Cynthia Macdonald

Notable awardsChildrenJennifer Macdonald

Cynthia Lee Macdonald (February 2, 1928 – August 3, 2015) was an American poet, educator, and psychoanalyst.^[1]

Life

Macdonald was born in Manhattan to screenwriter Leonard Macdonald and his wife Dorothy Kiam Macdonald.^[2]

She earned a B.A. in English from Bennington College in 1950 and pursued studies in voice at the Mannes School of Music in 1951-1952.^[3] She pursued a career in opera and concert singing from 1953-1966.^[4] After changing her focus to poetry, Macdonald received a master's degree in writing and literature from Sarah Lawrence College.^[5]

She went on to teach creative writing at Sarah Lawrence University and Johns Hopkins University.^[6] She co-founded the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston with fellow poet Stanley Plumly in 1979. She was a member of the English Department at the University of Houston until her retirement in 2004,^[7] receiving the Esther Farfel Award for faculty excellence.

Macdonald also worked as a psychoanalyst, having received a certification from the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute in 1986. She specialized in working with people who had writer's block.^[8]

She was a member of the board of directors of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.^[9]

She wrote the libretto for The Rehearsal (1978), an opera by Thomas Benjamin.

She was the mother of American artist Jennifer Macdonald.

Awards

• Three NEA grants (two for poetry and one for a libretto) ^{[citation needed][10][11]}
• 1977 National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award "for "recognition of the contribution of her poetry", 1977^[12]
• 1983 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry^[13]
• 1992 O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize^[14]

Works

• "Discomfiting the Absolute Splendor", Poetry Foundation
• "The Impossible May Be Possible", Ploughshares (Spring 1999)

Books

• Amputations: Poems. George Braziller. 1972. ISBN 0-8076-0656-1.
• Transplants: Poems. George Braziller. 1977. ISBN 0-8076-0810-6.
• (W)Holes. NY: Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated. 1980. ISBN 0-394-50852-1.
• Alternate Means of Transport. Knopf. 1985. ISBN 0-394-72968-4.
• Living Wills: New and Selected Poems. Knopf. 1992. ISBN 0-679-74278-6.
• I Can't Remember. Alfred a Knopf Inc. 1997. ISBN 0-679-45457-8.

References

External links

• Daniel Bourne (March 30, 1990). "A Conversation With Cynthia Macdonald". Artful Dodge. Archived from the original on September 27, 2008.
• "Cynthia Macdonald." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 18 Nov. 2009