It Looks Like a Man

MacArthur Fellow and Griffin Poetry Prize winner reflects on the gap between experience and expression

Heather McHugh's new collection of poems joins her fourteen previously published volumes of poetry, essays, and translation (one a Pulitzer Prize finalist and another designated a Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly). With her 2010 MacArthur Fellowship she funded a program of restorative getaways for unpaid family caregivers. An abiding theme throughout McHugh's work has been the essential muteness of individual experience as it is remarked from greatening distances of time, space, or feeling. In view of that gulf between experience and expression, the words of characters here suggest the many ways a human being can be said to look.