I began writing my own poems after retiring from thirty-five years of teaching 19th and 20th century poetry, both British and American (the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Colorado, Rutgers University).

        LOOSE PARLANCE was published in 2008 (Ragged Sky Press); RANDOM UNISONS followed (Thompson Shore, 2013). My poems have appeared in Threepenny Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Slant, Tulane Review, The Silt Reader, Tiger’s Eye, Taproot, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Skidrow Penthouse, Lullwater Review, and many other national poetry magazines. I want my poems to elicit an edge of engagement in our current history: where do our bodies and experiences fit? The political and social violence of our recent past has forced a fruitful and challenging time in which to write lyric poems that are not irrelevant. I try not to flinch. Auden noted wryly, “A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned.” We continue to try to speak/write words that may be of use to others, for the sake of coping.

        I’m also a serious environmentalist—involved in local and regional issues of land-preservation, appropriate conservation of resources, and sustainability. I’ve managed a successful campaign to save twenty acres of 18th-century forest from an inappropriate housing development and have worked for a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags. I was co-trustee of a broad movement in Princeton to stop an over-sized corporation from building a development attempting to forestall the social and economic recovery of the surrounding neighborhood. In Princeton, NJ, I’ve worked to achieve Historic District status for a neighborhood whose inhabitants, largely people of color (as if I had no white color), suffered systematic discrimination, including enslavement, for three centuries. But any place we live has the potential to be the Ideal City of Justice.

        Near the end of my university teaching life, I founded JEWISH VOICES, an outreach education program (1998-2003) of courses and discussion groups for Jewish adults and teens, through synagogues and Jewish community centers: short courses on Jewish poetry written in English as the original language of composition (from 1800 onwards, both British and American), with topics ranging from immigration poetry and Jewish women’s poetry to poems about Israel and about the experience of the Holocaust.

        Between writing and social action I try to find a balance; my poems reflect some of this tension. My wife, Jane (always my first and most attentive reader), helps a lot. Also Tasha, my yellow Labrador (who died too young), with whom I used to go on long hikes in the High Peaks of the Adirondacks.