We're honored to have Professor David L. Smith here to tell us more about writer, occasional poet, physician, institution-builder, and Pittsfield resident Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

David L. Smith is the John W. Chandler Professor of English at Williams College. His scholarly interests include Mark Twain, Southern Literature, Nature Writing, and the Black Arts Movemen, and he is editor, with Jack Salzman and Cornel West, of The Encylopedia of African American Culture and History. As the poet D. L. Crockett-Smith, Smith has published Cowboy Amok and Civil Rites, both from The Black Scholar Press. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Oxford Anthology of African American Poetry. He also translates the works of Spanish and Latin American poets, specializing in Federico Garcia-Lorca and Pablo Neruda.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894), doctor, scholar, and one of the Fireside poets, spent his summers in Pittsfield from 1850-1856. One of The Mastheads studios, currently installed at Canoe Meadows, was modeled on his house there.