It is with great sadness that we are announcing that  friend and great poet Paul Violi passed away on April 2. Paul wrote eleven books of poetry, including Overnight, Fracas, The Curious Builder, and Likewise, from Hanging Loose Press, and a selection of his longer poems, Breakers, from Coffee House Press. He taught in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and in the graduate writing program at New School University. Violi was an interim Artistic Director for The Poetry Project and a frequent featured reader and contributor the the Newsletter.

Here he is noting the influence of the conversational works of Coleridge and Wordsworth on his own work:

And here is a poem of his published in The Poetry Project Newsletter No.84, October 1981:

Haiku

Let’s have the money, or else.
Just do what I say
and nobody will get hurt

We will miss his generosity and amazing good humor and send out our condolences to his friends and family.