English professor's poem featured online

September 29, 2003

Two decades have passed since Kathy Mangan climbed above the tree line of New Hampshire’s Mount Monadnock.

But the poem her trek generated has been published in literary magazines and anthologies, earned the prestigious Pushcart Prize, and became the title poem of the McDaniel English professor’s first book published in 1995.

On Sept. 26, "Above the Tree Line" was the featured poem on the Poetry Daily Web site. The site’s editors select poems from books and literary magazines.
They chose Mangan’s poem from "Strongly Spent: Fifty Years of Poetry," a collection published this year of poems from 100 poets whose work has appeared in the pages of the literary magazine, "Shenandoah," during the past 50 years.

The poem reflects a journey above the timber line, where extreme weather allows only the sturdiest vegetation to survive.

"But – as I always warn my students – all poems have a sub-text," says Mangan, who recently received the 2003 faculty creativity award and last year celebrated her 25th anniversary of teaching creative writing and American literature at the College. "In a deeper sense, the central focus of ‘Above the Tree Line’ is loss and renewal. As I also tell my students, it shouldn’t matter that the poem doesn’t announce the specific sorrow – the end of love? the death of a beloved? – that the speaker confronts; the speaker simply informs us that she is ‘trying to surmount / something human.’"

To read "Above the Tree Line," visit www.poems.com, click on "Previously on Poetry Daily," and access the September 26 (Friday) entry in the archives.

For more information, contact Rita Beyer, associate director of media relations, at 410-857-2294.