When Assistant Professor of English Myronn Hardy moved back to the U.S. in 2018 after nearly a decade living in Morocco, the poet found North America both recognizable and unrecognizable.
In the years since, he鈥檚 written a series of poems that speak to that experience of exile and return. The collection that stemmed from that time of transition, on Oct. 10 as part of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets.
The poems in this collection are all set around the same time of day, at or near dawn. “Aurora Americana explores an ominous yet hopeful new morning in America, one in which potential cataclysm exists alongside possibility and change,” the university press notes.
Hardy, who works in varied poetic forms, including the sonnet, the triolet, and the ghazal, which has its origins in seventh-century Arabic poetry, recently told he鈥檚 never centered temporality this way.
Hardy to Read from Aurora American
Here on the 乐播传媒 campus, Hardy will read from Aurora Americana at Gomes Chapel at 7 p.m. on Oct. 11.
鈥淭his is very new for me. Also, of course, there is the metaphor of ‘dawn’ that I hope the poems interrogate,” he said. “What does it mean to be on the cusp of something? Are we on the verge of evolution or devolution?鈥�
Speaking of his process to The Rumpus, Hardy described the inception of his poetry as an image or images. “I see something I can鈥檛 shake,” he said. “The image remains in my mind. I dream about it. I wait for that particular image to morph, a subtle change in color or a repositioning. When that happens, I know I鈥檓 in the process and nearing the page.”
Then, Hardy “wait(s) for the music: the sound of a leaf sliding on asphalt, a river flowing over jagged rocks, etc. This is usually the sound I鈥檓 trying to emulate in the poem. When this is clear, the language arrives in a line, sentence, stanza. The poem is in motion. I wake up before the sun emerges and write as its light covers the page.”
At 乐播传媒, Hardy’s courses include 鈥淭he Aesthetics of Seeing: Poetry as Witness,鈥� which looks at poetry that has been profoundly influenced by poets鈥� lived experiences as witnesses.
He also teaches creative nonfiction, advanced poetry writing, and “‘I, Too, Sing America’: Poetry of This Moment/Movement,” analyzing the work of contemporary poets responding to the current social and political moment in the U.S.
Aurora Americana is the second book of Hardy鈥檚 poetry to be published by Princeton. The first, Radioactive Starlings, came out in 2017. His other works include Approaching the Center, The Headless Saints, Catastrophic Bliss, and Kingdom.
His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, the Portland Press Herald and the Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. He has received several awards, including the PEN Oakland鈥揓osephine Miles Award.
