Our Founder

Dr. Samuel John Hazo—Poet Laureate of Pennsylvania, U.S. Marine Captain, National Book Award finalist, and founder of the International Poetry Forum—was born in Pittsburgh, PA, on July 19, 1928.

The son of Assyrian and Lebanese immigrants, Hazo was raised from a young age by his aunt and grandparents, who introduced him to poetry and music in both Arabic and English. After graduating from Pittsburgh’s Central Catholic High School, Hazo was supported by a local doctor, Leo D. O’Donnell, to attend the University of Notre Dame, where he began writing seriously as a poet.

Upon graduation from Notre Dame, Hazo worked briefly for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette before enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps. After completing his tour as a captain, he returned to Pittsburgh as an M.A. student at Duquesne University, writing his thesis on the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hazo proceeded to doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh, during which time he traveled to Princeton and befriended the French philosopher Jacques Maritain. Maritain wrote the foreword to Hazo’s Ph.D. thesis, which was later published as The World Within the Word: Maritain and the Poet—a study of the creative imagination in Maritain, Hopkins, S.T. Coleridge, and John Keats. Hazo launched his career as an educator at Duquesne University, where he taught until his retirement as McAnulty Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus.

In 1966, Hazo founded the International Poetry Forum, an independent nonprofit organization that would go on to host hundreds of the world’s most celebrated poets and performers in Pittsburgh—including greats like Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Octavio Paz, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Mary Oliver, Kurt Vonnegut, Chinua Achebe, Gregory Peck, James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee, Anthony Hopkins, Princess Grace of Monaco, and Queen Noor of Jordan.

To date, Hazo has authored more than sixty books of poetry, fiction, plays, translations, and essays. His early translation of Ali Ahmad Said Esber, The Blood of Adonis (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), brought one of the century’s most famous Arabic poets to a broad American audience; his Once for the Last Bandit (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. In his foreword to Hazo’s collection To Paris (New Directions, 1981), Archibald MacLeish wrote, “[Hazo is a] critic and man of letters [who] has kept his head at a time when it was widely fashionable to have no head… as a poet himself he has faced the contemporary problems of poetry with intelligence and sense.”

In 1990, under Hazo’s leadership, the International Poetry Forum was awarded the Smithsonian Institution’s James Smithson Bicentennial Medal. Hazo was named the first Poet Laureate of Pennsylvania in 1993, and in 2024 won the prestigious Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service. Among Hazo’s many other honors are thirteen honorary doctorates, including one from his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame.

In 2023, after 57 years as director of the International Poetry Forum, Hazo named Jake Grefenstette as his successor of the literary organization. A recording of Hazo’s 2023 reading at the International Poetry Forum is available here.

More on Hazo can be found in Janine Molinaro’s 2022 biography, Before the Pen Runs Dry: A Literary Biography of Samuel Hazo.

Selected Poetry

Publications

  • Discovery and Other Poems, Sheed and Ward, 1958

  • The Quiet Wars, Sheed and Ward, 1962 (Poetry)

  • Hart Crane: An Introduction and Interpretation, Barnes & Noble, 1963 (Criticism; reprinted by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967)

  • A Selection of Contemporary Religious Poetry (ed.), Paulist Press, 1963

  • The Christian Intellectual: Studies in the Relation of Catholicism to the Human Sciences (ed.), Duquesne University Press, 1963

  • Listen with the Eye, with photographer James P. Blair, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964 (Poetry)

  • My Sons in God, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965 (Poetry)

  • Blood Rights, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968 (Poetry)

  • The Blood of Adonis, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971 (Translations of the poetry of Ali Ahmad Said Esber [Adonis])

  • Twelve Poems, Byblos Press, 1972 (Poetry with color intaglios by George Nama)

  • Seascript: A Mediterranean Logbook, Byblos Press, 1972 (Fiction)

  • Once for the Last Bandit, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972 (Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry)

  • Quartered, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974 (Poetry)

  • Inscripts, Ohio University Press, 1975 (Fiction)

  • The Growls of Deeper Waters, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975 (Translations of the essays of Denis de Rougemont; with Beth Luey)

  • The Very Fall of the Sun, Popular Library, 1977 (Fiction; film option by Eli Wallach, 1976)

  • Smithereened Apart, Ohio University Press, 1977 (Criticism; update of Hart Crane: An Introduction and Interpretation)

