They moved to New Orleans, another great birding location, and Cohen taught at the University of New Orleans, where he met Robert Bourdette; the two collaborated in writing an introductory poetry text, The Poem in Question, published by Harcourt Brace in 1983. Meanwhile, Cohen had moved the family, now including two sons, to Kentucky, where he taught at Murray State University, and Katharine took over the local Humane Society.
During his twenty-seven years at Murray State, Cohen spent some time as chair of the English Department and published studies of eighteenth and nineteenth-century English literature and painting, a study of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that won the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Studies Award, and a book about the appeal of mystery fiction.
The boys have moved on: Matt teaches at the University of Texas, and Dan is a guitarist and songwriter who lives in Nashville. They sometimes visit their parents at their Kentucky Lake house or at the house in the Tucson Mountains that Katharine inherited from her Nebraska parents, who wisely wintered in the warm Arizona sun.
Since his retirement, Cohen has been writing personal essays about his family, about lifelong pursuits such as golf and birdwatching, about newer interests in flying and amateur astronomy, and above all about six decades of reading. Recently his essays have appeared in Harvard Review, Birding, The Humanist, The Missouri Review, The Bayou Review, and The Kenyon Review.
