Breaking the Jaws of Silence: Sixty American Poets Speak to the World

Contributors

Contributors Kim Addonizio was born in Washington, D.C. Among her honors are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. Her books of poetry include Lucifer at the Starlite (W. W. Norton, 2009); Tell Me (BOA Editions, 2000), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Jimmy & Rita (1997, reissued 2011); and others. Addonizio is also the author of Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within (W. W. Norton, 2009) and, with Dorianne Laux, coauthor of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997). She has published two novels with Simon & Schuster and a collection of stories with FC2. Addonizio was a founding editor of the journal Five Fingers Review. Ralph Angel was born in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986–2006 (2007 PEN USA Poetry Award), Twice Removed (2001), Neither World (1995 James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets), and Anxious Latitudes (1986) as well as a translation of the Federico García Lorca collection, Poema del cante jondo/Poem of the Deep Song. Recent awards include a gift from the Elgin Cox Trust, a Pushcart Prize, a Gertrude Stein Award, the Willis Barnstone Poetry Translation Prize, a Fulbright Foundation fellowship, and the Bess Hokin Award of the Modern Poetry Association. He is Edith R. White Distinguished Professor at the University of Redlands and a member of the faculty at Vermont College of the Arts. He lives in Los Angeles, California. Mary Jo Bang was born in Waynesville, Missouri. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a “Discovery”/The Nation award, a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Hodder Award from Princeton University. Her books Louise In Love and Elegy both received the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for a manuscript in progress. Bang is the author of six books of poems, including The Bride of E (2009), The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (2004), The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans 117 (2001), and Louise In Love (2001). Her translation of Dante’s Inferno was published in 2012. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is professor of English at Washington University. Coleman Barks was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Since 1977 he has collaborated with various scholars of the Persian language (most notably, John Moyne) to bring over into American free verse the poetry of the thirteenth-century mystic Jelaluddin Rumi. This work has resulted in twenty-one volumes, including the bestselling Essential Rumi in 1995, two appearances on Bill Moyers’s PBS specials, and inclusion in the prestigious Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. In 2004 he received the Juliet Hollister Award for his work in the interfaith area. In March 2005 the U.S. Department of State sent him to Afghanistan as the first visiting speaker there in twenty-five years. In May 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Tehran. In 2009 he was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Barks has published seven volumes of his own poetry, including WINTER SKY: Poems 1968–2008. He is now professor emeritus at the University of Georgia in Athens. Tony Barnstone was born in Middletown, Connecticut. Among his awards are the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, a fellowship from the California Arts Council, the Poets Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment from the Arts. He is the author of twelve books. His editions of poetry include Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki, winner of the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry (BKMK Press, 2009); The Golem of Los Angeles, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award in Poetry (2008); Sad Jazz: Sonnets (2005); and Impure: Poems by Tony Barnstone (1999). He is a distinguished translator of Chinese poetry and literary prose, including The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (Anchor), The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Shambhala), Laughing Lost in the Monuntains: Poems of Wang Wei (University Press of New England), and Chinese Erotic Poems (Everyman). His multimedia work includes Tokyo Burning, a CD of original music based on his book of WWII poems. He is the Albert Upton Professor of English at Whittier College. 118 ✦ CONTRIBUTORS Willis Barnstone was born in Lewiston, Maine. He has received the NEA, NEH, Emily Dickinson Award of the PSA, four Book...