Philip Booth, a Shy Poet Rooted in New England Life, Dead at 81
Philip Booth, a poet known for his explorations of existence and New England in an intense, sparse style, died on July 2 in Hanover, N.H. He was 81 and had split his time between Hanover and Castine, Me., for many years.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his daughter Carol Booth.
Mr. Booth wrote 10 books of poetry, including “The Islanders,” “Weathers and Edges,” “Letter From a Distant Land” and “Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999.” He also wrote a book of essays about writing poetry called “Trying to Say It: Outlooks and Insights on How Poems Happen.” He received recognition and honors from many institutions, including Guggenheim, Rockefeller and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.
The sense of privacy that made poetry lovers appreciate Mr. Booth’s work ultimately cost him fame. He spent hours upon hours writing and revising in his room, Ms. Booth said, drawing material from deeper and deeper within his emotional landscape. He rarely traveled on book tours or did readings for large groups.
Stephen Dunn, a former student of Mr. Booth’s and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, wrote in an e-mail message after Mr. Booth’s death, “Booth’s quest was to deepen as opposed to range widely, and in that sense he was a poet of consciousness, even when his subject seemed to be the dailiness of Castine or the vagaries of sailing.”
Philip Edmund Booth was born in Hanover and spent most of his life there and in Castine, the city where his mother grew up and where he first learned to sail. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and married Margaret Tillman in 1946.
In addition to his wife, of Hanover, and his daughter Carol, of Amherst, Mass., Mr. Booth is survived by two other daughters, Margot, of Austin, Tex., and Robin, of Rowe, Mass.; and a sister, Lee Klunder, of Hartland, Vt.
He received his bachelor’s degree in English at Dartmouth, where he studied under Robert Frost, and a master’s degree in English at Columbia University. He later taught English at Bowdoin College and Wellesley College in the 1950s but spent the majority of his career at Syracuse University, where he was a professor, a poet in residence and a co-founder of the graduate program in creative writing.
In a poem called “First Lesson,” Mr. Booth wrote to a daughter:
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
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