Poet Charles Coe Brings His Poems and Lessons on Practicing the Art of Poetry to Westwood High School Students, in a Kickoff Event for Black History Month

On Friday, January 31, Westwood High School students heard poet Charles Coe’s early kickoff to Black History Month. Introduced by student Gabby Bernadeau, Coe read works from his books: A Picnic on the Moon (1999), All Sins Forgiven, Poems for My Parents
(2013), Memento Mori (2019), Purgatory Road: Poems (2023) and New and Selected Works (2024).

Coe began by reading humorous poems about dogs and people he observed in his walks around Cambridge and Boston, and poems about everyday encounters-- being stuck in line at the fish counter while a customer ahead of him dithered about which fish to buy, how to cook it, how much to buy. He read his poem about Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to attend an all-white school in the South, in 1960, and  tender, poignant poems for his late parents and sister.

Coe prefaced each poem with background and context, explaining any esoteric words yet never overexplaining his poems, which he believes speak for themselves. He ended with poignant poems—a black man walking into an Irish bar in Boston who feels unwelcome; the death of his older sister from cancer; and his mother’s doctor describing a difficult cardiac surgery his mother ultimately refused, hastening her death.

Coe concluded his performance by answering questions from students. In closing Coe explained that at one time in his life he was writing songs for his band, and the songwriting was not going well. One evening while waiting for a friend, he took down a book from a shelf in the living room and began paging through it. His eye fell on Robert Frost’s famous sonnet, “Acquainted with the Night.” Coe then recited the sonnet from memory, repeating the last two lines: “One luminary clock against the sky/Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.” “That’s exactly how I felt at that moment,” he told students, emphasizing the power of poetry.

Charles received a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and was selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a Boston Literary Light in 2014 and spent 2017 as an Artist-in-Residence for the city of Boston, creating "What You Don't Know About Me," a project that collected oral histories of people who live and work in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood.

Coe teaches in a wide variety of settings, including grade schools, high schools, colleges, writing conferences and workshops. He has served as poet-in-residence at Wheaton College and at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, and has taught in Dingle, Ireland for the Bay Path University MFA Abroad program. He is currently an adjunct professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, teaching poetry and nonfiction in the low-residency MFA program.

Coe's visit was funded by Westwood Poet Laureate Lynne Viti's grant from the Westwood Town Cultural Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Westwood Librarian Theresa Fisher planned the event, with input from Viti and members of the Westwood High English Department. Future poetry events slated for this school year include a class visit to the Creative Writing class and a Teen Poetry Slam, both during April, National Poetry Month.