Poet and author, Baron Wormser, poet laureate of Maine from 2000 to 2006, author of 16 books, and our neighbor in Vermont, will read and discuss his work at the Belden Noble Memorial library on Thursday, August 30, 2018, at 7:00 p.m.

Wormser is the author/co-author of 16 books, including Tom o’Vietnam, an extraordinary novel published in 2017.  Here’s a summary of the book:

Tom o’ Vietnam, traces the travels of a Vietnam vet in the fall of 1982. Tom o’ Vietnam is a very American road novel but also an evocation and investigation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Like Tom o’ Bedlam, Tom is hiding out, “impersonating a person,” as he puts it. Tom journeys on one bus after another across a landscape that makes him wonder what he was fighting for. From Santa Fe to Washington, D.C., he meets fellow Americans who have their own stories to tell and who wonder about his. Along the way he spends time with his three sisters, all the while attempting to deal with the demons of the war and the ghosts of the Shakespearean tragedy he carries with him. Tom o’ Vietnam blends poetry, history, and dark wit, as it bears witness to the depths of eloquence and grief, anger and endurance.