Schuyler Hoffman and Ruth Maasen

Schuyler Hoffman has published two books of poetry: Words in a Foreign Language and The Spaces Between as well as the collaborative poetry-music CD Sacrifice. His work has appeared in The Café Review and in The Anthology of Post-Beat Poetry in translation in China. His new book Signal to Noise explores the myriad ways that meanings may develop in relation to non-meaning, non-sense, and noise. The title implicates the varying of ratios between these elements.

Ruth Maassen has been writing poems about Cape Ann since she settled here in 1980. She grew up in western Michigan and studied at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and Indiana University. For twelve years she served as poet laureate of Rockport. Her Picking Raspberries collection was in the Folly Cove chapbook series. Ruth’s poems aspire to clarity and wit, with a wide range of subjects, moods, and forms, always with a strong connection to the everyday.