The alarm clock goes off. It is 5 a.m. on a Monday. The last thing Tim Murphy wants to do is to climb out of bed, but he hasn’t a choice. He know this, but he hits the snooze button anyway.
     Now it’s a half-hour later. He has hit the snooze button another four times. Finally, he has had enough and reluctantly climbs out of bed. One look out the window brings hardly a glimpse of sunshine, just the vast openness and flatness of the land.
     He grabs a bite to eat and steps outside. With nary a hill in sight, there is nothing to stand in the way of the blowing wind. Yet, he must continue with his daily tasks, which include farming and the normal smelly routine of producing hogs for market.
     When the farming and writing lag, Murphy can be found in the office for Murphy & Sons. In this scene, he is accompanied by his brother and an 86-year-old secretary, who happens to be partners with his father. Payment after payment is made as more and more bills find their way here. Yet, farm and business activities share only a part of the life of Fargo, N.D., native Tim Murphy. He is also a nationally recognized poet. Murphy grew up in the isolation of farmland, which meant he did not have much of a social life.
     He was born in Hibbing, Minn., in 1951. He describes his mother as fierce, but with five children born in six years, there was not much room for anything else. He was the eldest and, in his own words, the most terrible. At birth, he was originally to be named Ulthawn, but his mother took one look at him and, after reciting him the poem “Cradle Song” by Alan Alexander Milne, decided to name her firstborn Timothy.
     Murphy’s educational background includes a college diploma, which he earned at Yale University in 1972. During his time as a Bulldog, Murphy was Scholar of the House in Poetry and studied with the Pulitzer Prize winning Southern agrarian poet, Robert Penn Warren. Murphy labels him a “towering intellect,” and calls him one of the greatest men he has ever known.
     As a Scholar of the House, Murphy was one of the 12 seniors elected to pursue independent study, thanks to the intercession of poets Warren, Richard Howard, and Mark Strand. These were teachers and mentors of Murphy. Murphy also took intensive Greek that year, at Warren’s insistence, to fulfill the last of his requirements. Murphy called the course, “the worst in Yale’s history.” His reason? A total of 79 people took the class, and only six emerged with passing grades.
     Murphy acquired some of his writing principles from Warren. An important issue arose once when Warren advised him to stay far away from critical theory or literary criticism. Today, Murphy feels that is good advice because it prevents him from having to reread all good poetry over and over again. He feels the principle taught him that, if you read and memorize poetry, you don’t need an intermediary.
     In addition to Warren, Howard, and Strand, Murphy said there were other influences in his life. He cited a poet named Richard Wilbur as his “master” in poetry. As Murphy recalled, he wrote Wilbur a letter once. Wilbur wrote back, Murphy says, responding that Murphy’s language was “insufficiently charged.” As a result, Murphy began to shorten the length of his sentences. He also made sure that his sentences were more varied.
     Over the next 14 years, Murphy put together several books of poetry. In 1998, Murphy published a group of poems in “The Deed of Gift.” This publication collects Murphy’s poems he wrote between 1976 and 1996. The book compares two sections of poetry. The first half consists of poems he wrote when he was studying classical history, prior to age 30, and the second half consists of poems he composed when he got his first farm.

     While his writing style has garnered him many awards, Murphy acknowledges that he does not have any regular habits for writing poetry. He has been writing poetry for over 30 years, but he feels that he is just now coming into his own. He said the maturity has given him the potential to write twenty poems a year, a far cry from his earlier days, especially when one considers that he went through a couple of 18-month slumps during which he did not write a single bit of poetry.
     Since he began publishing his later work in 1995, 115 of Murphy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in periodicals. His chief venues are The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse (published in Scotland), The Formalist, and Light. He recently released another rack-worthy set of poems and short narratives entitled “Very Far North.”
     Murphy writes prolifically, but he will always be up in time to see the last dark of night slowly wisp away, followed by the rising of the sun. He hasn’t much time for nightlife: After all, he has a farm to maintain.

http://www.ohiou.edu/oupress/settheploughsharerelease.htm