(Photo by Cara Sheedy/Beacon staff) Abbot Cutler has had his poetry published numerous times in book and magazine form.
“I remember that the earth will hum into spring,” ends MCLA professor Abbot Cutler’s poem, “Leeks”. His poem was published in the March/April issue of Orion Magazine.
Abbot Cutler began his career at MCLA twenty five years ago. After working as an adjunct he took a full time position in the late 1980’s. Cutler teaches poetry and introduction to literature at the College. He also teaches Contemporary American Poetry and the Times, a course he developed himself.
“If you read the poets over the past fifty years you get a different view of the country than if you read the newspapers and magazines,” Cutler said. In his poetry course, students read contemporary poetry then write their own poems.
“It gives them a better feel for what Ginsberg and Lowell and Stafford and Bly and all those guys were doing,” he explained.
Cutler was a British and American literature major at Harvard during the sixties. During his senior year, he took a course in contemporary American poetry. I was kind of hooked,” Cutler admitted. The poetry class had a profound effect on him.
“They were talking about things that really mattered to me, and so that was interesting,” he said.
After graduating Harvard, Cutler joined the Peace Corps and journeyed to the island of Borneo. There, he began to write.
“I liked it there a lot, I learned a lot,” Cutler said. He spent two years in a remote jungle village that could only be reached by a small steam train. “It took eight hours to go eighty miles.”
After returning from Borneo Cutler lived in San Francisco, New York City, Boston and Vermont before finally settling in the Berkshires. He also saw Allen Ginsberg read four or five times.
“One time I went to see him read down in the Village and he read from his FBI files instead of his poems,” he revealed.
Cutler’s first book of poetry, “1843- Rebecca-1847” was published by Rowan Tree Press in 1981. He based the poems in the collection on one of his ancestor’s trip to China.
“I got reading her letters and diaries; they were in my grandmother’s barn,” Cutler said.
His second collection, titled “The Dog Isn’t Going Anywhere,” was published in 2000 by Mad River Press.
Recently, Cutler recited one of his poems at a local reading. After the event, an editor of Orion Magazine, which is based out of Great Barrington, approached Cutler and asked for a submission.
“I sent her a bunch of poems and she chose ‘Leeks’,” he said.
He cautioned that the road to being published is not easy.
“There is way too much focus on being published,” Cutler said. Instead he suggests future writers and poets to concentrate on their craft. This is a process that can take years according to Cutler. “Try to write good poems then think about getting published ten years down the road,” he stressed.
Cutler’s advice to MCLA students is to start with ‘Spires’. He has been the faculty advisor for the student publication for over ten years.
“The College magazine is a great place to get published, your friends see it, and your work is out there.” he said.
