That little book, he recalled, sold only a few hundred copies, but it fell into the hands of gay writers like White and Peter Cameron and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. It came together in a novella, “Mitko,” which was published in 2011. Greenwell wrote about topics that were rife with complication: desire, Bulgaria, privilege and at times a confluence of all three. All the while, he continued to work on his poems, assembling what was shaping up to be a collection.īut Greenwell began to write prose, and, he said, “it destroyed my poems.” Bidart felt as though Greenwell has found what he had been aiming at all along.

program at Harvard, but left in his third year to become a high school teacher in Michigan and, eventually, Bulgaria. Greenwell followed his poetry practice to a Ph.D. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Frank Bidart, a mentor of Greenwell’s and one of his teachers at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, recalled someone who was “serious and ambitious in a way most students aren’t.” Greenwell’s poetry, he added, always aimed for more than mere description and “tested the idea of what poetry should be.” Pierson, who keeps the poetry Greenwell has sent him over the years in a treasured Google Drive folder, said it contains “really beautiful language mixed with something deep from Garth’s experience mixed with profound observations about human nature.” “Garth always wants to be the best,” Pierson said, “and he always felt a little inadequate as a musician.” Finding himself increasingly interested in poetry and literature, Greenwell decided to study them full time.

While there, in the mid-1990s, he befriended people who are now luminaries in contemporary classical music - including Alan Pierson, the artistic director and conductor of the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, who described Greenwell as “fiercely devoted and very intense,” with a literary approach to singing.īut he was also self-critical, and unsure of his future in performance. But growing up in Louisville, Ky., he began as a singer, which earned him a spot at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, and later, the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. Greenwell, 41, has taken a long time, and tried out different roles, to find the artistic environment in which he has truly blossomed: prose, for which he has garnered widespread critical admiration, including a spot on the longlist for the National Book Award. Garth Greenwell’s “Cleanness” comes out on Jan.

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell