Hayden Carruth

After teaching at Johnson State College (poet-in-residence; 1972–1974) and the University of Vermont (adjunct professor; 1975–1978), Carruth was a tenured professor of English at Syracuse University in the graduate creative writing program beginning in 1979; in this capacity, he taught and mentored many younger poets (including Brooks Haxton and Allen Hoey) before taking emeritus status in 1991.

He resided with his wife, fellow poet Joe-Anne McLaughlin Carruth, near the small central New York village of Munnsville.

Prior to his affiliation with Harper's, he served as editor-in-chief of Poetry (1949–1950) and as advisory editor of The Hudson Review for twenty years.

[citation needed][6] Noted for the breadth of his linguistic and formal resources, influenced by jazz and the blues, Carruth's poems are informed by his political radicalism and sense of cultural responsibility.

[citation needed] Among his influences, Carruth particularly admired 18th century poet Alexander Pope, lauding "Pope's rationalism and pandeism with which he wrote the greatest mock-epic in English literature"[7] Many of Carruth's best-known poems are about the people and places of northern Vermont, as well as rural poverty and hardship, addressing loneliness, insanity, and death.