Dorianne Laux Selected as Ninth Westminster Poet

English Department Head Michael Cervas has announced that Dorianne Laux has accepted the English Department's invitation to become the ninth Westminster Poet. Laux, a poet known for her emotional honesty and for her deft command of imagery and narrative, will visit Westminster in the spring of 2009. She will give a reading to the entire school community on Wednesday, April 22 and entertain questions from students and faculty during the morning blocks on Thursday, April 23.

Without a doubt, Laux will add her own distinctive voice to the very successful Westminster Poetry Series, which has included visits by several U. S. poets laureate, a Maryland State poet laureate, a Connecticut State poet laureate and a number of Pulitzer Prize winners.

Born in Augusta, Maine, in 1952, Laux has an Irish, French, and Algonquin heritage. Between the ages of 18 and 30, she worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, a maid and a doughnut-holer before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988. For the past 15 years, she has taught creative writing at the University of Oregon in Eugene, and since 2004 she has taught in Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program.

An Author of Acclaimed Books of Poems
Laux is the author of four acclaimed books of poems. Her latest, Facts About the Moon, was published by W. W. Norton and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the recipient of the Oregon Book Award, and short-listed for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Her first book, Awake (1990), was introduced by Philip Levine, and was followed by What We Carry (1994) and Smoke (2000).

No one reads Laux’s poems without being impressed by their passion and power, as well as by their technical proficiency. In fact, one might describe her poetry as the perfect combination of grit and grace. Poet Jane Hirshfield has said that “Laux has created an ever-expanding body of work in which the examined life is the common one, recognizable and shared, yet also transformed—each statement, feeling, fact set down with accuracy, original vision, and an unerring musicality and alertness.”

Laux has waited tables and written poems in San Diego, Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Petaluma, Calif., and as far north as Juneau, Alaska. For her efforts, she has received two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Best American Erotic Poems Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Best of the American Poetry Review and the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and she is a frequent contributor to magazines as varied as The New York Quarterly, Orio, and Ms. Magazine. Along with her husband, poet Joseph Millar, Laux will move in the fall of 2008 to Raleigh, N.C. where she will join the faculty at North Carolina State University as a poet-in-residence.

A Visit Made Possible by the Ford-Goldfarb Fund
The Westminster Poetry Series is delighted and honored to have Dorianne Laux as the ninth Westminster Poet. Her visit is made possible by a generous gift from the Ford-Goldfarb Fund, which was established by Maureen Ford-Goldfarb and her daughter Kirsten Ford ‘00 in 2005 to support English Department enrichment activities. Last year, the fund brought three distinguished writers to Williams Hill. In 2008-2009, in addition to bringing Dorianne Laux to campus for a two-day visit in April, the fund will allow the English Department to take the entire school to see the Hartford Stage’s new production of William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream in September.

The following are examples of Laux’s poetry:

THE JOB

for Tobey

When my friend lost her little finger
between the rollers of a printing press,
I hadn’t met her yet. It must have taken
months for the stump to heal, skin stretched
and stitched over bone, must have taken
years before she could consider it calmly,
as she does now, in an airport café
over a cup of black coffee.
She doesn’t complain or blame the unguarded
machine, the noise of the factory, the job
with its long unbroken hours.
She simply opens her damaged hand and studies
the emptiness, the loss
of symmetry and flesh, and tells me
it was a small price to pay,
that her missing finger taught her
to take more care with her life,
with what she reaches out
to touch, to stay awake when she’s awake
and listen, to pay attention
to what’s turning in the world.


PLANNING THE FUTURE

I never dreamed my daughter would be 16
until the day arrived with a car full of kids
and balloons, take-out Mexican food
and a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake.
A few months later and she has a boyfriend
in a baseball cap and baggy pants, two gold hoop
earrings and a shaved head. They are happy.
After school they do their homework together,
stretched out on her bed, the door open
to the edge of the legal limit.
Every history question finished deserves
a kiss. They’re embarrassed by the names
they’ve invented for each other,
by their tenderness. Toward evening
they watch MTV, mute the volume
during the commercials and plan their future—
junior college, then marriage, then kids,
what they’ll take with them—his dog,
her rat. I’m happy for them, even knowing
what will happen—the last gift, the last
kiss, her huddled on her bed, blinded
by her own bright pain. And I can see clearly
the day she’ll walk away, keys on a ring,
a suitcase banging her legs.
Then the real work of motherhood will begin,
the job of waking into each morning, trusting.