Nancy Galbraith; Led Center For Poetry

Nancy Burdick Galbraith, 79, retired head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, died July 7 of complications from emphysema at an assisted-living facility in Bellevue, Wash.

In 1964, she joined the center, which was then the office of the annually appointed consultant in poetry and later, by a 1985 act of Congress, the office of the nation's poet laureate.

She became head of the center in 1970 and was the principal assistant to the poet in residence. She also was responsible for running the library's annual schedule of public literary readings.

In a 1991 interview, she said of her role: "I like my part of the handiwork to be invisible, like the stitches in a quilt."

She told The Washington Post in 1989 that one did not have to be a literary buff to enjoy the readings, which she scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursdays to attract workers before they left Capitol Hill for home.

"I have talked to some businessmen and lawyers who have studiously stayed away from poetry since either high school or college, who then read a few poems by Howard Nemerov and were just knocked over by how approachable and interesting poetry turns out to be," she said. "So I'd like to get more and more of those people having the surprising discovery that they can understand and enjoy poetry."

Mrs. Galbraith retired in 1993 but returned from 2001 to 2004 as a part-time editor at the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

Mrs. Galbraith was born in the District and graduated from the Madeira School in 1947. A classmate recalled that she was "perhaps the best dancer in the school, one of the best students in our class and also one of the loveliest-looking."

In later years, Mrs. Galbraith enjoyed repeating to friends the frequent admonition of a Madeira headmistress: "Girls, function in disaster and finish in style!"

She received her undergraduate degree in English literature from Bryn Mawr College, graduating cum laude in 1951. She spent the next three years as a Central Intelligence Agency secretarial assistant.

She received a master's degree in art therapy from George Washington University in 1979 and worked as a volunteer art therapist with psychiatric patients at George Washington University Hospital and with children at Suburban Hospital. Her case study, "A Foster Child's Pictorial Expression of Ambivalence," and numerous book reviews appeared in the American Journal of Art Therapy.

She also developed an art course for adults called "I Can't Draw," and some of her line drawings accompanied articles in various publications.

She won a 1988 PEN Syndicated Fiction Project award for her short story "Fantastic Ambition." The story was later named by the project as one of the 10 best of that year's winning stories.

She was active at the Writer's Center in Bethesda and was a founding member of the Stromboli Stregge women writers group. The group's anthology, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Broom" (2006), included her work. She also was a featured poet in the Joaquin Miller poetry series in Rock Creek Park in 1999.

She was a resident of the District until moving to Washington state last year.

Her marriage to Evan Galbraith ended in divorce. Her daughter, Alexandra Galbraith, died in 2005.

There are no immediate survivors.

-- Joe Holley