Philip Booth

Philip Booth (1925-2007). Courtesy LifeInLegacy.com.

Philip Edmund Booth (October 8, 1925 - July 2, 2007) was an American poet and academic. He has been called "Maine's clearest poetic voice."

Life

Booth was born in 1925 in Hanover, New Hampshire. He served in the United States Air Force in World War II . He then attended Dartmouth College, where he studied with Robert Frost; he received his B.A. in 1947. He subsequently received an M.A. from Columbia University. Booth married Margaret Tillman in 1946; they had 3 daughters. He spent much of his time living in Castine, Maine in a house that has been handed down through his family for five generations.

Booth was an instructor and professor of English and of creative writing at Dartmouth College, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and Syracuse University. Booth was one of the founders of the Creative writing program at Syracuse. A student of his, poet Stephen Dunn, has written of his 1969-70 experience at Syracuse that, "We had come to study with Philip Booth, Donald Justice, W.D. Snodgrass, George P. Elliott, arguably the best group of writer-teachers that existed at the time."

Writing

Booth's poetry was published in many periodicals including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Denver Quarterly. He published 10 poetry collections and a book about writing poetry.

One of Booth's early poems, "Chart 1203," is indicative of the physical character of some of his poetry and also of his lifelong love of the sea and sailing:

Whoever works a storm to windward, sails

in rain, or navigates in island fog,

must reckon from the slow swung lead, from squalls

on cheek; must bear by compass, chart, and log.

...

...He weathers rainsquall,

linestorm, fear, who bears away from the sound

of sirens wooing him to the cape's safe lee.

He knows the ghostship bow, the sudden headland

immanent in fog; but where rocks wander, he

steers down the channel that his courage

dredges. He knows the chart is not the sea.

A much later poem, "Places without Names," has a more public concern:

...

What gene demands old men command young men to die?

The young gone singing to Antietam, Aachen, Anzio.

To Bangalore, the Choisin Reservoir, Dien Bien Phu,

My Lai. Places in the heads of men who have no

mind left. ...

A major essay regarding Booth's poetry was published by Guy Rotella in 1983.

Recognition

The Salthill Journal awards an annual Philip Booth Poetry Prize.

Awards

• Bess Hokin Prize (1955).
• Lamont Poetry Prize for Letter from a Distant Land (1956). *Saturday Review Poetry Award (1957).
• Emily Clark Balch Prize of the Virginia Quarterly Review (1964).
• Theodore Roethke Prize for a poem in Poetry Northwest (1970).
• Syracuse University Chancellor's Citation (1981).
• Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets (1983), the Guggenheim Foundation (1958, 1964), and the Rockefeller Foundation (1968).
• Maurice English Poetry Award for Relations (1987).
• Poem selected for The Best American Poetry 1999. *Poets' Prize (2001) for Lifelines.

Publications

Poetry

• Letter from a Distant Land. New York: Viking, 1957.
• The Islanders. New York: Viking, 1961. ISBN 0-670-40221-4
• Weathers and Edges. New York: Viking, 1966. ISBN 0-670-75509-5
• Margins. New York: Viking, 1970. ISBN 0-670-45623-3
• Available Light. New York: Viking, 1976. ISBN 0-670-14310-3
• Before Sleep. New York: Viking, 1980. ISBN 0-670-15529-2
• Relations. New York: Viking, 1986. ISBN 0-140-58560-5
• Selves. New York: Viking, 1990. ISBN 0-140-58646-6
• Pairs. New York: Penguin, 1994. ISBN 0-140-58724-1
• Lifelines: Selected Poems, 1950-1999 New York: Viking, 1999. ISBN 0-670-88287-9

Non-fiction

• Trying to Say It: Outlooks and insights on how poems happen. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1966. ISBN 0-472-06586-6

Juvenile

• Crossing (illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline). Candlewick, 2001. ISBN 0-763-61420-3 (based on Booth's poem "Crossing" from Letter from a Distant Land).

Edited

• Syracuse Poems, 1965 (edited & foreword by Booth). Syracuse: Syracuse University Department of English, 1965.
• Syracuse Poems, 1970 (edited & foreword by Booth). Syracuse: Syracuse University Department of English, 1970.
• Syracuse Poems, 1973 (edited & foreword by Booth). Syracuse: Syracuse University Department of English, 1973.
• Syracuse Poems and Stories, 1978 (edited & foreword by Booth). Syracuse: Syracuse University Department of English, 1978.

  

  5 Poems by Philip Booth

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "Post-Equinox Spectra", in Beloit Journal of Poetry.
• Philip Booth at the Poetry Foundation.
• Philip Booth profile and 3 poems at the Academy of American Poets.
• Philip Booth at PoemHunter (12 poems).

Audio / video

• 5 poems by Philip Booth at YouTube

Books

• Philip Booth at Amazon.com

About

• Philip Booth, a Shy Poet Rooted in New England Life, Dead at 81," obituary at the New York Times
• Philip Booth obituary at the Boston Globe.
• "Philip Booth: Poet of the hard country", review of Lifelines.

Etc.

• Love's Ways: Three Songs to Poems by Philip Booth composed in 1996-7 by Arnold Berleant. The poems are "First Song", "Chances", and "The Dancer".
• Nancy Ogle's performance of "Chances", a song by Arnold Berleant based on Booth's poem of the same name.