ELLSWORTH — Award-winning Maine poet Wesley McNair, called “one of America’s finest living artists,” riveted his audience Wednesday night with powerful poems expressing pain, joys and poignant moments from life.

At the Ellsworth Public Library, the tall, gracious poet invited people to grab a cup of coffee and cookies. He made them at home like the Riverview Room was his own. He politely abandoned the podium, sitting down with one leg crossed over the other, as if settling in for an evening with friends. He proceeded to read poems from his new collection of poems “Lovers of the Lost” (David R. Godine, Boston, $17.95). His reading unofficially kicked off National Poetry Month. Held every April, the observance was started by the Academy of American Poets in 1996.

To understand his poems, McNair started off by briefly outlining his childhood and putting his early autobiographical works in context. His father abandoned the family when he was 8. His mother took in sewing to support her sons.

“He never came back,” McNair, professor emeritus and writer in residence at the University of Maine in Farmington, related as a prelude to his poem “How I Became a Poet.” “I sat down and drew a Wanted Poster.”

How I Became a Poet

“Wanted” was the word I chose
for him at age eight, drawing the face
of a bad guy with comic-book whiskers,
then showing it to my mother. This was how,
after my father left us, I made her smile
at the same time I told her I missed him,
and how I managed to keep him close by
in that house of perpetual anger,
becoming his accuser and his devoted
accomplice. I learned by writing
to negotiate between what I had
and that more distant thing I dreamed of.

— Wesley McNair, “Fire: Poems” (Godine, 2002)

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