Background
Carter studied at
YaleRapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
and at
Goddard CollegeGoddard College is a private, liberal arts college located in Plainfield, Vermont, offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Goddard College currently operates on an intensive low-residency model...
. After military service and travel abroad, he made his home in
IndianapolisIndianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
, where he has lived since 1969. He worked for many years as an editor and interior designer of textbooks and scholarly works, first with the
Bobbs-Merrill CompanyThe Bobbs-Merrill Company was a book publisher located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Bobbs-Merrill was known for publishing such authors as Richard Halliburton, David Markson, Ayn Rand, James Whitcomb Riley, Walter Dean Myers, and Irma S. Rombauer. Bobbs-Merrill also published the early works of...
and later in association with
Hackett Publishing CompanyHackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett titles are used as textbooks, making the company very...
.
Work
Carter writes in
free verseFree verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
and in traditional forms. Much of his early work is set in Mississinewa County, an imaginary place that includes the actual
Mississinewa RiverThe Mississinewa River is a tributary of the Wabash River in eastern Indiana and a small portion of western Ohio in the United States. It is long. Via the Wabash and Ohio rivers, it is part of the Mississippi River watershed. During the War of 1812, the river was the site of the Battle of the...
, a tributary of the
Wabash RiverThe Wabash River is a river in the Midwestern United States that flows southwest from northwest Ohio near Fort Recovery across northern Indiana to southern Illinois, where it forms the Illinois-Indiana border before draining into the Ohio River, of which it is the largest northern tributary...
. In recent years, as Carter has published increasingly on the web, his poetry has ranged farther afield.
His first collection,
Work, for the Night Is Coming, won the
Walt Whitman Award. His second,
After the Rain, received the
Poets' PrizeThe Poets' Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year. The $3000 annual prize is donated by a committee of about 20 American poets, who each nominate two books and who also serve as judges...
. His poems have appeared in literary journals in the U.S. and abroad and in the anthologies
Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Contemporary American Poetry, and
Writing Poems. He has received two literary fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Arts, a
Guggenheim Fellowship, and the
Indiana Governor’s Arts Award.
In 2008 Carter's poem "Heart's Forest," which appeared in issue # 38 of
Lunch, received the
Rosine Offen Memorial Award given by the
Free Lunch Arts Alliance.
His poem
Prophet Township, which first appeared in the
Valparaiso Poetry Review, was selected as one of the best poems published online during 2007. It is included in the print anthology
Best of the Web 2008 published by Dzanc Books.
Carter’s tanka sequence,
“A Country Visit,” first published in
Simply Haiku, was selected for
Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka. published in 2009 by Modern English Tanka Press.
Relevant studies
- Deines, Timothy J. The Gleaning: Regionalism, Form, and Theme in the Poetry of Jared Carter.” Master’s thesis, Cleveland State University, 1998.
- “Jared Carter.” Contemporary Authors . Vol. 145, pp. 75–76. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.
- Ponick, T. L., and Ponick, F. S. “Jared Carter.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 282, pp. 31–40. Detroit: Gale Research, 2003.
External links