Craft: Pamela Alexander

Pamela Alexander (b. 1948) is not a well-known poet, but she deserves a far wider readership. Most of the writers I admire had a very small readership; some exceedingly small.

Alexander has a B.A. from Bates College and an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (1973). Her first book, Navigable Waterways, was selected by James Merrill for the 1984 Yale Younger Poets prize. She taught creative writing at M.I.T. and Oberlin College for years, but now travels around North America in an RV with her cat. She also writes mystery novels under the pen name Pam Fox.

Alexander in her natural habitat, “concealing something more interesting than repetition.”

Merrill praised Navigable Waterways as follows:

This poet works elegantly, unpredictably, without teasing. Her voice can be wholly direct (“Hey you,”); her subjects—heat, air, sex, trees, the peerless dog Pfoxer—impeccably democratic. Yet she is most at home in distance, and the more she offers herself for inspection, the more cryptic the result is.

Navigable Waterways is out-of-print. George Bradley called it “one of those rare books of poetry that are simply fun to read.”