Priscilla Washburn Shaw

Tilly was my instructor at Yale for a class in modern poetry I took in my senior year, 1962-63. She had the greatest influence on me of any of my professors (a spectacular group in those days?), because she taught me how to delve into the verbal depths if a poem, rather than accept any superficial meaning. We were visited in our seminar room by Donald Hall and Randall Jarrell, among others, but it was Tilly herself who left a lasting impression, giving me subtle pleasure for the rest of my...

I am deeply saddened to discover that my search for Professor Shaw is too late! I so wanted to connect with her when Bob Dylan recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature: I was a student in her Stevenson core seminar in 1967. Professor Shaw assigned a Dylan song for analysis. None of us could understand his lyrics and there were loud protests from my fellow students on the day the assignment was due. One even accused her of trying too hard to be "relevant." Professor Shaw responded in...

We greatly appreciate Tilly's support for our work.

Beth Golden
Doctors Without Borders USA

9/13/2015 - Just back from radio station KUSP Santa Cruz' Poetry Show, 88.9, Memorial reading tribute to our long-time friend and colleague and member of our poetry group. Readings of Tilly's poems by Lisa Ortiz, Charles Atkinson, Farnaz Fatemi, David Swanger and Robert Sward.

Tilly and her quiet, guiding presencetouchstones in my writer's life. I miss her and will always. That she and my father were at Stevenson during an overlapping time also mattered greatly.

met Tilly Shaw just once, sometime in the seventies when I used to visit Paul and Sally Goodman in North Stratford NH. She came to visit her long-term friend Ruth Perry. It was a talky household, lots of non-stop New York-style opinions, sporting but edgy arguments about literature, politics, culture. Tilly walked in, quiet, rather soft-voiced, with vivid, curious/kindly blue eyes. I watched her watching. I noted her listening, with seemingly no need to jump right in and assert. At...

I met Tilly thru Poetry Santa Cruz. I loved her keen ear that heard the unsaid words. Her no nonsense approach to life but most of all her wonderful heart . This is a great loss. Peg

Such a spark of joy you were

Blessings, janine

I met Tilly around the time that "Family" came out. Her poems about her mother and her dementia really spoke -- and later, when I was taking care of my own mother, I would go back to them with new understanding. Tilly was the best of poets and teachers: so gentle yet strong, quiet yet steady as a hum, funny but sensitively insightful. She was such a gift to us.