Massachusetts as a state and as a state of mind plays a prominent role in the works of its poets and writers. This special feature focuses on five poets who have helped shape the literary imagination of Massachusetts and who have been shaped artistically by living there. Not coincidentally, three of the poets featured here appeared in John Wieners’s Measure Number Three — Boston the City and in Donald Allen’s New American Poetry 1945–1960 anthology. The connection of these poets’ work transcends physical place but also is indebted to it.
