New Republic, Jed Perl’s Year-End Bests: ‘That Mysterious Zone Where Art and Life Meet’
Provincetown Independent – ‘Word Suite’ Combines Poetry and Music
Provincetown Independent – Maxwell’s Answer to ‘What is a Poem’
Open University of Wellfleet – A Course for Serious Readers and Writers of Poems