Brooks Haxton has published six collections of poems with Alfred A. Knopf , most recently Uproar in 2006 and They Lift Their Wings to Cry in 2008 . He has also published two book-length narrative poems, a collection of translations from the ancient Greek, a version of the fragments of Heraclitus, and a bicentennial translation of selected poems by Victor Hugo. His poems have appeared in the Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Prizes awarded him include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In sixth grade, in Greenville , Mississippi , he stood back, after drawing a line nine feet long on the blackboard to illustrate the wingspan of the Andean condor. Looking at the line he felt that the condor was bigger than he had known, and he began to think that teaching might be worth a try. He started writing and memorizing poems not long after that. Five decades later, he finds teaching and poetry both endless sources of amazement. .
