Theodore Enslin

Theodore Enslin Poems

Theodore Enslin Biography

Theodore Vernon Enslin (born March 25, 1925 – November 21, 2011) was an American poet associated with Cid Corman's Origin and press. He is widely regarded as one of the most musical of American avant-garde poets. Enslin was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father was a biblical scholar and his mother a Latin scholar. He studied musical composition at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His teacher, Nadia Boulanger, was the first person to recognize his ability as a writer and encouraged him to pursue his interest in poetry. He has said "I like to be considered as a composer who happens to use words instead of notes." His first book, The Work Proposed, was published by Origin in 1958. Enslin moved to Maine in 1960 and has lived in Washington County ever since, working at odd jobs and making and selling handmade walking sticks. The Maine landscape forms an integral part of his poetry, as does the isolation, both geographic and in terms of distance from literary fashion and the academy his life on the physical margin of the United States allows. Ranger 1978 is one of the key American long poems of the second half of the 20th century. He died in Milbridge, Maine on November 21, 2011.)

The Best Poem Of Theodore Enslin

The Glass Harmonica

It snowed in far country
north and
beyond the trees.
As I went through the mirror
my breath froze
clouding it,
and they saw me no longer
in the villages of spring.
I walked alone
across level plains,
and my tracks disappeared
in the snow which went with me.
A wind rose
playing on harpstrings
and reeds.
There was nothing there, and my fingers
touched ice.
A music
a music
an echo of music—
sound not a sound
in the quiet north country—
the snow.

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