Background
McHugh, Heather was born on August 20, 1948 in San Diego, California, United States. Daughter of John Laurence and Eileen Francesca (Smallwood) McHugh.
(Heather McHugh's new book, Eyeshot, is a brooding, vision...)
Heather McHugh's new book, Eyeshot, is a brooding, visionary work that takes aim at the big questions—those of love and death. The poems suggest that such immensities balance on the smallest details, and that a range of human blindness is inescapable. The power of this new work comes from its delicate yet tenacious fidelity to the ever-unfolding senses of sense. The poems invite the reader to follow careening words and insights through passages both playful and profound. Her "Fido, Jolted by Jove" reveals the tension endemic to both language and living: "the world itself is worried." Yet the same poem remarks the high price of any reductive fix: "a brain this insecure may need another bolt be driven in it." This movement between anxiety and the human compulsion for order informs Eyeshot's darkly comic, 20/20 acuity.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819566721/?tag=2022091-20
("When I call poetry a form of partiality," writes Heather...)
"When I call poetry a form of partiality," writes Heather McHugh, "I mean its economies operate by powers of intimation: glimmering and glints, rather than exhaustible sums. It is a broken language from the beginning, brimming with non-words: all that white welled up to keep the line from surrendering to the margin; all that quiet, to keep the musics marked." In Broken English, McHugh applies her poetic sensibility and formidable critical insight to topics ranging from the poetry of Valéry and Rilke to ancient Greek drama and Yoruba folk songs, offering intense, passionate, highly personal readings that are informed and unified by her concern for the relationships among language, culture, and poetry.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819562726/?tag=2022091-20
( "If McHugh is serious, she's anything but grim; with al...)
"If McHugh is serious, she's anything but grim; with all her punning, bantering, and mock scolding of herself . . . she brightens the shadowy corners of her world with verbal pyrotechnics."—The New York Times Book Review "Her poems are open, resilient, invisibly twisted: part safety net, part trampoline."—Village Voice Literary Supplement This fast-paced, verbally dexterous book—honored as a "Book of the Year" by Publishers Weekly—"boils up and boils over" as it utilizes medical terminology and iconography to work through loss and detachment. Heather McHugh's startling rhymes and rhythms, coupled with her sarcastic self-reflection and infectious laughter, serve as both palliative and prophylactic in the face of human sufferings and ignorance. Being "upgraded to serious" from critical condition is a nod to the healing powers of poetry. "Not to Be Dwelled On" Self-interest cropped up even there, the day I hoisted three instead of the ceremonially called-for two spadefuls of loam onto the coffin of my friend. Why shovel more than anybody else? What did I think I'd prove? More love (mud in her eye)? More will to work? (her father what, a shirker?) Christ, what wouldn't anybody give to get that gesture back? She cannot die again; and I do nothing but re-live. Heather McHugh is the author of a dozen books of poetry and translation. She teaches at the University of Washington and Warren Wilson College and lives in Seattle, Washington.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556593953/?tag=2022091-20
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010MZMF32/?tag=2022091-20
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010MZEM3S/?tag=2022091-20
(Available now in paperback, The Father of the Predicament...)
Available now in paperback, The Father of the Predicaments is Heather McHugh's first book since Hinge & Sign was selected as a National Book Award finalist and chosen a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. In this witty and deeply felt collection, McHugh takes her cue from Aristotle, who wrote that "the father of the predicaments is being." For McHugh, being is intimately, though perhaps not ultimately, bound to language, and these poems cut to the quick, delivering their revelations with awesome precision
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819565067/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008WDMD2K/?tag=2022091-20
literature and language professor poet
McHugh, Heather was born on August 20, 1948 in San Diego, California, United States. Daughter of John Laurence and Eileen Francesca (Smallwood) McHugh.
Bachelor with honors, Harvard University Radcliffe College, 1970. Master of Arts, University Denver, 1972.
Poet-in-residence Stephens College, Missouri, 1974—1976. Associate professor English State University of New York, Binghamton, 1976-1982. Professor department English, Milliman distinguished writer-in-residence University Washington, Seattle, since 1983.
Visiting faculty Master of Fine Arts progressive for writers Warren Wilson College, North Carolina, since 1976. Vos. professor Columbia University, New York City, 1987. Holloway lecturer University California, Berkeley, 1987.
(Available now in paperback, The Father of the Predicament...)
("When I call poetry a form of partiality," writes Heather...)
(Heather McHugh's new book, Eyeshot, is a brooding, vision...)
( "If McHugh is serious, she's anything but grim; with al...)
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Fellow: American Academy Arts & Sciences. Member: Academy American Poets (chancellor 1999—2006).
