David Wojahn - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

David Wojahn is a contemporary American poet who teaches poetry in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University is a public university located in Richmond, Virginia. It comprises two campuses in the Downtown Richmond area, the product of a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968...

, and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts

Vermont College of Fine Arts

Vermont College of Fine Arts offers four distinct graduate programs, awarding Master of Fine Arts degrees in Visual Art, Writing, Writing for Children & Young Adults and Graphic Design. The student to faculty ratio at VCFA is 4-to-1.. The faculty and alumni of VCFA have won many literary awards,...

. He has been the director of Virginia Commonwealth University's Creative Writing Program.

Career

He was educated at the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, and the University of Arizona

University of Arizona

The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...

.

Wojahn taught for many years at Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

. He has also taught at University of Alabama

University of Alabama

The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

University of Arkansas at Little Rock

University of Arkansas at Little Rock , is a public research university located in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, and the second largest university by enrollment in the state of Arkansas....

, University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, University of Houston

University of Houston

The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...

, and University of New Orleans

University of New Orleans

The University of New Orleans, often referred to locally as UNO, is a medium-sized public urban university located on the New Orleans Lakefront within New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It is a member of the LSU System and the Urban 13 association. Currently UNO is without a proper chancellor...

. In 2003, he joined Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

. He also teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Poetry

Most of Wojahn's poetry is metrical although he also works in free verse, usually addressing political and social issues in American life. He often takes as his subjects moments of significance in popular culture, such as the assassination of John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

, the professional decline of Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison

James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...

or the drowning of Brian Jones

Brian Jones

Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones , known as Brian Jones, was an English musician and a founding member of the Rolling Stones....

. He has said that he hopes his poetry is considered "activist."

The noted poet Richard Hugo

Richard Hugo

Richard Hugo , born Richard Hogan, was an American poet. Primarily a regionalist, Hugo's work reflects the economic depression of the Northwest, particularly Montana. Born in White Center, Washington, he was raised by his mother's parents after his father left the family...

selected Wojahn's first book, Icehouse Lights, as a winner of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. "David Wojahn's poems concern themselves with emotive basics: leaving home, watching those we love age and die, the inescapable drone of our mortality," Hugo wrote. "Yet as poems, they are far from usual. They help us welcome inside, again and again, the most personal of feelings."

Wojahn has gone on to publish seven more books of poetry, all with the University of Pittsburgh Press

Pitt Poetry Series

The Pitt Poetry Series, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, is one of the largest and best known lists of contemporary American poetry.-History:...

. Wojahn has also edited a volume of poetry by his late wife, Lynda Hull

Lynda Hull

Lynda Hull was a United States poet. She had published two collections of poetry when she died in a car accident in 1994. A third, The Only World , was published posthumously by her husband, the poet David Wojahn, and was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award...

, entitled The Only World (HarperPerennial, 1995), as well as her more recent Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2006).

Awards

Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is a writers' conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont...
writing residencies from the Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...

, and McDowell colonies.
1987-1988 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship
Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship
The Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship is given annually to a U.S.-born poet to spend one year outside North America in a country the recipient feels will most advance his or her work....
Icehouse Lights, was chosen by Richard Hugo as a winner of the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Book Award.
Glassworks, awarded the Society of Midland Authors’ Award for best volume of poetry
Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982-2004, was one of three named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, and winner of the O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize
O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize
The O.B. Hardison, Jr., Poetry Prize was awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S. poet whose art and teaching demonstrated great imagination and daring...

from the Folger Shakespeare Library
In April 2007, Wojahn was one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

for Interrogation Palace.
2003 List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 2003
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, Fellowship
Illinois Arts Council award
the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Fellowship
William Carlos Williams Award
Celia B. Wagner Award from the Poetry Society of America
Vermont College’s Crowley/Weingarten Award for Excellence in Teaching
George Kent Prize from Poetry magazine
three Pushcart Prizes.
2008 he was named VCU’s Outstanding Faculty Award Winner
2008 Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize.

Essays

Strange Good Fortune (Arkansas, 2001)
"The Language of My Former Heart" : The Memory-Narrative In Recent American Poetry (Published in Green Mountains Review 1988)

Edited

Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry, with Jack Myers (Southern Illinois University, 1991)

Critical reception

Wojahn's Interrogation Palace has received a number of accolades, and has been received favorably by critics and fellow contemporary American poets.

Peter Campion, writing in Poetry magazine, called the new work "Superb. Powerful, panoramic. In Interrogation Palace Wojahn picked the perfect title: these are poems of both largesse and terror. . . . He writes with as much formal and emotional strength as any poet alive."

"Wojahn’s poems . . . integrate confessional and academic modes with honesty and skill," wrote Fred Muratori in Library Journal

Library Journal

Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...

.

National Book Award-winner Jean Valentine

Jean Valentine

Jean Valentine is an American poet, and currently the New York State Poet . Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry....

wrote:

After September 11th, one of the first living poets I thought of was David Wojahn: someone who could follow our tragedy to its grave depths, with dignity and unsparingness, and egolessness, and who would stay with it—and us—as long as need be. For life. His poetry is, as Norman Dubie has said, the poetry of conscience; and here, at the birth of our new century, we are grateful.

External links

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