Mike McCormack, originally of Haverhill, Mass., is a long-time resident of Alaska where he became a close friend of poet Tom Sexton (1940-2025). Mike is a  past contributor to this blog and to The Lowell Review. He wrote this introduction for Tom’s final book, Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass, published by Loom Press this past spring. The new book has poems ranging from lyrics about life in Alaska; reflections on the ancient Chinese poets he admired; and reports from his days on the Maine seacoast.

Mike adapted the introduction for remarks at a recent tribute event for Tom in Alaska which was organized by Sharyn Sexton, Tom’s wife. More than 60 people attended the event in Anchorage, including friends, fellow writers, and colleagues from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where Tom taught for several decades. Along with his books, he helped establish the nationally acclaimed Alaska Quarterly Review and served a term as Poet Laureate of Alaska. Born in Lowell, Tom is a member of the Lowell High School alumni hall of fame. He graduated from Northern Essex Community College after serving in the military and then earned a bachelor’s degree from Salem State College (now University). With Sharyn, he moved to Alaska to complete a master’s degree at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

For Lowell area readers, Tom’s new book is available at the independent store Lala Books on Market Street downtown. While the official publication date is October 1, online orders are being filled at loompress.com. Amazon won’t ship books until October. 

Tom Sexton’s Final Book of Poems

by Mike McCormick

Few writers blossom and flourish as late in life as Tom Sexton did. He published ten books after turning sixty in 2000 and another eight after he turned seventy.

Tom Sexton labored on Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass, his thirteenth collection, as he battled illness until his death at age eighty-four.  With his death in sight, he questioned his life’s worth and wondered if he had been ambitious enough, if he should have tried harder to make more of a name for himself.

Although he published in some of the most esteemed journals on the continent (Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Paris Review) and received sterling reviews in publications from Ireland to New York to Alaska, Tom Sexton never achieved fame in the same league as Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, or Ted Kooser.

He never sought it.

He never attempted to mount an author platform. He had scant interest in developing a website. He and his wife Sharyn did not purchase their first personal computer until 1996. He never owned or learned to use a cell phone. In large part to limit his carbon footprint, he never took a flight in the last twenty-five years of his life.

Tom Sexton, 2018 (Photograph by Kevin Harkins)

Tom Sexton lived deliberately. He constructed a life that enabled him to focus on the things that mattered most to him: poetry, the natural world, and Sharyn, whom he met in Salem, Massachusetts, and married in 1968.

The Sextons lived together in the same modest one-story home on a residential street in West Anchorage for fifty-two years. Rooted in one place for so long, Tom Sexton developed a deep knowledge and intimate relationship with his chosen community. He tried to walk each day, often in the early morning before the sun cleared the Chugach Mountains east of the city. His sojourns might bring him past vast expanses of Cook Inlet, along Chester or Fish Creek, or into downtown Anchorage where he sometimes stopped for coffee or breakfast. On clear days, he’d scan the horizon for Denali, North America’s tallest peak, a hundred miles to the north. He’d often walk along Westchester Lagoon, a man-made lake that hosted nesting waterfowl and Arctic terns in the summer and ice skaters on its frozen surface in winter.

Tom Sexton frequently stopped on his rambles to record an observation, an idea, or a poetic line on a piece of paper he carried in a pocket. Arriving home, he’d sit at his oversized Underwood typewriter or pull out a yellow legal pad or fire up his computer to develop a poem from his walking notes.

If all he’d ever done was publish the dozens of poems triggered during his Anchorage walks, Tom Sexton would rank as one of Alaska’s, and the country’s, greatest poets.

But his interests and travels ranged beyond his neighborhood.

In his seven plus decades in Alaska, Tom Sexton wrote about communities and natural and historic sites from Ketchikan to Fairbanks; from Delta Junction to Juneau; from Homer to Isabel Pass.

Some of Tom Sexton’s finest poems rose from the ten years the Sextons owned the 12’x16’ wood stove-heated cabin accessed by a mile-and-a-half hike from Hurricane Station House, 170 miles north of Anchorage. The cabin at the edge of a bog had a small west-facing window that framed a view of Denali. Tom and Sharyn got away to the cabin when they wanted to immerse themselves in the wonders of Alaska’s Interior. They sold the cabin when noise from neighbors and visitors on snow machines became so pervasive that it destroyed the quiet and solitude the Sextons cherished.

After giving up the cabin, the Sextons drove through Canada every other year between 2002 and 2023 to winter at a house in Eastport, Maine, they bought with money from the cabin sale. They always left Maine in May to avoid Eastport’s summer crowds and to get back to Anchorage’s long early summer days.

Tom Sexton fell in love with Eastport where the downtown streets, brick buildings, and working-class residents reminded him of life in his hometown in Lowell, Massachusetts, a place he never got over, a place he returned to in his memories, dreams, and occasional visits. His most recent book, Cummiskey Alley: New and Selected Lowell Poems (Loom Press 2021) explores history, people and places in that Massachusetts mill town where he was born and raised.

With the publication of Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass, Tom Sexton completes a singular poetic journey that spans the continent. His work reminds us to pay attention and question; to celebrate, laugh and wonder; to value, respect, and speak for all we love as we journey through this world.

Tom Sexton’s legacy will live for generations.

—Mike McCormick