Featured Poet: Don Share

Eyewear is very glad to welcome American poet Don Share (pictured) this exceptionally warm Friday in London, and to feature a new poem by him.  Share grew up in Memphis, Tennessee.  He is Senior Editor of Poetry in Chicago. He was previously Curator of the Poetry Room at Harvard University, and Poetry Editor of Harvard Review and Partisan Review. Squandermania is his most recent book of poems, three poems from which were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His earlier book, Union, was a finalist for the Boston Globe/PEN New England Winship Award for outstanding book.


His other books include Seneca in English and I Have Lots of Heart, translations of Miguel Hernandez which received the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize. His critical edition of the poems of Basil Bunting is forthcoming from Faber and Faber.

Looking Over My Shoulder

I went to Heaven once, sadly

leaving my push-mower and orange snow

shovel behind, like uneaten food

pushed aside on a stark china plate.

The man upstairs was not happy.

He liked a sharp blade and a clear

driveway.  His strictures were

stringent enough to shrive a cactus.

Yet it was I who blindly insisted

on formalities, and stood

on what I thought was ceremony.

I could scarcely taste the beer he poured,

or eat my ham sandwich.

When our visit was over,

he shook my hand and sent me

somersaulting back to my village, where

I was filled, thank God, with genuine salt.

poem by Don Share