Philip Edmund Booth was an American poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and educator; he has been called "Maine's clearest poetic voice."

Life

Booth was born in 1925 in Hanover, New Hampshire

Hanover, New Hampshire

Hanover is a town along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 11,260 at the 2010 census. CNN and Money magazine rated Hanover the sixth best place to live in America in 2011, and the second best in 2007....

. Booth served in the United States Air Force in the Second World War. He then attended Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

, where he studied with Robert Frost

Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...

; he received his B.A. in 1947. He subsequently received an M.A. from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. Booth married Margaret Tillman in 1946; they had three daughters. He spent much of his time living in Castine, Maine

Castine, Maine

Castine is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States and was once the capital of Acadia . The population was 1,343 at the 2000 census. Castine is the home of Maine Maritime Academy, a four-year institution that graduates officers and engineers for the United States Merchant Marine and marine...

 in a house that has been handed down through his family for five generations.

Booth was an instructor and professor of English and of creative writing at Dartmouth College, Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...

, Wellesley College, and at Syracuse University

Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...

. Booth was one of the founders of the Creative Writing program at Syracuse. One of his students, the poet Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn is an American poet. Dunn has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2001 collection, Different Hours and has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dunn completed his B.A. in English at...

, has written of his 1969-70 experience at Syracuse that, "We had come to study with Philip Booth, Donald Justice

Donald Justice

Donald Justice was an American poet and teacher of writing. In summing up Justice's career, David Orr has written, "In most ways, Justice was no different from any number of solid, quiet older writers devoted to traditional short poems. But he was different in one important sense: sometimes his...

, W.D. Snodgrass

William De Witt Snodgrass

William De Witt Snodgrass was an American poet who also wrote under the pseudonym S. S. Gardons. He won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.-Life:W. D...

, George P. Elliott, arguably the best group of writer-teachers that existed at the time."

Poetry

Booth's poetry was published in many periodicals including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Denver Quarterly. He published 10 poetry collections and one book about writing poetry (see references below).

One of Booth's early poems, "Chart 1203," is indicative of the physical character of some of his poetry and also of his lifelong love of the sea and sailing:

Whoever works a storm to windward, sails

in rain, or navigates in island fog,

must reckon from the slow swung lead, from squalls

on cheek; must bear by compass, chart, and log.

...

...He weathers rainsquall,

linestorm, fear, who bears away from the sound

of sirens wooing him to the cape's safe lee.

He knows the ghostship bow, the sudden headland

immanent in fog; but where rocks wander, he

steers down the channel that his courage

dredges. He knows the chart is not the sea.

A much later poem, "Places without Names," has a more public concern:

...

What gene demands old men command young men to die?

The young gone singing to Antietam, Aachen, Anzio.

To Bangalore, the Choisin Reservoir, Dien Bien Phu,

My Lai. Places in the heads of men who have no

mind left. ...

A major essay regarding Booth's poetry was published by Guy Rotella in 1983.

Awards

Bess Hokin Prize (1955). Lamont Poetry Prize for Letter from a Distant Land (1956). Saturday Review Poetry Award (1957). Emily Clark Balch Prize of the Virginia Quarterly Review (1964). Theodore Roethke Prize for a poem in Poetry Northwest (1970). Syracuse University Chancellor's Citation (1981). Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets

Academy of American Poets

The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...

 (1983), the Guggenheim Foundation

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 (1958, 1964), and the Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

 (1968). Maurice English Poetry Award for Relations (1987). Poem selected for The Best American Poetry 1999. Poets' Prize

Poets' Prize

The Poets' Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year. The $3000 annual prize is donated by a committee of about 20 American poets, who each nominate two books and who also serve as judges...

 (2001) for Lifelines.

Poetry collections

• Lifelines: Selected Poems, 1950-1999 (Viking Press, 1999). ISBN 0-670-88287-9
• Pairs (Viking Penguin, New York, 1994). ISBN 0-140-58724-1
• Selves (Viking Penguin, New York, 1990). ISBN 0-140-58646-6
• Relations (Viking Penguin, 1986). ISBN 0-140-58560-5
• Before Sleep (Viking Adult, 1980). ISBN 0-670-15529-2
• Available Light (Viking Adult, 1976). ISBN 0-670-14310-3
• Margins (Viking Adult, 1970). ISBN 0-670-45623-3
• Weathers and Edges (Viking Adult, 1966). ISBN 0-670-75509-5
• The Islanders (Viking Adult, 1961). ISBN 0-670-40221-4
• Letter from a Distant Land (Viking, 1957). ASIN B000BYR9AE

Additional bibliography

• Booth, Philip (1996). Trying to Say It: Outlooks and Insights on How Poems Happen (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor). ISBN 0-472-06586-6
• Booth, Philip and Ibatoulline, Bagram (2001). Crossing (Candlewick) ISBN 0-763-61420-3 . Children's book based on the poem "Crossing" from Letter from a Distant Land; the book was illustrated by Ibatoulline.

External links

• "Post-Equinox Spectra", poem posted at website of Beloit Journal of Poetry. Retrieved December 21, 2006.
• "Adding It Up" and "Terms" are posted at the website of The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved December 21, 2006.
• "Philip Booth", biography and critical appreciation posted at the website of The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved August 2, 2007.
• 12 poems posted at the PoemHunter.com website; retrieved December 21, 2006.
• Love's Ways: Three Songs to Poems by Philip Booth composed in 1996-7 by Arnold Berleant. The poems are "First Song", "Chances", and "The Dancer".
• Nancy Ogle's performance of "Chances", a song by Arnold Berleant based on Booth's poem of the same name.