Harvey Mudd

He was born in 1940 in Los Angeles, CA. He graduated of the New School, NYC, in 1963 and served in the US Army from 1963-1967. In 1968 he moved to New Mexico, where, for ten years, he was the co-director of an environmental organization. He has ben a farmer and an art gallery owner. He has lived in New York City; San Francisco; Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico; Burlington, Vermont; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Cordoba, Spain; London; Mexico City; and Paris. He has lived in the south of France, the Languedoc, with his partner, Ellen Davies, for the last 12 years. He has three children and one grandson. Mudd is the author of three published collections of diverse poems, Soulscot (1976), Stations (1980), and Spinoza's Dog (2017). He has also written two long-poem, single-theme books: The Plain of Smokes (1982), a poem "containing" Los Angeles, using that city as a metaphor; and A European Education (1986), a poetic diary of exploration of the Holocaust, as historical fact and as a philosphical dilemma. Both these books were published by Black Sparrow Press. The Plain of Smokes was short listed for the Los Angeles Times poetry book of the year in 1982. He has also published a memoir, Leaving My Self Behind (2017); and a collection of his own drawings, There was a Peacock: the drawings of Juan Ezekiel Fontana (2019, ) a fictional Mexican artist. He has written political blog since 2002, and continues this practice via Substack. He is also an artist working with oils, charcoal, and ink. Though from a family that was American from the 17th century, Mudd considers himself a "citizen of the world," a perspective that is wider than merely nationalistic. He has, however, a deep love for the land of the American Southwest and returns from France annually to replenish this attachment. He is widely read in European and American history, in political theory and economics, and literature. His primary poetic influences are T.S. Eliot and his circle; he is resistant to more contemporary trends, valuing clarity more than cleverness.