Poet Lucie Brock-Broido died March 6. She was 61. Her editor at Knopf, Deborah Garrison, said: "Lucie was a defining presence on the Knopf list. Her poetry, while stunningly various in its forms and subjects, had its signature: injustices unmasked in beautifully embroidered, fanciful language that continually fascinated her readers and was hugely influential with students of poetry over several decades.
"Lucie was nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was the winner of honors including the Witter Bynner prize for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. No one was more dedicated to the art of poetry, students of poetry, and the people she cared about than Lucie. She will be deeply missed."
Brock-Broido's poetry collections include Stay, Illusion (2013), a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award; Trouble in Mind (2004); The Master Letters (1995); and A Hunger (1988).
Her poem "That Same Vagabond Sweetness," from The Master Letters:
Odd I cannot remember a time
When there was no World. I am
At home, at callow home
Worshipping the train, the Elsewhere's
Metallic sweetness, whistling. A pack
Of blessings lights upon my back.
There art thou happy.
The noise of the world's tracks
Made magical alarms me. There
Art thou happy too. And the half-
Blown catweed & the vagrant
Sky & the vacant apoplectic
Bed shiftless in its vacancy, I stop.