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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry
The Maine State Library is partnering with the State's new Poet Laureate, Wesley McNair, and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance in the initiative, Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry.
Each week McNair will offer one previously published poem by a Maine poet. McNair will select each poem and write a brief introduction about the poet's background and connection to Maine, and the history, context, or themes of the poem.
Recent Poems

- May 12, 2013 - Fiddleheads
- May 5, 2013 - My Hairy Legs
- April 28, 2013 - The Dump Pickers
- April 21, 2013 - Night Wind in Spring
- April 14, 2013 - Spring Thaw, Loon Return and Growing Lettuce
- April 7, 2013 - For Cullen: Four Days Old, Waking
- March 31, 2013 - Which World
- March 24, 2013 - The Clerks
- March 17, 2013 - Last Writes
- March 10, 2013 - Out Here
- March 3, 2013 - Musician
- February 24, 2013 - Divorce
- February 17, 2013 - Airfield
- February 10, 2013 - Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat Nor Drink
- February 3, 2013 - The Goldfish
- January 27, 2013 - The Street
- January 20, 2013 - The Alligator's Hum
- January 13, 2013 - Housekeeping of a Kind
- January 6, 2013 - Sandwiches
- December 30, 2012 - Sixty
- December 23, 2012 - The Cross of Snow
- December 16, 2012 - Eighty-Five
- December 9, 2012 - He Sees the Future
- December 2, 2012 - Nude
- November 25, 2012 - The Red and Green Cement Truck
- November 18, 2012 - Gulls in Wind
- November 11, 2012 - The Habitation
- November 4, 2012 - Hands Reaching
- October 28, 2012 - Humane Society
- October 21, 2012 - Regeneration
- October 14, 2012 - Frenchboro
- October 7, 2012 - Lost Graveyards
- September 30, 2012 - New England Asters
- September 23, 2012 - Today, the Traffic Signals All Changed for Me
- September 16, 2012 - If You Should Die Before I Do
- September 9, 2012 - Spooked Moose
- September 2, 2012 - The Net
- August 26, 2012 - Making the Turn
- August 19, 2012 - Night
- August 12, 2012 - Hearing Your Words, And Not A Word Among Them
- August 5, 2012 - Garden Spider
- July 29, 2012 - Watermelon
- July 22, 2012 - From the Toy Box
- July 15, 2012 - 1940 and Rained Out
- July 8, 2012 - Regret and Snap
- July 1, 2012 - Unknown Algonquin Females, Circa 1800s
- June 24, 2012 - Ball Smacks Mouth, Splits Lip
- June 17, 2012 - How to Catch a Poem
- June 10, 2012 - Nobody at Treblinka
- June 3, 2012 - Question in a Field and To an Artist, to Take Heart
- May 27, 2012 - They All Come Back
- May 20, 2012 - Spaghetti Western Days
- May 13, 2012 - The Man Who Likes Cows
Featured Links
Wesley McNair: Speaking 2011 National Book Festival
The Remarks of Maine Poet Laureate, Wesley McNair from April 2011 as a newly appointed Poet Laureate.
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Wesley McNair is the fourth Maine Poet Laureate. He is the author of nine volumes of poetry and two books of nonfiction, and he has edited five anthologies of Maine writing, including three that feature Maine poetry. Few authors are as well versed in the history of Maine poetry or the work of Maine's contemporary poets as Wesley McNair.