H.T. or Tom Kirby-Smith (born 1938) is an American author and poet.

Life

H.T. Kirby-Smith grew up on the Cumberland Plateau, in

Sewanee, Tennessee Sewanee () is a census-designated place (CDP) in Franklin County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 2,535 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Tullahoma, Tennessee Micropolitan Statistical Area. Sewanee is best known as the home of ...

. He received his B.A. from Sewanee an M.A. from Harvard and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, where he studied with

Yvor Winters Arthur Yvor Winters (October 17, 1900 – January 25, 1968) was an American poet and literary critic. Life Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived there until 1919 except for brief stays in Seattle and in Pasadena, where his grandparen ...

. He was also a Fulbright scholar in

Dijon, France Dijon (, , ) (dated) * it, Digione * la, Diviō or * lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920. The earlie ...

. He taught at the

University of North Carolina at Greensboro The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG or UNC Greensboro) is a public research university in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Carolina system. UNCG, like all members of the UNC system, is a stand- ...

for many years, where he was also one of the founding editors of the Greensboro Review. He has published several books including a guide to U.S. observatories, a book on the philosopher

George Santayana Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish and US-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised ...

, a book that examines

free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French '' vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Defi ...

poetry and one on the emergence of poetry from music. His poetry and essays have been published in the ''

Southern Review ''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes ficti ...

'', the ''

Sewanee Review ''The Sewanee Review'' is an American literary magazine established in 1892. It is the oldest continuously published quarterly in the United States. It publishes original fiction and poetry, essays, reviews, and literary criticism. History ''Th ...

'', the ''

Virginia Quarterly Review The ''Virginia Quarterly Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established in 1925 by James Southall Wilson, at the request of University of Virginia president E. A. Alderman. This ''"National Journal of Literature and Discussion" ...

'', '' Shenandoah'', ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

'', the ''Mountain Goat'', the ''Southern Poetry Review'', ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Bos ...

'', and the ''Hudson Review'' and he has served on the board of editors of ''Versification''. His chapbook of poems, ''The Musical Constellations'', was published by Unicorn Press in the fall of 2007. Among his former students is

Claudia Emerson Claudia Emerson (January 13, 1957 – December 4, 2014) was an American poet. She won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection ''Late Wife'', and was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Tim Kaine in 2008. Early life Emerso ...

, the 2006 Pulitzer prize winner for poetry. His online poetry tutorials have been used widely by poetry teachers for almost a decade.

Works

*''U.S. Observatories: A Directory and Travel Guide'' (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976). (cloth); (paper) *''The Origins of

Free Verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French '' vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Defi ...

'' (University of Michigan Press, 1996). (cloth); (paper) *''A Philosophical Novelist:

and The Last Puritan'' (Southern Illinois University Press,1997). (cloth) *''The Celestial Twins: Poetry and Music Through the Ages'' (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999). (cloth) *''The Musical Constellations'' (Unicorn Press, 2007). (cloth) (paper) * Tutorial on Poetic Prosody: Meter and For

2001

References

1938 births Living people Sewanee: The University of the South alumni Harvard University alumni Stanford University alumni American male poets People from Sewanee, Tennessee {{US-poet-1930s-stub