Hayden Carruth

1. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Hayden Carruth McKayla Baxley 2010-2011

2. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography The crazy and ridiculous life of Hayden Carruth • "A poem is not an expression, nor is it an object. Yet it somewhat partakes of both. What a poem is never to be known, for which I have learned to be grateful." • This quote was said by Hayden Carruth on his thoughts about poems (Carruth). Hayden Carruth was born on August 3, 1921 in Waterbury, Connecticut. He was born to the loving parents of Gorton Veeder, a newspaper editor, and Margery Barrow-Carruth. Carruth resided in Munnsville, New York with his fourth spouse Joe-Anne McLaughlin Carruth. Carruth attended and studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago, where he recieved his master’s degree. Carruth was an active soldier for two years during the World War II. He was a staff sergeant in the Army Air Corps. Then, at the age of 33, Carruth fell into a seemingly controlled environment. He became an alcoholic. Carruth became mentally unstable and had an ‘alcoholic breakdown’. He was then admitted to the White Plains section of the New York Hospital, which was previously named the Bloomingdale Asylum. He was in treatment for 15 months and was still not recovered. It seemed as though nothing could help him get through this tough time, not even writing. Over time, medications helped him recover. As well as his love of women, music, work, and a psychiatrist that understood him which helped him recover as well. Shortly after, he had to have open heart surgery due to multiple strokes.

3. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Biography cont. • While resting and recovering, his wife, who is 30 years younger than he, took care of him and worked around the house and also wrote poems. He was greatly known for his sense of criticism. He wrote several books containing reviews and selected poems. Some of the books include; Selected Essays and Reviews along with Sitting In: Selected Writings on Jazz (CopperCanyon Press). Hayden Carruth passed away on September 29, 2008, after a long battle with alcoholism and multiple strokes (Academy of American Poets) (Mertens). • Hayden Carruth’s career started when he took a job at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and at the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University. Then he began to write poems and stories. His first collection of poems was called The Crow and The Heart which was published in 1959 (Academy of American Poets). Since his first book, he has published more than thirty books. For one of the books he received a National Book Award. Many of his poems seemed to be written describing people and places in Vermont as well as poverty and hardship. Carruth has received many awards for his writing. Some of them are the Lenore Marshall Award, Patterson Poetry Prize, Vermont Governor’s Medal, Carl Sandburg Award, Writing Award, Ruth Lilly Prize, the Pulitzer Prize as well as many more (Academyof American Poets).

4. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Biography cont • The main idea behind Carruth’s writing style is the people and places of Vermont. Occasionally he would write about poverty and hardship, which was understandable because of the time period he lived in (Academy of American Poets). Hayden Carruth has made a lasting impact on the people of poetry because of the way he lived his life (Mertens). Not only did he write great poems, but he also led a crazy life. Galway Kinnell said this about Carruth, "This is not a man who sits down to 'write a poem'; rather, some burden of understanding and feeling, some need to know, forces his poems into being. Thoreau said, 'Be it life or death, what we crave is reality.' So it is with Carruth. And even in hell, knowledge itself bestows a halo around the consciousness with, at moments, attains it (Academy of American Poets)."

5. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Collected works • • Appendix A, 1963: a novel about adultery. • • The Voice That is Great Within Us, 1970: an influential anthology of American poetry. • • The Mythology of Dark & Light, 1982: a long poem published as a limited edition chapbook, later republished in Collected Longer Poems • • Mother, 1985: a long poem published as a limited edition chapbook, later republished in Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands (1989) and subsequently gathered in Collected Longer Poems • • The Sleeping Beauty, (Copper Canyon Press, 1990) • • Collected Shorter Poems: 1946-1991, (Copper Canyon Press, 1992) • • Suicides and Jazzers, 1992 • • Collected Longer Poems, (Copper Canyon Press, 1994) • • Selected Essays & Reviews, 1996 • • Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, (Copper Canyon Press, 1997) • • Reluctantly: Autobiographical Essays, 1998 • • Beside the Shadblow Tree: A Memoir of James Laughlin, (Copper Canyon Press, 1999) • • Hayden Carruth: A Listener's Guide, (audio CD) 2000 • • Doctor Jazz, (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) • • Letters to Jane, (Copper Canyon Press, 2004) • • Toward the Distant Islands: New and Selected Poems, (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)

6. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Onondaga, Early Winter by Hayden Carruth Analysis of Onondaga, Early Winter • Onondaga, Early Winter by Hayden Carruth • Lights in the twilight, • Lights of Solvay over the expanse of frozen snow-covered • Lake, • Orange lights of the refineries, • Yellow and green and red lights of the neon along the • Strip, • Lights as if undersea, the argon just coming to exist, • All lights in the cold moisture of the grounded wind • Staggering across the lake at twilight • Are blurred, are meaningless, they call, together, • With a sound unintelligible and of no interest; • But in the slate sky above the imagined horizon • Like an old lantern left long ago on top of a heap of slag • The evening star alone is bright and clear • And alone responds to this knowledge of death too soon • that comes in the loneliness of twilight and dying wind, • The loneliness of decayed and useless and ragged fear • And the soundless cry for a thing that has no name. . . .

7. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Analysis of Onondaga, Early Winter • In Hayden Carruth’spoem, “Onondaga, Early December”, Carruth uses a great amount of imagery. In lines 7,8 and 9, he writes ‘lights as if under sea, the argon just coming to exist/ all lights in the cold moisture of the grounded wind/ staggering across the lake at twilight’. Carruth presents an ample of what he is trying to get the reader to picture. “Onondaga, Early December” represents a Native American tribe of Iroquoian Indians, located in New York, and the Onondaga Lake they reside on. The sights that the Iroquoians see every day are portrayed in the poem so that the reader has a clear understanding of the beautiful appearance. The poem continues to use an endless sense of imagery when Carruth writes “but in the slate sky above the imagined horizon/ like an old lantern left long ago on top of a heap of slag/ the evening star alone is bright and clear”. In these lines, the image of nightfall begins to ascend in the reader’s imagination. Carruth may have used imagery to write this poem because he felt it was necessary that the reader be able to enjoy the poem as well as picture a reservation and the people who may live on it. Overall, “Onondaga, Early December” is a prodigious poem that represents a great culture.

8. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Introduction Poem (I, I, I) • I chose the poem “I, I, I” because it shows the curiosity of someone when looking at one self through multiple mirrors. After reading this poem, many questions may be running through your head. Such as, “How many people are looking at me without me noticing?”, “How many people am I looking at who are watching other people?. The lines “For if I know/ The self that watches, another watching self/ Must see the watcher, then another watching that/ Another and another, and where does it end?”, give examples of what we may be thinking while we are ‘people watching’. • Hayden Carruth • I, I, I • First, the self. Then, the observing self. The self that acts and the self that watches. This The starting point, the place where the mind begins, Whether the mind of an individual or The mind of a species. When I was a boy I struggled to understand. For if I know The self that watches, another watching self Must see the watcher, then another watching that, Another and another, and where does it end? So my mother sent me to the barber shop, My first time, to get my hair "cut for a part" (Instead of the dutch boy she'd always given me),

9. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Introduction Poem Continued (I, I, I) • As I was instructed to tell the barber. She Dispatched me on my own because the shop, Which had a pool table in the back, in that Small town was the men's club, and no woman Would venture there. Was it my first excursion On my own into the world? Perhaps. I sat In the big chair. The wall behind me held A huge mirror, and so did the one in front, So that I saw my own small strange blond head With its oriental eyes and turned up nose repeated In ever diminishing images, one behind Another behind another, and I tried To peer farther and farther into the succession To see the farthest one, diminutive in The shadows. I could not. I sat rigid And said no word. The fat barber snipped • My hair and blew his brusque breath on my nape And finally whisked away his sheet, and I climbed down. I ran from that cave of mirrors A mile and a half to home, to my own room Up under the eaves, which was another cave. It had no mirrors. I no longer needed mirrors.

10. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Introduction Poem (Something for the trade) • I chose “Something For The Trade” by Hayden Carruth because I think we can all relate to what he is talking about in the poem. At least once in our lifetime, we get so angry at the person on the other line that we slam the phone down in hopes they got the message that the conversation was clearly over and that you won the argument. Only now do we realize that they can’t hear the ‘slam’. They only hear a simple ‘click’. • Something For The Trade • by Hayden Carruth • Please note well, all you writers, editors, directors out there: when a phone call is terminated by the other person you do not, NOT, hear the buzz of a dial tone. You hear a faint click and then silence, absolute silence, the Great Silence, more eloquent than any electronic buzz could ever be. In fact the dial tone cannot be heard until you yourself hang up and then lift the receiver again. Further note this: you cannot tell from the click if the other person has hung up reluctantly or desperately, softly or violently. It is only the sound of a disconnected circuit. I've read this error in a thousand books, I've seen it in a thousand movies, and how so many of you can be so unobservant, you who call yourselves artists, is beyond me. Ah, my friends, you are becoming my enemies, and I'm appalled by your irreverence for the simple truth that should sustain us all.

11. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Inspired poem (Original) • Graves • Hayden Carruth • Both of us had been close • to Joel, and at Joel's death • my friend had gone to the wake • and the memorial service • and more recently he had • visited Joel's grave, there • at the back of the grassy • cemetery among the trees, • "a quiet, gentle place," he said, • "befitting Joel." And I said, • "What's the point of going to look at graves?” • I went • into one of my celebrated • tirades. "People go to look • at the grave of Keats or Hart • Crane, they go traveling just to • do it, and what a waste of time. • What do they find there? Hell, • I wouldn't go look at the grave • of Shakespeare if it was just • down the street. I wouldn't • look at--" And I stopped. I • was about to say the grave of God • until I realized I'm looking at it • all the time. . . .

12. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Inspired poem (Gravestone) • Gravestone • McKayla Baxley • Great Grandma Rosella • An angel above • Eighty one years here • Six months gone • Crazy isn’t it? • One can spend eighty one years here • Be gone in an instant • The days slowly tick by • As one other questions “when will my time be up?” • They will never know • What will be on my gravestone?

13. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Inspired poem (Original) • The Curtain • Hayden Carruth • Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing. One can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever- renewing field of corpse-flesh. In this valley the snow falls silently all day and out our window We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in our little house, We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like a fantasy, the snow-clad trees So graceful in a dream of peace. In our new bed, which is big enough to seem like the north pasture almost With our two cats, Cooker and Smudgins, lying undisturbed in the southeastern and southwestern corners, We lie loving and warm, looking out from time to time. • "Snowbound," we say. We speak of the poet Who lived with his young housekeeper long ago In the • mountains of the western province, the kingdom Of complete cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and snow fell for many months across the mouth Of the pass and drifted deep in the vale. In our kitchen the maple-fire murmurs In our stove. We eat cheese and new-made bread and jumbo Spanish olives That have been steeped in our special brine of jalapeños and garlic and dill and thyme. We have a nip or two from the small inexpensive cognac that makes us smile and sigh. For a while we close the immense index of images

14. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Inspired poem (original cont) • which is Our lives--for instance, the child on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico in 1966 Sitting naked in the dirt outside his family's hut of tin and cardboard, Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course the child is here with us now, We cannot close the index. How will we survive? We don't and cannot know. Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable. The machine May break through and come lurching into our valley at any moment, at any moment. Cheers, baby. Here's to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers and falls back.

15. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Inspired poem (The Curtain) • The Curtain • McKayla Baxley • Life is like a curtain • You never know what may be behind it • It may be the scenery of a beautiful day • Or perhaps, a fork in the road • Whatever it may be, it’s always a surprise • We never fully understand why life isn’t consistent • But the time comes when we realize why • But not until the curtain closes

16. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Original poem (R.E.M) • R.E.M • McKayla Baxley • Nightmares • Night terrors • The thrashing • The kicking • The punching • The fighting • The screaming • The running • The falling • The sweating • Heart pounding • Jolt awake • Sigh of relief

17. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Original poem (beautiful day) • Beautiful Day • McKayla Baxley • A gentle breeze immersed from the cliffs • Spilling the scent of the mountains contents • The butterfly frolics quietly in her birthing glory • A bumblebee soars alone in its silent but mystical roar, wearing an eternal smile • Fruit flies buzzing wildly near the velvet lilac • Robins viewing from a nearby evergreen • The exhausted fish and beastly bear declare their evening war, the fish, withered forever • Fragile children play colorful paint • On this beautiful day

18. Biography List of Works Sample Poems Original Poems Inspired Poems Bibliography Bibliography • http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/onondaga-early-december/ • http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/graves-2/ • http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-curtain/ • http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0504/features/carruth.shtml • http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/232 • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Carruth • http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-i-i/ • http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/something-for-the-trade/ • http://www.x929.ca/shows/newsboy/wp-content/uploads/angry_phone.jpg • http://www.happynews.com/living/livingimages/rem-sleep.jpg • http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2386/2141348817_b5eb3a5a4f.jpg • http://i.ehow.com/images/a04/lo/rg/saved-through-believing-jesus-christ-800X800.jpg • http://www.travelbrook.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/cliffs-of-moher.jpg • http://poetrydispatch.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/carruth_hayden.jpg • http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.grandforksherald.com/media/story/jpg/2010/12/04/RGust1204.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/185701/&usg=__mGW8rNOY8ll1fNXGNEzuGPQj4gM=&h=198&w=142&sz=19&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&tbnid=PHCXeMEdWxswDM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=75&ei=vR3ETcHoMtCXtwedpfCkBA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DRosella%2BGust%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26biw%3D1259%26bih%3D839%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1