Lucie Brock-Broido, poet and beloved teacher, passed away in her home in Cambridge, Mass. last Tuesday.  Ms. Brock-Broido was 61. The cause of her death was not reported in the announcement from The New York Times.

Brock-Broido authored four books of poetry. Stay, Illusion (2013) was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. Maureen N. McLane described Brock Broido’s work as seeming “to approach her life as an allegorical one: alchemized…into poetry.”

Current U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, a former student of Brock-Broido, said of her teacher, “She was just a full-force, wonderful presence of creativity, magic, belief and reverence for poetry. She guided us to look at chocies within individual poems and the largest structure of a book and the way that questions, recurring thems and obsessions could be highlighted by placement.”

Poetry, according to Brock-Broido, “troubled into its making. It’s not a thing that blooms; it’s a thing that wounds.” She is survived by her sister, stepsister, and half sister.

Image Credit: Karen Meyers