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Hayden Carruth wrote in obscurity and poverty before being recognized as one of the most powerful voices in contemporary poetry. Born in Connecticut in 1921, he served in the air force during World War II and earned his MA from the University of Chicago in 1948. After a nervous breakdown in 1953, Carruth moved to rural Vermont, where he immersed himself in the manual labor that profoundly shaped his poetry. His work includes more than thirty books, and in 1992 he was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Carruth died in New York in 2008.

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Little Citizen, Little Survivor

by Hayden Carruth
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A brown rat has taken up residence with me.
A little brown rat with pinkish ears and lovely
almond-shaped eyes. He and his wife live
in the woodpile by my back door, and they are
so equal I cannot tell which is which when they
poke their noses out of the crevices among
the sticks of firewood and then venture farther
in search of sunflower seeds spilled from the feeder.

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