Hayden Carruth

Biography

Hayden Carruth (1921–2008) published work with VQR for nearly forty years, and he remains the only poet to have won VQR’s Emily Clark Balch Prize more than once. In his long life in letters, he published literary criticism, essays, a novel, and more than thirty books of poetry. His many awards include a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

See Work

POETRY / Spring 1969

Emergency Haying

By Hayden Carruth

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the tongue of the trailer, behind the tractor
in its hot exhaust, lank with sweat

POETRY / Spring 1970

From a Summer Notebook

By Hayden Carruth

Do you hear       as if
in a far away room
down a narrow hall
in another part of the hotel

Winter 1977

Homage to A. MacLeish

By Hayden Carruth
Spring 1975

The Little Fire in the Woods

By Hayden Carruth
POETRY / Spring 1985

The Opposing Concepts of Spontaneity and Expediency in Improvisation

By Hayden Carruth

Who has not thought of Johann Sebastian Bach—and please pronounce
That good man’s good name in German, whether you can or not—seated
At the keyboard of who cares what delubrum in the splendor of his isolation
Within the church of sound? The...

POETRY / Spring 1985

Ovid, Old Buddy, I Would Discourse With You a While

By Hayden Carruth

upon mutability—if it were possible. But you
don’t know me. Already you cannot conceive my making the second line
of a poem so much longer than the first.

Autumn 1974

Attractions and Dangers of Nostalgia

By Hayden Carruth
Summer 1964

North Winter

By Hayden Carruth
Autumn 1963

The Dry Heart of Modesty

By Hayden Carruth
POETRY / Autumn 1962

Godhulivela

By Hayden Carruth