Professor and Poet Wayne Zade Featured in Atticus Review

Wayne Zade, Professor of English at Westminster since 1976 and published poet, was recently featured in the online magazine Atticus Review: Boo’s Hollow. Zade’s feature includes two poems titled, “Achilles” and “Women and Children,” his essay “More or Less Certain of the Spot,” and an interview with Poetry Editor Lea Graham, ’89.

Click here to check out Zade’s feature on Atticus Review, and read on for Graham’s reflection on Zade.

Boo’s Hollow Feature:  Wayne Zade

It’s been about 25 years since I studied with Wayne Zade and I can still recall poems he shared with me through the years.  I doubt he even knows how important that was for me or if he remembers showing or sending those poems to me.  His work has always seemed to render his characteristic gentle attention to the world: observations about his son and his son’s buddies smoking on the porch into a Fulton evening, his memory of hearing the jazz great, Oscar Peterson, in Chicago with his father; the quiet, yet, alert force in the music of his work.

I think that reading his work as a young poet and hopeful college teacher complicated my notions of who we are as teachers and writers.  The persona in the classroom and then as a friend/colleague is often times a comfort, an encouraging voice.  The writing self often asks questions and raises moods that can’t always be answered, but are nevertheless important in their address of the human condition.  These different roles and perspectives aren’t necessarily at odds, though they may appear that way at first.  Wayne has helped me understand and accept that more than I would have on my own.  Also, I am always amazed at how he’s never stopped writing poems, never stopped his love of and engagement with poetry.  With a full-time teaching load (not to mention other commitments), it is difficult to find space and quiet to hear and think about your own language—something poetry writing requires.  That Wayne Zade has never stopped writing and thinking hard about poetry and continuing to teach a lot and with passionate commitment and so well … Well, it just seems heroic to me.

– Lea Graham, ’89, Contributing Editor for Atticus Review

Lea Graham is the author of the poetry book, Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You (No Tell Books, 2011) and the chapbook, Calendar Girls (above/ground press, 2006). Her poems, translations and reviews have been published in Notre Dame Review, Southern Humanities Review and Fifth Wednesday. She is an Associate Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York and a native of Northwest Arkansas.