Carol Vanderveer Hamilton, member of the Green Party, cyclist, former competitive swimmer, and assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, has had two of her poems, “May Day” and “Night Thoughts,” appear in the Summer 2003 edition of The Paris Review. Though this is not the first time her work has been published in the Review (“Narcolepsy” 1997), she said this recent publication means a lot to her because it kindles fond memories of her time spent with the late writer George Plimpton (1927-2003), first editor of The Paris Review, in his three-level townhouse on Manhattan's East 72^nd Street.

“He was striking,” Hamilton said. “He was 6'4'' with this tuft of white hair.” Hamilton grabbed the front of her own hair aggressively, to simulate “the tuft.”

“The greatest thing about meeting Plimpton was that I was one degree away from famous writers [like] Ernest Hemingway and famous political figures, [like the] Kennedies and Bill Clinton.”

The Paris Review, founded by Peter Matthiessen and Harold L. Humes in the summer of 1953 in Paris, France, is said to be one of the most — if not the most — prestigious literary journals around. Its editors appreciate written work for what it is rather than emphasizing the role of the critic who compares the work to more acclaimed writers, judging the new work for what it is not. Submissions from all across the world have been reviewed, and those chosen to grace the pages of this literary gem are written by some of the finest authors, Hamilton among them.

In his “Letter to an Editor” manifesto in the first issue of The Paris Review in the summer of 1953, William Styron, one of the first editors of the journal, states the criteria by which submissions are selected for publication and also the job of the writer.

“[H]e must go on writing,” Styron said, “reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope — qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic’s formula or by a critic’s yearning.”

In Hamilton’s “May Day,” though it is not explicitly stated that the speaker in the poem is in Paris, there exists a French bourgeois air. It capitulates to the criteria stated in Stryon’s manifesto, drawing a concrete image on the brink of inciting a revolution.

“In every uprising there’s an instant/when street corners look like movie sets and/the protesters feel self-conscious, like/extras in Ben-Hur. Just now/beyond the barricades, some invisible gesture/has frozen everyone in place —/blue-jacketed workers, defiant students,/the police massed behind their lexite shields.”

It is apparent that Hamilton’s extensive travels about Europe, including a considerable time in France, have had a great influence on her subjects. She is also inspired by her favorite poets, who include W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Georg Trakl, and the French Surrealists.

“I liked verse as a child,” Hamilton said, “and read Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses — my favorite poem was ‘Windy Nights’ — A.A. Milne’s poems, and Lewis Carroll’s [poems]. In fifth grade I wrote all my assignments in verse.”

In her other recently published poem, “Night Thoughts,” Hamilton creates a completely different, yet wonderfully engaging, mood as she describes the unsolicited thoughts that invade our minds in the middle of the night. The word choice of this piece makes it stand out from other poems that may entertain the idea of the insistent stream of conscience. Hamilton seems to be a enthusiast of the word “detritus” as it appears  in some of her other poems — “Fortune Cookies For Beginners” (Carnegie Mellon University Press chapbook, 1999) and “Narcolepsy” — usually in reference to dreams.

“There is something plangent about the bathroom light,/a cello solo, boring a neat hole/in the head, bonedust flying, the eye like soft cheese…. All that you have lost —/the detritus of nightmares,/those younger, cast-off selves, each sideways glance/of hatred or desire into/the mind’s cold purpose and the heart’s unfathomable ambivalence.”

In addition to her appearance in The Paris Review, Hamilton has been published in a variety of other notable media including The North American Review, Salmagundi, Kestrel, The Cumberland Poetry Review, Frank, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Poetry Miscellany, The Berkeley Poetry Review, and Five AM. She has most recently appeared at the Slaughterhouse Gallery & Studios in Lawrenceville to read her work. Hamilton’s forthcoming novel, Blindsight, will be available in 2005.