The Vermont Studio Center invites you to join us Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 8:00pm to celebrate the publication of From Sorrow’s Well: The Poetry of Hayden Carruth, edited by Shaun T. Griffin. An acclaimed American poet and critic, Hayden Carruth lived for many years along the Foote Brook in Johnson and wrote some of his most lasting and significant poems about the rural environment and people of northern Vermont. This book launch will feature readings and reflections by:
David Budbill
Rose Marie Carruth
Shaun T. Griffin
Geof Hewitt
Baron Wormser
Free and open to the public. Vermont Studio Center's Lowe Lecture Hall, 58 Lower Main Street East, Johnson.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Hayden Carruth survived isolation, mental health problems, and long struggle with drink and smoke to produce a vision of modern poetry rooted in the New England tradition but entirely his own. Many feel his best poems emerged from his years living in northern Vermont, and his poems often are concerned with rural images and metaphors reflecting the land and hardscrabble people around him. Together with his second love, jazz, Carruth’s rural experiences infuse his poems with engaging and provocative ideas even as they present sometimes stark topics.
This volume collects essays and poems from such notable contributors as Donald Hall, Marilyn Hacker, Adrienne Rich, and Philip Booth, among many others. The book’s sections concern the kinds of writings, and the values expressed in his writings, for which Carruth was most famous, including what editor Shaun T. Griffin calls “social utility,” jazz, his impoverished rural environment, and “innovation” in poetic form.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Shaun T. Griffin is the co-founder and director of Community Chest, a rural social justice agency serving children and families in northwestern Nevada since 1991. For over twenty years he has taught a poetry workshop at Northern Nevada Correctional Center and publishes a journal of their work, Razor Wire. His latest book of poetry, This Is What the Desert Surrenders, New and Selected Poems, was published last fall by Black Rock Press. He received the Rosemary McMillan Lifetime Achievement in Art Award in 2006, awarded by Sierra Arts Foundation, and the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1995.
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