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| Rodger LeGrand |
Rodger LeGrand has published six collections of poetry, including Two Thirds Water (2018), Seeds (2017), andMillions of Ravenous Creatures (2016). His work has been described by the poet Thomas Lux as being “lighted by an almost excruciating tenderness towards the world and its inhabitants.” The editor of The Cortland Review, Ginger Murchison, has described his work as “poems of crisp intelligence sparked by imagination with an eye and an ear to both the street and the heart.” Darrell Laurant, editor of Snowflakes in a Blizzard, describes LeGrand’s poetry as “sweet liquid disguising bitter medicine—until the aftertaste kicks in.” The poet Stephen Dobyns has written that, “always there is a shuffling between clarity and mystery [in LeGrand’s poetry], precision and ambiguity, humor and darkness as he works through the conundrums of how we live and how we might live better—not in terms of money, though that would be nice, but metaphysically, or, more simply, basic kindness in a world where kindness is too often a rarity.”
LeGrand grew up in Upstate New York, was educated at the State University of New York at Oswego, and received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, North Carolina State University, and currently teaches at MIT.
LeGrand’s collection, Seeds, was included as part of Books on the T. In a recent interview he had said “I love the idea of sharing poetry with people who might not ordinarily read poems. My poems are written to be read and understood by any interested reader. I don’t write for an academic audience, so knowing that my work has been traveling around through the Boston transit system has been really exciting. The Books on the T program places poems in front of commuters—maybe nurses or cooks or whoever. That just feels right to me.”