Williams Professor Publishes New Poetry Collection
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Lawrence Raab, professor of English at Williams College, has had a new collection of poetry, "The History of Forgetting," published by Penguin.The 59 poems, divided into four sections, probe the fragility of certainty, the complicated value of contemplating the past, and the beauty of "things as they are," according to a release from the college.
Set in fairytale forests, on childhood vacations, in the Garden of Eden, or around the classroom table, the poems simultaneously classify and blur the limits of desire, tenderness, deception and hope.
"These poems draw us into little mazes of thinking only to surprise us with bursts of feeling," writes former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins of the collection. "Lawrence Raab exhibits the rare knack of being perfectly clear and complex at the same time."
The Pittsfield native's poems often imagine themselves into the minds of others - Sherlock Holmes explaining his method to Watson, Nathaniel Hawthorne walking home late one afternoon, thinking of a story, Adam and Eve just before the Fall.
In his opening poem, the man who paints the first still life strives to find allegorical meaning in his rendition of an apple in a bowl, but eventually concludes, as does Raab himself throughout the collection, "That's all that is here./There's nothing you can't see."
Raab is the author of six previous collections: "Visible Signs: New and Selected Poems" (2003), "The Probable World" (2000), "What We Don't Know About Each Other" (1993), "Other Children" (1986), "The Collector of Cold Weather" (1976), and "Mysteries of the Horizon" (1972).
"What We Don't Know About Each Other" was a winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the National Book Award.
Several of the poems have been read recently by Garrison Keillor on "The Writer's Almanac." Many of the poems in the collection were previously published in magazines including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, The New Republic and Triquarterly, as well as The Best American Poetry 2006.
Raab's work has been supported by Yaddo and the Mellon and Guggenheim foundations.
He has taught literature and writing at Williams College since 1976. He received his bachelor's degree from Middlebury College in 1968 and his master of arts degreee from Syracuse University in 1972.
