Molly Peacock



Molly Peacock (born 1947) is an American-Canadian poet, essayist and creative nonfiction writer.

Life
Molly Peacock was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. She received a B.A. from State University of New York at Binghampton, and her M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. After graduation she worked at Johns Hopkins for seven years, before turning to poetry full-time.

She has been poet in residence for the Delaware State Arts Council in Wilmington (1978-1981), Bucknell University (1993-1994), the University of Western Ontario (1995-1996), and the Poets' Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

She has published six collections of poetry, including Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. Widely anthologized, her work is included in The Best of the Best American Poetry and The Oxford Book of American Poetry, as well as in leading literary journals such as the Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review.

Ms. Peacock is the author of a memoir, Paradise, Piece By Piece. Her essay on Mrs. Delany, “Passion Flowers in Winter”, appeared in The Best American Essays. Other pieces appear in O: The Oprah Magazine, Elle, House & Garden, and New York Magazine. Molly Peacock is also the editor of a collection of creative non-fiction, Private I: Privacy in a Public World.

She was President of the Poetry Society of America from 1989 to 1995, and again from 1999 to 2001. As President of the Poetry Society of America, Molly Peacock was one of the creators of the Poetry in Motion program; coediting Poetry In Motion: One Hundred Poems From the Subways and Buses.

She is also the Series Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books), as well as a Contributing Editor of the Literary Review of Canada.

Molly Peacock is also the author/performer of a one-woman show in poems, “The Shimmering Verge,” produced by Louise Fagan Productions.

Currently, Ms. Peacock lives in downtown Toronto with her husband, Michael Groden. She keeps in touch with New York City, her former home, by teaching at the 92nd Street Y every February and March.

Her latest work of nonfiction is The Paper Garden, at once a biography of Mary Delany, an extraordinary 18th century gentlewoman, and a meditation on late-life creativity. Her latest book of poems is The Second Blush, love poems from a midlife marriage. She is a Faculty Mentor at the Spalding University Brief Residency MFA Program.

Recognition
Peacock has received recognition from the Leon Levy Center for Biography (CUNY), Danforth Foundation, Ingram Merrill Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts.

Publications
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--. Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. PS 3566 .E15 C67 Robarts Library. --. --, ed.

Poetry

 * And Live Apart. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980. ISBN 9780826202888
 * Raw Heaven. New York: Random House, 1984. ISBN 9780394539737
 * Take Heart. New York: Random House, 1989. ISBN 9780394575155
 * Original Love. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. Lightning Source Inc, 1996, ISBN 9780393314663
 * Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2002. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. ISBN 9780393051230. Toronto: Penguin, 2002.
 * The Second Blush: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. ISBN 9780393066517. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2008.

Non-fiction

 * Paradise, Piece By Piece. Putnam, 1998. Riverhead Books, 1998, ISBN 9781573220972
 * How To Read A Poem and Start A Poetry CircleNew York: Riverhead Books, 1999. ISBN 9781573221283
 * Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011, ISBN 9781608195237

Articles

 * "What the Mockingbird Said." In Conversant Essays: Contemporary Poets on Poetry. Ed. James McCorkle. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990. 343-47. PS 325 .C68 Robarts Library
 * "From Gilded Cage to Rib Cage." In After New Formalism: Poets on Form, Narrative, and Tradition. Ed. Annie Finch. Ashland, Oregon: Story Line, 1999. 70-78. PS 325 .A28 Robarts Library
 * "One Green, One Blue: One Point about Formal Verse Writing and Another about Women Writing Formal Verse." In New Expansive Poetry: Theory, Criticism, History. Ed. R. S. Gwynn. Ashland, Oregon: Story Line, 1999. 181-86. PS 325 .E9 Robarts Library

Edited

 * The Private I: Privacy in a Public World. Saint Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 2001. [Anthology of essays on being alone.]
 * Molly Peacock, Elise Paschen, and Neil Neches, eds. Poetry in Motion: 100 Poems from the Subways and Buses. New York: Norton, 1996.