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Welcome!

My new book, Tremors, can be ordered now from Four Way Books.

Upcoming readings are below.

Excerpt from a review of Far Past War, a choral work composed by my sister Augusta Read Thomas, to my text, which premiered at the National Cathedral in Washington DC on Sunday, March 13, 2022:

“The most successful world premiere on the program was Augusta Read Thomas’s Far Past War, set to a two-part poem by Cammy Thomas, the composer’s sister. Read Thomas used the forces on hand, a large orchestra and chorus, more effectively, opening with a heraldic fanfare in the brass. The chorus built up vast, yearning clusters of sound, shadowed by the strings and interwoven with brass and bells. Surprising harmonic shifts, often begun by destabilizing notes in the low brass, added an aura of mystery.

Fox conducted…with admirable care, marshaling his ensemble in the Thomas work to a triumphant climax on the words “drop far past war.” Soft echos on the words “take us take us too,” answered by a dulcet violin solo, offered a prayer on behalf of all people.”

By Charles T. Downey

Mar 14, 2022

Washington Classical Review

(Full review is here.)

Some recent and upcoming readings:

Sunday, December 12, 3 pm

New England Poetry Club, on Zoom

Information will be posted before the reading on the New England Poetry Club website, and on their Facebook page.

Please register here for the Zoom. Thanks!

Thursday, December 16, 2021, 6-7 pm.

Reading and discussion with Julia Lisella, on our work's relation to the work of Emily Dickinson.

Phosphorescence Reading Series, on Zoom

Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst

Please register here.

Sunday, March 13, 2022, 4 pm.

Two of my poems are the text of Far Past War, a new choral work by my sister, composer Augusta Read Thomas. The work will be premiered by the Cathedral Choral Society.

Washington National Cathedral

3101 Wisconsin Ave., NW, Washington DC

You can attend in two ways:

buy tickets for ATTENDING IN PERSON here, OR

Monday, April 4, 2022, 7 pm.

Reading with Alan Shapiro and Regie Gibson

Cary Library Poetry Series

Cary Memorial Library, 1874 Mass. Ave, Lexington MA

HYBRID reading:

If you attend ON ZOOM, register here.

If you attend IN PERSON, no registration required.

(Note: masks optional, vaccination not required.)

Sunday, April 10, 2022, 2 pm.

ZOOM reading with Ilene H. Rudman, with open mic to follow

Brookline Poetry Series sponsored by the Brookline Public Library

For more information, click here

For a link to the reading, send an email ahead of time to brooklinepoetry@minlib.net.

. . .

Poem of the Month:

Dirge Without Music

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.