Death on the tracks: Jan Beatty, from Dodge ‘Democracy & Poetry’ in Morristown

Jan Beatty recites her work at 'Poetry & Democracy,' presented in Morristown by the Dodge Poetry Program, March 23, 2019. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Jan Beatty recites her work at 'Poetry & Democracy,' presented in Morristown by the Dodge Poetry Program, March 23, 2019. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
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Award-winning poet Jan Beatty continues our daily poetry series with For the Man Who Died on the Tracks.

Her subject will be hauntingly familiar to local rail commuters.

Beatty gave the reading in Morristown at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church for Poetry & Democracy, presented by the Dodge Poetry Program on March 23, 2019.

Beatty’s session, In Praise: A Hundred Ways to Kneel and Kiss the Earth, featured reflections on gratitude and our common humanity, by eight poets and the musical trio The Parkington Sisters.

Video: Jan Beatty at ‘Poetry & Democracy’ in Morristown:

Beatty’s bio, from Dodge:

Jan Beatty’s fifth book, Jackknife: New and Collected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press) won the 2018 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her book, The Switching/ Yard, was named by Library Journal as one of …30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover PoetryThe Huffington Post named her one of ten women writers for “required reading.” Books include Red SugarBoneshaker, and Mad River (Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize). Beatty worked as a waitress, welfare caseworker, and a social worker and teacher in maximum-security prisons. She directs the creative writing program at Carlow University, Madwomen in the Attic Workshops, and co-directs the MFA program.

Featured poets were Janet Aalfs, Jan Beatty, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Catherine Doty, Rigoberto González, Joe Weil, and Rachel Wiley.

If you can’t wait for our next installments, here is a video playlist:

MORE FROM ‘POETRY & DEMOCRACY’

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