D. H. Tracy

Poet, critic, and editor D.H. Tracy earned an MFA at Boston University. In his formally engaged poems, often infused with sly humor, he explores themes of intimacy, perception, and loss. His debut poetry collection, Janet’s Cottage (2012), won a New Criterion Poetry Prize, and his work is featured in The Hecht Prize Anthology 2005–2009 (2011, edited by Joseph Harrison).
 
In a 2013 interview with Garrick Davis for the Contemporary Poetry Review, Tracy states, “The poet-critic’s role is, minimally, to write as well as possible—in the case of criticism, to hit that very tricky, almost Aristotelian mean, flexibility without floppiness, rigor without rigidity. In the literary culture I might wish for, everyone would have this sense that the two activities were artificially distinct, and poets would be more invested in criticism than they are.”  Later in the same interview, he notes, “If [criticism] resembles a science, it is geology, not physics: ‘laws’ don’t get you very far, and with each new piece of ground, if you are not going to be very cavalier, you have to invest a certain amount in new taxonomies and in characterizing local phenomena. Past experience may apply, or not.” 
 
In 2010, he helped found the independent literary press and nonprofit Antilever Press, which publishes both poetry and criticism. In the mid-2000s, Tracy served as archive editor for the Poetry Foundation website.