Bruce Bennett  (b. 1940) LINKS Poetry Daily Feature: Bruce Bennett http://www.poems.com/navigben.htm Poetry Daily’s Feature on Bruce Bennett includes biographical information on the poet, in addition to a reprint of his poem “In a Time of War” from his collection Navigating the Distances: Poems New & Selected. Welcome to Ploughshares: The Literary Journal http://www.pshares.org/searchResults.cfm Ploughshares, the highly celebrated literary journal, provides links to reprints of Bennett’s poems that have been printed in the journal. BIOGRAPHY Bennett was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and began writing poems when he was eight years old. He attended Harvard University as an undergraduate and graduate student, receiving a Ph.D. in English (1967). From 1967 to 1970 he taught at Oberlin College, where he co-founded Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. In 1971 he co-founded and co-edited the literary journal Ploughshares. In that year he married Renaissance art historian Bonnie Apgar; the couple lived in Florence, Italy, for two years, and return there often. Since 1973, Bennett has taught English and directed creative writing at Wells College in Aurora, New York, where, in 1993, he also became director of the Wells College Book Arts Center. He has published numerous books and chapbooks, including Navigating the Distances (1999), which was selected by Booklist as “one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of 1999.” Bennett writes in a variety of forms and moods and regards storytelling as a key element of his work. He believes poetry should be accessible, a part of everyone’s life, and approvingly quotes William Carlos Williams: “If it ain’t pleasure, it ain’t a poem.” Through public readings and visits to schools, he encourages young people to write poems. X. J. Kennedy has called Bennett a “master fabulist and satirist” and a “parodist par excellence,” who “often compresses realms of wisdom into tight, economical packages.”