Mary Mackey, MA'67, PhD'70

"In Sugar Zone Mary Mackey takes you on a fascinating journey to the interior, somewhere between Saint Theresa’s Inner Castle and the thicket of Eros, a place of desperate actuality even if it is ‘on the other side of the world.’ Mackey joins other visionary poets of dépaysement—Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan. But Mackey really seems to recover a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forró, and death. Sugar Zone authoritatively creates a language and a culture, and the lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home.” — Dennis Nurkse

Mary Mackey’s published works include six collections of poetry and twelve novels. Her poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Nurkse, Ron Hansen, and Marge Piercy for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry four times on The Writer’s Almanac.