Heather McHugh frequents the Salish Sea areas of western Washington State and southern British Columbia. ln addition to her 2009 MacArthur Fellowship, she has won many distinguished awards for writing and for teaching, having taught for decades at the University of Washington in Seattle, as well as at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (and elsewhere). Between 1979 and 2009, collections of her essays, translations, and original poetry regularly appeared in print, but FEELER will be her first new volume since 2009.
All of her lines are demanding, especially her last lines--puzzling yet provocative, they're like little switches that flip at the end, sending the reader back into the poet's maze of words. --The New York Times Book Review In poems that are rich with wordplay--puns, rhymes, syntactical twists--Heather McHugh reveals the complex layers of meaning that individual words or phrases contain. The result is intellectually challenging, yet emotionally engaging verse that balances gravity with humor. --The MacArthur Foundation