UPDATE: Poet Craig Arnold Missing

by Jane Ciabattari | Apr-30-2009

+++Update from Don Share of the Poetry Foundation:

4/30 at 12:30 pm EST: The police will extend the search for three days. They will add 55 people (exact number NOT confirmed, but estimated) to the search.  We still need help! The island has dense vegetation, and only continued interest and pressure will guarantee enough manpower to find Craig.

Poet Craig Arnold, a Yale Younger Poet for his first collection, Shells, is missing. Don Share has posted an urgent call for help on Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, with the plea from the family, updates, suggestions on how to help. More here on Paper Cuts. Meghan O’Rourke on Slate here. “Find Craig Arnold” FaceBook page here.

Latest update from the family, 4/30 at 12:30 pm EST: “The police will extend the search for three days. They will add 55 people (exact number NOT confirmed, but estimated) to the search.  We still need help! The island has dense vegetation, and only continued interest and pressure will guarantee enough manpower to find Craig.”

“Volcano Pilgrim,” Craig’s blog about his trip before he went missing here. The last entry, April 26. On the homepage, Arnold writes,:“‘This is part of the sublime / From which we shrink,’ says Wallace Stevens. He is thinking of Pompeii and Vesuvius, of cities and civilizations laid low by disaster, of the utter indifference of geology to humanity.The Volcano Pilgrim has dedicated the last three years to the belief that one need not shrink from the sublime. Nay, rather, one may seek it out, with a pack on your back and a stick in your hand,  liberal applications of sunblock and when necessary a gas mask over your face.”