Poet reads from new work at MCLA
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| Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Professor Don Washburn, Ph.D. |
Washburn gives a reading from the book Thursday, October 8, at 7 p.m. in Room 218 of Murdock Hall on the MCLA campus.
“I went ahead into it without counting the cost, and I really did give my heart away,” says Washburn, 77, of the relationship that inspired the sonnets. “I never said to myself, ‘No, this is stupid.’”
He was 74 at the time, and the end of the romance was shocking and painful. But it was also “a wonderful gift,” he says.
“I was able to work my way out of the disappointment,” says Washburn, a practitioner of the Sufi approach to spiritual practice. “When you’re in love, you feel closer to the divine spirit… I was never afraid I’d go to pieces.”
“She was a very unforgettable person,” he continues. “From a literary point of view, you couldn’t figure a better character.”
In addition to writing and teaching, Washburn leads services at the Abode of the Message Sufi community in New Lebanon, NY.
“If you have a vital spiritual life, there’s a kindling of energy,” he says. “I never feel depressed because I really feel alive.”
In describing the book, The Poet’s Press says, “Love after 70? How about love, betrayal and the transcendent pursuit of yet another ‘Dark Lady’ in literature? Washburn’s sonnets, composed with amazing grace and fluency as a diary during his doomed romance, combine utterly modern language and a wry self-awareness with a classical ease. The reader is propelled into this taut narrative, nearly forgetting the formal rules and boundaries of the sonnet.
“The poet’s engagement with Sufi mysticism adds a special grace to the denouement of loss and abandonment,” the press continues. “We are proud to publish this new landmark in the genre of the sonnet-cycle.”
Washburn, a graduate of Yale and the University of Denver, has been a member of the English/Communications Department at MCLA for 38 years. His courses this fall include “Science and Spirit,” “Divine Witness,” and “The Power of Words.”
