A Night of Poetry at Harvard Book Store

Harvard Book Store welcomes New Hampshire’s former poet laureate CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON and Harvard Ph.D. candidate ADAM SCHEFFLER for a discussion of their poetry collections. Huntington, author of Terra Nova, also wrote Heavenly Bodies, and is a National Book Award finalist. Scheffler, a local poet, will be discussing his collection, A Dog’s Life.

Huntington’s writing in Terra Nova is hybrid, oscillating between verse and lyrical prose to create a work that falls somewhere between an epic poem and a collection of lyric essays. Whether chronicling the creation of the world and the first exile from the Judeo-Christian Garden of Eden or imagining the terror and thrill of the first sea voyages, this is electric poetry: challenging, startling, and fulfilling.

“A Dog’s Life is a romp through Americana by way of ‘real’ America with sly, politically engaged poems. Though this poet issues a rallying cry against ‘siren songs of entertainment,’ his poems are completely entertaining but, at the same time, completely wise. He takes on true love, extinction, our fragile environment, war, technology, porn, aging and our fight against it, cancer, nursing homes, and death. A Dog’s Life is an enlightened look at Doritos, Carson Daly, Walmart, McDonalds, theme parks, and, of course, dogs.” —Denise Duhamel