From “Hurricane Hymn”
Poetry cannot perform search and rescues.
Words are not water or food or shelter.
Grief cannot put a roof over storm-refugees.
Compassion’s not a substitute for action.
Come in from the wind, let words restore power.
Come in under the blue tarp of this Muse…
H. R. Stoneback, Distinguished Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz, has also taught at the University of Paris and Peking University, and has lectured and performed (poetry and folksong) around the world. Renowned poet, literary critic, and leading Hemingway scholar of international reputation, Stoneback is the author or editor of twenty volumes of criticism and poetry and some 200 essays on American and world literature. His recent award-winning critical volume Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises was published in 2007. Eight volumes of his poetry include Cartographers of the Deus Loci; Singing the Springs, Cafe Millennium; Homage: A Letter to Robert Penn Warren (recipient of NAS Triennial Award for Outstanding Book Length Poem 2005–2007); and Amazing-Grace-Wheelchair-Jumpshot-Jesus-Love-Poems. His poetry has won numerous awards and has been translated and published in Chinese, French, Provencal, and other languages. Editor of four poetry anthologies, he is founding editor of the Shawangunk Review. A semiretired singer-songwriter once active in such places as Nashville and New Orleans, he recently released a two-CD album, Stoney & Sparrow: Songs of Place 1962–2006, which includes fifteen of his songs.
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