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Henry Hart is the author of four poetry collections, including Familiar Ghosts and Background Radiation. He is also the author of the biographies The Life of Robert Frost and James Dickey: The World as a Lie and has written critical works on Seamus Heaney, Robert Lowell, and Geoffrey Hill. Hart serves as the Mildred and J. B. Hickman Professor of English and Humanities at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia.

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After the Shooting

by Henry Hart
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At the memorial service, I could barely hear
the student read: After great pain a formal feeling comes.
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs.

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