Background
Paul Smyth was born in Boston and raised in Holliston, Massachusetts.
Paul Smyth was born in Boston and raised in Holliston, Massachusetts.
He studied in Harvard University"s extension program with poet Theodore Morrison.
At the age of sixteen, he left home to hitchhike across the North America. During this time, he spent time in Mexico, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Provincetown. lieutenant was in Massachusetts that he got his first writing job as a freelancer for the New Beacon Newspaper.
He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1968.
Smyth was married three times, the third time to the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. He taught writing and literature at Mount Holyoke College and Bard College at Simon"s Rock.
Smyth eventually left academia after 10 years of teaching, and moved to Greece for a year. During his time spent on the Islands of Aegina and Crete, he continued to write.
In addition to poetry, he wrote two novels and a prose-poem memoir before moving back to New England.
He died in Charlottesville, Virginia, just after completing a book, A Plausible Light: New and Collected Poems.