DON SHARE

Here’s some of what’s actually on the desk: Paul Blackburn, Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser, Robert Lowell, Ezra Pound, Thomas Traherne, a Milton dictionary, W.S. Graham, Robert Burton, Delmore Schwartz, Samuel Johnson, Blake, Auden, Jules Supervielle, Janet Frame, Walter Benjamin’s “archives,” Lamb’s essays, tiny volumes of Thoreau & Marcus Aurelius, Michael Hofmann, Basil Bunting, compact OED, dictionary of similes (!).

RR spikes from Memphis, cheap reproduction of New York Public Library clock, bit of the wall from a Boston subway tunnel (Red Line – Harvard Square), bowl I made when I was 7, picture of place in Denmark where I lived as a kid, photo my dad took in NYC, cotton ball from Memphis, photo of famous ghostly poet. Wires.

Don Share for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a one-liner or a bio)?

DON SHARE Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry magazine. He has been Poetry Editor of Harvard Review and Partisan Review, Editor of Literary Imagination, and Curator of Poetry at Harvard. His books include Squandermania (Salt Publishing), Union (Zoo Press), The Traumatophile (Scantily Clad Press), and Seneca in English (Penguin Classics); forthcoming are a critical edition of Basil Bunting¹s poems (Faber and Faber) and Bunting¹s Persia (Flood Editions). His translations of Miguel Hernández, collected in I Have Lots of Heart (Bloodaxe Books) were awarded the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize, the Premio Valle Inclán Prize, and the PEN/New England Discovery Award.

DS When did you start writing?

DON SHARE My fifth grade teacher - to punish me for doodling rather than taking notes on his lecture about volcanoes - smacked me on the crown of the head with the stone in his bulky class ring, exclaiming "One day, Don is going to be a GREAT WRITER." The gauntlet... almost literally... was laid down. Pete Townshend had his nose for motivation; I had Mr. Kramer.

DS Where do you write?

DON SHARE I write - and read - mostly on public transportation, which is where I spend almost all of my quality time. My desk (which is actually an old table), as you can see, is specifically designed to facilitate reading... and inhibit writing.

DS Why do you work where you do (at your desk because it is a quiet
space/outside b/c it helps you think/in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

DON SHARE I work on the train because... well, because I have to.

DESK SPACE What are you working on now?

DON SHARE I'm working on a long poem about Heath Ledger which is dedicated to Kent Johnson - neither of whom I have ever met. Since that's a complete disaster, I'm also working on the preface to a book coming soon from Flood Editions called Bunting's Persia.