Maine Humanities Council

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert P. Tristram Coffin (1892-1955) was a native Mainer, Bowdoin College graduate, and longtime Bowdoin faculty member. Though a popular writer and speaker in his time, his work is not widely known today. In this podcast episode, Kevin Belmonte, who recently completed a Master’s thesis on Coffin for the American and New England Studies program at the University of Southern Maine, considers why. In the process, he shares pieces of Coffin’s correspondence and, with permission from Coffin’s literary executor, reads three poems aloud. Kevin Belmonte is the author of William Wilberforce, A Hero for Humanity (Zondervan/HarperCollins, 2007), for which he received the John Pollock Award for Christian Biography, and has served as a script consultant for the BBC and PBS. He lives in York, Maine, where his family has resided since the 1630s.

Permission to read Coffin’s poems was granted by the Estate of Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Photo courtesy of Kevin Belmonte. We welcome your feedback on this Robert P. Tristram Coffin podcast.

Robert P. Tristram Coffin [ 23:48 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3427)

For her doctoral dissertation in American history, scholar Mimi Killinger researched the life of homesteader and writer Helen Nearing. Her dissertation became the biography The Good Life of Helen K. Nearing (University of Vermont Press, 2007). Here, Killinger uncovers the roots of her project at the Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine, and reads excerpts from the biography. Killinger earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maine, where she is now Rezendes Preceptor for the Arts at the Honors College. The photo of Helen Nearing is courtesy of the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.

The Good Life of Helen K. Nearing [ 44:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (4715)

Neil Rolde’s 2006 book, Continental Liar from the State of Maine, is a biography of James G. Blaine, the Maine politician who dominated the American political stage from just before the Civil War and almost until the twentieth century. A former Maine politician himself, Rolde is a prize-winning historian and author of Unsettled Past, Unsettled Future: The Story of Maine Indians; The Interrupted Forest: A History of Maine’s Wildlands; Maine, Down East and Different; and many other books. A former Board member of the Maine Humanities Council, Rolde won the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2005.

This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series. We welcome your feedback on this Neil Rolde podcast.

Neil Rolde [ 54:45 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (4746)

Through different historical characters, humor, little known facts, and thought-provoking stories, Taxing Maine explores what taxes mean for Maine communities, the state government, the Maine landscape, and Mainers’ wallets. The performance, featuring David Greenham and Dennis A. Price from the Theater at Monmouth, encourages us to consider how history and a range of opinions and beliefs about taxes have influenced our current taxation system.

We welcome your feedback on this Taxing Maine performance.

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