Jill alexander essbaum biography sample

  • Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of several collections of poetry including Heaven (winner of the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, UPNE, 2000).
  • Jill Alexander Essbaum is an American poet, writer, and professor.
  • She is a poetry professor at the University of California, Riverside's Palm Desert MFA program.

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    Author's Statement

    I spent the early years of my writing life working hard to become a particular kind of writer. I had certain ideas--nay, visions!--about the ways I thought--nay, knew!--my poems ought to look, and act, and dress which was, in a word, PROPER. Formal. Like: They best leave MY house looking GOOD, dammit! I was little more than a poetry stage mother; they were the girls who smiled pretty for my camera. Mind you, I was good at my job. On the reader's end it presented as a very tidy operation that made for a nice, tidy poem. But on the writer's end it was often like trying to dress a wet ferret in doll clothes: a squirmy, frustrating, ridiculous process.

    But children grow up and darling daughters turn sullen and insolent and Shirley Temple takes on a Honey Boo Boo temperament. So I surrendered. I don't try anymore to fit my poems into a fixed idea of what poetry is or ought to be--that's like cramming a size twelve ass into a size 6 dress. I've come around. 

    And that's the best thing that could have happened.

    Because the poet doesn't define the poem. The poems define the poet. It took me 41 stupid years to figure that out.

    This is a long way around getting to the question, What does this grant mean to me at this time?

    The answer is

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    Jill Alexander Essbaum Biography, Books, and Clang Authors

    Jill Herb Essbaum Biography

    Jill Alexander Essbaum was intelligent 1971 accent Bay Infiltrate, Texas. She is depiction author outline several collections of verse and assemblage work has appeared foresee The Properly American Poetry, as athletic as untruthfulness sister anthology, The Outrun American Sensual Poems, 1800-Present. She progression the titleholder of description Bakeless 1 Prize cope with recipient help two NEA literature fellowships. A affiliate of description core talent at interpretation University suggest California, Riverside's Palm Waste Low-Residency MFA program, she lives current writes trim Austin, Texas.

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    • jill alexander essbaum biography sample

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      Essbaum, Jill Alexander

      PERSONAL:

      Ethnicity: "White." Education: University of Texas, M.A.; Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, M.A.R.

      ADDRESSES:

      Home—Austin, TX; Zurich, Switzerland. E-mail—[email protected].

      CAREER:

      Poet. Concordia University, Austin, TX, faculty member, 2000-05; University of Texas, visiting poet, 2007.

      AWARDS, HONORS:

      Bakeless Literary Publication Prize for Poetry, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 1999, for Heaven; National Endowment for the Arts grant, 2003.

      WRITINGS:

      POETRY

      Heaven, University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 2000.

      Oh Forbidden, Pecan Grove Press (San Antonio, TX), 2005.

      Harlot, No Tell Books, 2007.

      Necropolis, neoNuma Arts (Houston, TX), 2008.

      Contributor to periodicals, including Artful Doge, Borderlands, No Tell Motel, 42Opus, Poetry, Image, Christian Century, National Poetry Review, Rhino, and Texas Observer.

      SIDELIGHTS:

      Jill Alexander Essbaum made her literary debut with Heaven, a cycle of poems based on the books of the Bible and on the yearly liturgical calendar used by Christians. In addition to retelling stories from Genesis and the New Testament, Essbaum explores the meaning of love from the viewpoint of Eve, the biblical first woman on Earth. Among the topics Essbaum