Welsey McNair

Wesley McNair (born 1941) is an American poet, writer, editor, and professor. He has authored ten volumes of poetry, most recently, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems (David R. Godine, 2014). He has also written three books of prose, including a memoir, The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry. In addition, he has also edited several anthologies of Maine writing, and served as a guest editor in poetry of the 2010 Pushcart Prize Annual. According to United States Artists, much of McNair's...See more

Wesley McNair (born 1941) is an American poet, writer, editor, and professor. He has authored ten volumes of poetry, most recently, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems (David R. Godine, 2014). He has also written three books of prose, including a memoir, The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry. In addition, he has also edited several anthologies of Maine writing, and served as a guest editor in poetry of the 2010 Pushcart Prize Annual. According to United States Artists, much of McNair's poetry deals with "the struggles of the economic misfits of northern New England, often with humor and through the use of telling details." In The Words I Chose, McNair refers to the region of his poetry as "a place of farmers under threat, ethnic shop workers, traders, and misfits at the margins" and his exploration of "their American dreams, failures, self-doubts, and restlessness." McNair also writes autobiographical poems that reveal the difficulty of family bonds and critique American culture, sometimes mixing the two themes together, as in his long narrative piece "My Brother Running," in which he links his brothers fatal heart attack, after months of desperate running, with the explosion of NASA's Challenger shuttle. In his most recent collection, The Lost Child: Ozark Poems, he deals with characters and themes derived from the Ozarks of southern Missouri, where his mother grew up. A New Hampshire native who has lived for many years in Mercer, Maine, McNair received his undergraduate degree from Keene State College and has earned two degrees from Middlebury College, an MA in English, and an M.Litt. in American literature. He has also studied American literature, art, and history at Dartmouth College, sponsored by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.As of 2014, McNair is professor emeritus and writer in residence at the University of Maine at Farmington. In March 2011 he became Poet Laureate of Maine. See less