Sophie Cabot Black

Read poems by this poet

Sophie Cabot Black was born in New York, New York, in 1958 and grew up on a small farm in Connecticut. She received a BA from Marlboro College in 1980 and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University in 1984.

Cabot Black is the author of Geometry of the Restless Herd (Copper Canyon Press, 2024); The Exchange (Graywolf Press, 2013); The Descent (Graywolf Press, 2004), winner of the Connecticut Book Award; and The Misunderstanding of Nature (Graywolf Press, 1994), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. The Boston Review notes,

Black’s taut, resonant lyrics are chastened of all excess verbiage and reveal a poet of keen assurance and consummate craft, but perhaps what most amazes the reader is that such honed writing can speak with such emotional immediacy.

In an interview for The New Yorker, Cabot Black says,

For me, the act of writing comes out of query. Each image turns to the next with its question and gets answered. Or with its answer it gets questioned. Poetry is my way to understand what is difficult. How one thing can be explained through another—is to get closer, to unhide what feels hidden.

The recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Bunting Institute, Cabot Black has taught at the New School, Rutgers, and Columbia University. She divides her time between New York City and Wilton, Connecticut.