Feeler, Heather McHugh
Since Heather McHugh first began publishing her poems in 1968 poetry readers have marveled at the immensity and range of her gift. There seems to be nothing that McHugh can’t do with words and do with high wit and sonic brilliance. In her chapbook Feeler McHugh takes on the fraught subject of empathy—how much we feel, and do, for the afflicted. It also addresses the relation between thought and feeling: “Nowadays I cannot tell/ the two apart: can’t feel things thoughtlessly/or think things up without emotion.” As with only the very best poets, McHugh seamlessly combines thought and feeling, in poems that are entertaining and profound.
Additional Info
Heather McHugh frequents the Salish Sea areas of western Washington State and southern British Columbia. ln addition to her 2009 MacArthur Fellowship, she has won many distinguished awards for writing and for teaching: among her accomplishments are having taught for decades at the University of Washington in Seattle, as well as at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (and elsewhere). Between 1979 and 2009 collections of her essays, translations and original poetry regularly appeared in print, but Feeler will be her first new volume since 2009.
PAST PRAISE FOR HEATHER MCHUGH:
“In poems that are rich with wordplay—puns, rhymes, syntactical twists—Heather McHugh reveals the complex layers of meaning that individual words or phrases contain. The result is intellectually challenging, yet emotionally engaging verse that balances gravity with humor.”
—The MacArthur Foundation