Philip Booth Study Guide

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eNotes | TABLE OF CONTENTS

PHILIP BOOTH STUDY GUIDE 1

BIOGRAPHY 3
Biography 3

ANALYSIS 3
Analysis: Other literary forms 3
Analysis: Achievements 3
Bibliography 4

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Biography

Biography
As his poetry suggests, Philip Edmund Booth was a New Englander, a man of Down East sensibilities and humor.
Born in 1925 in Hanover, New Hampshire, to a Dartmouth English professor, and having grown up both in New
Hampshire and in Maine, he settled in the white-clapboard, black-shuttered, 130-year-old house in Castine, Maine,
which belonged to his family for five generations. Thomas Jefferson had appointed Booth’s maternal great-great-
grandfather to serve as customs collector in Castine two hundred years before, and the Greek Revival house on
Main Street where the poet would reside belonged to his mother’s family for nearly a century.

Booth received his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire; there, as a freshman in a
noncredit seminar during the summer of 1943, he met Robert Frost, who acted as an occasional grandfather for
Booth’s three daughters during the early years of his marriage (in 1946, to Margaret Tillman). Booth graduated from
Dartmouth in 1947, taught at Bowdoin College in Maine in 1949, and then stopped teaching for a while. He hoped to
be a novelist and, to pay the bills for the next four years, worked in both Vermont and New Hampshire at jobs that
included a stint in Dartmouth’s admissions office, work as a traveling ski-book salesperson, and some time in a
carpentry shop. After deciding that he was not a good storyteller but rather a good wordsmith, Booth turned his
attention to writing poetry. He earned his master’s degree at Syracuse University, and for the next twenty-five years,
he served as senior poet in the creative writing program there. During these years he edited several volumes of
Syracuse Poems.

Booth published poetry in many leading literary magazines and journals, including Harper’s, Kenyon Review, The
New Yorker, and Saturday Review. He developed Alzheimer’s disease and died in Hanover on July 2, 2007.

Analysis

Analysis: Other literary forms

Philip Booth’s poetry forms the basis of his literary reputation. He gave readings of his works on both radio and
television, and he edited several volumes of poetry. His essay collection, Trying to Say It: Outlooks and Insights on
How Poems Happen, appeared in 1996.

Analysis: Achievements
The finely crafted poetry of Philip Booth has a strong, clear connection with his ancestral home of Castine, Maine, a
colonial coastal village of fewer than seven hundred year-round residents. Through his poetry, Booth carefully
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captured this place; he was at home with its blustery winters, its tides and charts, its starkness, its dry humor, its
sparse, homely conversation, and its flora, fauna, and animals. However, like Emily Dickinson, through an intimate
closeness with one place, the poet spoke of a common humanity and universal themes.

Booth’s poems move from engaging openings to clear, satisfying conclusions and are meticulously placed in each
volume, moving toward a final resolution of their themes. Booth husbanded his language, but his poems hold a
richness of meaning and look with curiosity and wonder at the miracle of human life. The poet, whose works have
been translated into French, Portuguese, Finnish, Dutch, and Italian, and have been lauded by fellow poet Maxine
Kumin as having a “wonderfully consistent tone,” is recognized as one of the best of late twentieth century writers.

Booth’s first collection of poems, Letter from a Distant Land, was named the 1956 Lamont Poetry Selection by the
Academy of American Poets. Additional honors include the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine (1955),
Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, grants from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1967) and from the
National Endowment for the Arts, and awards from Poetry, Saturday Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Poetry
Northwest. In 1983, Booth received an Academy of American Poets Fellowship. His 1986 collection Relations
earned for him the Maurice English Poetry Award. In 2001, Booth was awarded the Poets’ Prize by the Academy of
American Poets.

Bibliography
Booth, Philip. Interview by Rachel Berghash. American Poetry Review 18 (May/June, 1989): 37-39. The poet
discusses his sense of place and roots in Castine, offering some biographical information. He also talks about his
views on survival, his philosophy of poetry, and his collection Relations.

_______. Interview by Stephen Dunn. New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly 9 (Winter, 1986): 134-158.
Dunn is one of the four former students to whom Booth dedicated Selves and from whom the poet says he is still
learning. This interview offers good insight into the poems of Booth’s seventh volume, Relations.

Marquard, Bryan. “Philip Booth: Poetry and Maine Were the Core of His Life, at Eighty-One.” Boston Globe, July 12,
2007, p. D7. This obituary of Booth examines his life and work, with an emphasis on his connection to Maine.

Phillips, Robert. “Utterly Unlike.” Hudson Review 52, no. 4 (Winter, 1999): 689-697. Phillips contrasts Booth’s style
and thematic focus in Lifelines with two other works in this celebration of poetic diversity.

Rotella, Guy L. Three Contemporary Poets of New England: William Meredith, Philip Booth, and Peter Davison.
Boston: Twayne, 1983. Rotella places Booth in a New England regional context, providing biographical information
and analysis of the poetry.

Taylor, John. Review of Lifelines. Poetry 177, no. 1 (January, 2001): 272-273. Taylor notes that Booth’s realism is
often overcast with a dreaminess that invites introspection and meditation.

Tillinghast, Richard. “Stars and Departures, Hummingbirds and Statues.” Poetry 166, no. 5 (August, 1995): 295-297.
Tillinghast appreciates Booth’s Yankee sensibility, close observation, and the way in which he avoids forcing his

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material into themes.