By Buzz McClain December 8, at am. Before we get into what it was about those poets that set Peabody on his life journey, you need to know the end result: 67 issues of a largely Washington-focused regional literary magazine called Gargoyle ; several collections of hundreds of twisted stories and poems about Barbie, Elvis, Jimi, Marilyn, James Dean and Alice of Wonderland, among others; story and poem collections about sex and chocolate; fiction by women only and forgotten female beat writers; several spoken word and music recordings; and 10 books of his own poetry and stories.
Three years ago saw the release of the career-spanning The Richard Peabody Reader Alan Squire Publishing , an impressive page tome of short stories, poems and a novella, with an introduction by a Pulitzer Prize-winning literature critic. It was done without his knowledge by his longtime publishing partner, the late Lucinda Ebersole.
By his own count he has counseled hundreds of regional writers. But if you add the factor of the students who studied with him during 15 years of teaching at the Johns Hopkins University Advanced Academic Programs , where he twice won faculty awards, and stints at the University of Maryland, the University of Virginia and the Washington Writers Center, the number is certainly in the thousands.
And yet, you have probably never heard of him. Or Gargoyle. Or the other books. Or most of the writers. Peabody is 66, with dark hair pulled into a long ponytail and a gray scruff of a beard that may always be exactly three days old. He has a wide, happy face, and he speaks softly enough that you have to lean in to hear but often punctuates his punch lines with a brief burst of loud laugher.
He and his wife Margaret Ellen Grosh, a senior advisor at the World Bank, have lived for about two decades in a brick North Arlington house a block or so from Washington-Lee High School, where their two daughters, Twyla and Laurel, go to school.
