Laurence Lieberman: "Angel at the Helm"

The Poem of the Week is Laurence Lieberman’s “Angel at the Helm,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2001 issue (Volume II, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. A review of Lieberman’s poetry by James Finn Cotter appears in the same issue.

Laurence Lieberman has published more than a dozen collections of poetry and three volumes of essays or literary criticism. His poetry has appeared widely in numerous journals, including American Poetry Review, Atlantic Monthly, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Sewanee Review, and The Southern Review. He has received the Jerome J. Shestack Prize awarded by American Poetry Review, an NEA Fellowship, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and Grant, and a William Carlos Williams Citation from the Poetry Society of America. Lieberman is a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, where he has served as poetry editor of the University of Illinois Press since 1971.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.