  • Shuffle, Cut, and Look, The Rook Press, 1977 (Chapbook)

  • An America Made in Paris, Byblos Press, 1978 (Poetry)

  • To Paris, New Directions, 1981 (Poetry)

  • Transformations of the Lover, Byblos Press, 1982 (Further translations of Adonis; reprinted by Ohio University Press, 1983)

  • The Wanton Summer Air, North Point, 1982 (Fiction)

  • Thank a Bored Angel, New Directions, 1983 (Poetry)

  • The Feast of Icarus: Lyrical Essays, Palaemon Press, 1984

  • The Pittsburgh That Starts Within You, Byblos Press, 1986 (Memoir)

  • The Color of Reluctance, Dooryard Press, 1986 (Poetry)

  • Nightwords, Sheep Meadow Press, 1987 (Poetry)

  • Silence Spoken Here, Marlboro Press, 1988 (Poetry)

  • Stills, Atheneum, 1989 (Fiction; reprinted by Syracuse University Press, 1998)

  • The Rest is Prose, Duquesne University Press, 1989 (Essays)

  • Lebanon: Twenty Poems for One Love, Byblos Press, 1990 (Translations of Nadia Tueni)

  • Picks: 1966–1991, Byblos Press, 1991 (Poetry)

  • The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You, Byblos Press, 1992 (Second and expanded edition)

  • The Past Won’t Stay Behind You, University of Arkansas Press, 1993 (Poetry)

  • The Pages of Day and Night, Marlboro Press, 1995 (Further translations of Adonis; reprinted by Northwestern University Press, 2000)

  • The Holy Surprise of Right Now, University of Arkansas Press, 1996 (Poetry)

  • Latching the Fist, Byblos Press, 1996 (Chapbook)

  • The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You, Byblos Press, 1998 (Third and expanded edition)

  • Spying for God, Byblos Press, 1999 (Essays)

  • As They Sail, University of Arkansas Press, 1999 (Poetry)

  • Just Once: New and Previous Poems, Autumn House Press, 2002 (recipient of the Maurice English Poetry Prize)

  • Jots Before Sleep, Byblos Press, 2004 (Poetry)

  • The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You, Local History Company, 2004 (Fourth and expanded edition)

  • A Flight to Elsewhere, Autumn House Press, 2005 (Poetry)

  • The Power of Less: Poetry and Public Speech, Marquette University Press, 2005 (Essays)

  • The Song of the Horse, Autumn House Press, 2008 (Poetry)

  • Like a Man Gone Mad: Poems in a New Century, Syracuse University Press, 2010

  • The Stroke of a Pen, University of Notre Dame Press, 2011 (Essays)

  • The Time Remaining, Syracuse University Press, 2012 (Fiction)

  • And the Time Is, Syracuse University Press, 2014 (Poetry)

  • Sexes: The Marriage Dialogues, Northwestern University Press, 2014 (Poetry)

  • They Rule the World, Syracuse University Press, 2016 (Poetry)

  • Outspokenly Yours, Word Association Publishers, 2017 (Essays)

  • The Feast of Icarus: Memoir & Myth, Lambing Press, 2017 (Prose poetry)

  • The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You, Word Association Publishers, 2017 (Updated memoir; Awarded 2018 IPPY national bronze citation for creative non-fiction)

  • The World Within the Word: Maritain and the Poet, Franciscan University Press, 2018 (Criticism; foreword by Jacques Maritain with an introduction by James Matthew Wilson)

  • When Not Yet Is Now, Franciscan University Press, 2019 (Poetry)

  • If Nobody Calls, I’m Not Home: The Open Letters of Bim Nakely, Wiseblood Books, 2020 (Fiction)

  • The Next Time We Saw Paris, Wiseblood Books, 2020 (Poetry)

  • The Less Said, the Truer, Syracuse University Press, 2022 (Poetry)

  • I Want it to Happen: Love as a Saga, Serif Press, 2023 (Fiction)

  • Becoming Done, Serif Press, 2023 (Poetry)

  • Entries from the Interior, Serif Press, 2023 (Journals)

  • Who Needs a Horse That Flies?: Essays on Poetry and Pretense, Serif Press, 2023

  • The Treachery of Luck: New and Selected Poems: 2014–2024, Serif Press, 2024