A Sunday in Purgatory - Softcover

Poetry. The poems in A SUNDAY IN PURGATORY combine memoir, reflections on aging, sexuality, and wrestling with the tension that exists between being part of a famous American family and wanting to be an individual, separate from family history. Morgenthau writes, "In these precious days I dress my private demons in scribblings to come out from behind the shadows that have darkened my long and privileged life...in a purgatory where I wait to pass through the open gates."

2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian calls these poems "crisp, elegant forays into memory both personal and cultural...His surgical examinations of self and his unflinching stare into mortality define the unique and honest voice of this remarkable first book of poems."

Having reached his centennial year, Henry Morgenthau III has recently found a delayed vocation: writing poetry. Formerly a producer and writer for WBGH in Boston, a major contributor to PBS, he received many awards for his pioneering documentaries and talk shows. He produced the series Eleanor Roosevelt: Prospect of Mankind, which she hosted during the last three years of her life. His memoir, Mostly Morgenthaus, won the annual Jewish Book Council prize for autobiography/memoir. He has recently published poetry in Nimrod and an essay, "The White House Revisited," in District Lines, published by Politics and Prose. Morgenthau now resides in Washington, D.C.