If you google the name DeWitt Clinton, you’ll find the top entries refer to the early 19th-century politician, one-time presidential candidate and naturalist who is often referred to as the “Father of the Erie Canal.”
Search a little farther and you will come across another DeWitt Clinton, this one a Shorewood poet and professor emeritus at UW-Whitewater, who recently released a new collection of poems entitled At the End of the War. This DeWitt Clinton, who served on the English faculty at UW-Whitewater for more than 30 years, has published numerous pieces of non-fiction and creative works of poetry as well as six chapbooks. He has been recognized for his writing with a Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award Honorable Mention and the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize.
As you may expect, a collection entitled At the End of the War includes poems that philosophize the startling brutality of war. A Vietnam War veteran, Clinton’s newest volume of poetry uses perspective-shifting narratives to muse on human atrocities, but it also weaves together beautiful spiritual images and considers timeless universal questions. Clinton draws on the wisdom and mysteries of his Jewish faith as well as the guidance learned from centuries of wise East Asian philosophers to ponder anew the intersections of our past and present.
These compelling long narrative poems crisscross historic locales in rich detail and wander through the depths of the human mind to draw incisive perceptions of our current world. DeWitt Clinton will perform a reading and discuss his new collection at Boswell Book Company at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21.
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