Herbert R Coursen Jr (1932 - )

Genre: Non-Fiction - Scholarly, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Mystery, General Fiction

An ex-fighter pilot, a prolific poet, and a Shakespearean scholar, Herb Coursen is originally from New Jersey. He taught poetry at the Choate School and the Univ. of Connecticut before moving to Maine to teach at Bowdoin College in 1964. Retired from Bowdoin in 1991, Coursen lives in Brunswick and teaches now at the University of Maine in Augusta. He's also the academic advisor for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Institute in Brunswick. His poem "Feb. 5th 05" is online at Wolf Moon Press Journal.

Coursen's works include:

Poetry:

• Storm in April (1973?)
• Lookout Point: Poems (1974)
• Survivor: Poems (1974)
• Inside the Piano Bench (1975)
• Fears of the Night: Poems (1976)
• Walking Away (1977)
• Hope Farm: New and Selected Poems (1979)
• After the War (1981)
• Winter Dreams: poems (1982)
• Rewriting the Book: Poems (1987)
• Rewinding the Reel (1989)
• Songs and Sonnets: New Poems (1991)
• Five Minutes After "Mayday": Poems (1992)
• Love Poems (Sort Of) (1993)
• Graves of the Poets (1993; photos of poets' graves, accompanied by their own poems and Coursen's)
• Recalling August (1995)
• New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996 (1996)
• The Green of Spring, and Other Poems (1997)
• Songs and Seasons: New Poems (1997)
• History Lessons (1998)
• Poems from "The Metamorphoses" (1998)
• Mythos: New and Selected Poems: 1966-1999 (1999)
• Mirros (1999)
• Winter Music (2001)
• The Greatest Game Ever Played (chapbook; 2001)
• Another Thursday (2002)

Fiction:

• The Outfielder (1992)
• The Search of Acherland (1993; fantasy)
• The Golden Haze: a story of the future (1995; fantasy)
• Penelope (1995; WW II fiction)
• The Thirteen Greatest Love Songs (1999; mystery)
• Return to Acherland (1999; sequel to The Search for Acherland)
• Ask For Me Tomorrow (2000)
• The Lake (2001)
• Moment of Truth (2003)
• Escape from Amerika (2003)
• The Blind Prophet of Archerland (2004), his sixth fantasy adventure about the kingdom of Archerland, in which the evil Mazlun poses as a prophet who preaches pacifism and convinces most of Archerland to abandon its citizen army.
• The Wilderness (2005): Life seems to turn against Richard Turnbull when he finds himself on the wrong side of the government's anti-terrorism campaign.
• And Less Than Kind (2006): In a musty English library, Professor Benjamin Richards makes a discovery that he hopes will win him a promotion.
• Country Matters (2006), set partly in Maine
• Storm Warnings (2008): A former military pilot and a Vietnam veteran try to reach the Canadian border and escape the increasingly fascist US.

Non-Fiction: Shakespeare:

• Henry IV, Part 2 (1971; edited)
• Christian Rituals and the World of Shakespeare's Tragedies (1974)
• The Leasing Out of England: Shakespeare's Second Henriad (1982)
• The Compensatory Psyche: A Jungian Approach to Shakespeare (1986)
• Shakespeare on Television: An Anthology of Essays and Reviews (1988; ed. by J.C. Bulman and H.R. Coursen)
• Shakespearean Performance as Interpretation (1992)
• Watching Shakespeare on Television (1993)
• Reading Shakespeare on Stage (1995)
• Shakespeare in Production: Whose History? (1996)
• Teaching Shakespeare with Film and Television: A Guide (1997)
• Macbeth: A Guide to the Play (1997)
• Shakespeare: The Two Traditions (1999)
• The Tempest: A Guide to the Play (2000; Greenwood Guides to Shakespeare)
• Shakespeare in Space (2002)

Non-Fiction: Non-Shakespeare:

• Growing Up in Maine: A Collection of Essays (1968; edited; written by the Upward Bound Program students at Bowdoin College)
• As Up They Grew: Autobiographical Essays (1970; edited)
• Us: An Anthology of Autobiographical Essays (1971; edited; written by the Upward Bound Program students at Bowdoin College)
• Shaping the Self: Style and Technique in the Narrative (1976)

Last Update: 02/07/2009

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