News - Harvard College Library

Don Share Publishes Book of Poetry, Explores World of Union

Don Share, Curator of the George Edward Woodberry Poetry Room, recently published Union, a book of original poetry.

November 20, 2002 -- Don Share is immersed in poetry. He is the curator of the George Edward Woodberry Poetry Room, works as poetry editor for the Harvard Review and the Partisan Review, and translates poetry from Spanish into English. After spending years surrounded by words, stanza, meter, Share will publish his first book of original poetry, Union (Zoo Press), this month. "Service to the art form was my priority. I was not in a rush to have my own book of poems published. Union has developed slowly," said Share, who holds an MA in creative writing, is completing a Ph.D. in Editorial Studies, both from Boston University, and has published in countless journals.

Union is a collection of poems crafted around a central theme: how two disparate philosophies -- or groups or emotions or people -- come together in both conflict and harmony. For Share, this duality began on Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, the Main Street of the poet’s youth, where memories of Civil War allegiances still divide and "the past still hurts, and gets sung about." The poems move beyond Memphis, to the shared American history of love, pain, struggle.

"Poetry can re-envision history. Unlike facts and dates, it offers the emotional story of a time and place. And it can outlast empires! Think of how much we have learned from the ancient Greek and Roman poets," says Share. "It interests me that many of us are living out a history, are surrounded by history, without knowing it. So much of the past is invisible."

Award-winning poet Alice Fulton writes, "Union suggests – in exquisitely lyrical gestures – the breadth and depth of our public and private, civil and uncivil wars … But Union also sings the eternal concerns of love and time, death and longing. And ‘sing’ is the right verb for Share’s passionate, richly realized work."