Stuart Kestenbaum

Sep 10, 2024 | poets.org | Carl Phillips |Ross Gay |Stuart Kestenbaum |Lars H Gustafsson

Carl Phillips’ most recent books are Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007–2020 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press, 2022).

Aug 27, 2023 | pressherald.com | Stuart Kestenbaum

This week’s poem, Stuart Kestenbaum’s “Apprentice,” brings us into the past of a man’s work and younger sense of self. I love how this poem takes the actions and substance of pottery as metaphors for the ways we learn – and relearn – who we are. Kestenbaum is the author of six books of poems, most recently “Things Seemed to Be Breaking” (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021. He lives on Deer Isle.