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William Harmon

William Harmon grew up in Concord, North Carolina, a cotton-mill town about thirty miles northeast of Charlotte. At sixteen he entered the University of Chicago, where in 1958 he earned an A.B. in English. He then

Auden

by William Harmon (b. 1938)

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2<author>
3  <person id="4989" sex="1" role="author">
4    <name>
5      <firstname>William</firstname>
6      <lastname>Harmon</lastname>
7    </name>
8    <life-events>
9      <date ty="birth" circa="false" suffix="ad">1938</date>
10      <text-value>(b. 1938)</text-value>
11    </life-events>
12    <biography>y</biography>
13  </person>
14</author>
15

Already the routine ritual paragraphs appear,

Prefabricated obituaries that distort

Important names and transpose dates and continents

Until the modest busy life is modified

Into a civic fiction, as false as the photograph

Becomes to the face, as the poet's body, untended

For a day or two, will become to the unkept spirit.

Sit still: we are ready because he readied us,

Delivering for forty years the old homily,

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