Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
Loading
HS![]()
author
Henry Wells Sullivan
Henry Wells Sullivan was educated at Oxford and Harvard. He now teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans. His books of poetry include a bilingual edition of The Poems of Gustavo...view moreHenry Wells Sullivan was educated at Oxford and Harvard. He now teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans. His books of poetry include a bilingual edition of The Poems of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (2002) and further translations from the Spanish in The New Laurel Review (2005). Currently he is preparing for publication a major retrospective anthology The Collected Poems of Henry Wells Sullivan, 1960-2010. While Sullivan is known to the public as a scholar of literature (Cervantes, Calderón, Tirso, Juan del Encina), popular music (The Beatles), as a practicing playwright and Board Director of the Southern Repertory Theater, he has written poetry all his life, regarding it as the most important genre he exercises. He believes that inspiration comes from the unconscious and is another form of processing our good and bad experience in a manner akin to dream work. The poet has often woken in the night, scribbled rapidly on a notepad, and found a new poem by his bedside the next morning. Writing verses may also be compared to prayer, where the poet addresses a larger and more transcendental Other than the others of human conversation. These theories explain the origins of the present book. Sullivan’s collection of original poems Death Threats from British Petroleum was conceived suddenly and written in tragic invocation. It will appeal to any husband who has lost a dearly beloved to cancer and is still in the process of grieving her. As a mixture of elegy and requiem, the verses give unique voice to the lingering emotions of loss and devastation, while at the same time vividly summoning up the loved one’s presence and haunting memory, albeit beyond the grave. Indeed, in these poems the living and the dead continue to converse with one another and to debate life’s mysteries.view less