Dorianne Laux’s “Family Stories” from her 2000 collection Smoke is this week’s American Life in Poetry featured poem. Laux traded her University of Oregon duck pond for the North Carolina State University wolfpack in 2008, but is currently back in Oregon as part of her MFA teaching gig at Pacific University. She’s the author of five books of poetry.
While in Eugene, Laux helped guide the budding careers of several notable young writers, including Amanda Coplin, Michael Dickman, Matthew Dickman, Michael McGriff, Carl Adamshick and Peter Brown Hoffmeister. Her poem Savages was inspired by watching McGriff, Adamshick and the Dickmans crouched in the poetry section at Powell’s.
Each week, American Life in Poetry features an American poem in a column that’s made available to newspapers and online publications free of charge.