Sad news for the literary community. According to The New York Times Marie Pronsot, a prolific poet, has passed away at aged ninety-eight. During her lifetime, the poet embarked on a long and extraordinary writing career. By the time of her death, Pronsot had translated dozens of books, published seven volumes of poetry, and served as the chancellor at the Academy of American Poets from 2010 to 2014. She passed away with her husband in New York City. She began her carer in the 1950s, where she was first published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a native of Yonkers who championed the Beat poetry movement.
Image via the New York times
Ponsot’s first notable work was True Minds, was a collection of love poems for her husband. For nearly twenty-five years, this remained her only book, as Ponsot abandoned her poetry career in order to focus on her personal life. During this time, she had become divorced from her husband, leaving her in Manhattan with seven children to raise. But despite this, she continued writing, filling her notebooks with ideas, scribblings, and poems even in the midst of her personal exile from the poetry world.
In 1981, she resumed her career after ‘finding her feet’ and titled her second collection Admit Impediment. The opening poem of the collection was a direct response to her husband, to whom her last and first collection was dedicated. The poem goes:
Death is the price of life.
Lives change places.
Asked why
we ever married, I smile
and mention the arbitrary fierce
glance of the working artist
that blazed sometimes in your face
but can’t picture it.
Image via The New York times
The collection went on to earn praise for its elegance, intimacy, as well as its rawness and fragility. It was followed by two sequels, the first in 1988 titled The Green Dark and the second in 1998 titled The Bird Catcher. The final one brought her National Attention, as well as increased praise and several awards. She described her process as writing ten minutes per day, pouring her life into the words and said she would encourage anyone to give poetry a go.
“Anyone can write a line of poetry. Try. That’s my word: try.”
Rest in peace, Marie Pronsot. You brought true imagination and love to the world of poetry.
Featured Image Via The New York Times
