David Wojahn

David Wojahn
Born	1953 (age 70–71)
Occupation	Poet and Professor of Creative Writing
Education	University of Minnesota (BA) University of Arizona (MFA)
Period	1970s-present
Genre	Poetry
Notable works	Icehouse Lights, 1982

David Wojahn (born 1953, in St. Paul, Minnesota) is a contemporary American poet who teaches poetry in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He has been the director of Virginia Commonwealth University's Creative Writing Program.

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Hello, I’m David Wojahn and the title of this poem is “Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908”. It’s after a photo taken that year by Lewis Hine. Propping his tripod, Hine remembers Childhood snowfall in Wisconsin, Flakes careening in prairie wind, A red sleigh skimming a frozen lake, Curlicued breath-mist of two dappled drays. But this is a blizzard of cotton dust From the looms & thirty thousand spindles, Gauze-air, whirlwind of innumerable floaters. The thermometer reads one hundred & three. & for these seven ten-year-olds, childhood Is six ten-hour shifts & on the seventh day They rest, heads nodding over hymnbooks, The drone of temperance & hellfire. But this is din, not drone, the spindles’ Manic prayer wheels, the doffers & the “little piecers,” skittering on hand & knee Beneath the clatter of the looms, Patrolling for clumps of cotton waste. This is weaver’s cough and “mattress maker’s fever,” The mad percussive shivaree & glossolalia. But then, for this moment, it ceases. The foremen have gathered their doffers & stilled the looms & spindles— Six boys, a lone girl. The foreman Adjusts his derby, pointing them toward the cyclop-eye: Hine’s 5 x 7. They are ordered To look solemn, as if they could look otherwise. Pulled slide, the flashpan Dusted with power, the sizzle as the room Erupts in light. Where the punctum? Where the studium? To end your life At twenty-five or thirty. Missing fingers, Mangled hands, to walk somnambulant To a sullen dormitory bunk, picking Cotton shavings from your hair, Mattress ticking spat onto a rude pine floor. But Hine has set his flashpan in its case, Broken down his tripod. Fiat Lux. Hine gathers his work & faintly smiles, Adjusting his bowler & making a fist, as if To attest that in this foul rag & sweatshop, In this charnel house of ceaseless Motion, his lens might render One fugitive moment of dignity. Light Is required, wrote Hine, light in floods.

Career

He was educated at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona.

Wojahn taught for many years at Indiana University. He has also taught at University of Alabama, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Chicago, University of Houston, and University of New Orleans. In 2003, he joined Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. 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, the professional decline of Jim Morrison or the drowning of Brian Jones. He has said that he hopes his poetry is considered "activist."

The poet Richard Hugo selected Wojahn's first book, Icehouse Lights, as a winner of the 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."^[1]

Wojahn has gone on to publish seven more books of poetry, all with the University of Pittsburgh Press. Wojahn has also edited a volume of poetry by his late wife, Lynda Hull, entitled The Only World (HarperPerennial, 1995), as well as her more recent Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2006).

Awards

Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
writing residencies from the Yaddo, and McDowell colonies.
1987-1988 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship
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 from the Folger Shakespeare Library^[2]
In April 2007, Wojahn was one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Interrogation Palace.^[3]^[4]
2003 List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 2003
National Endowment for the Arts, 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.^[5]^[6]
2008 he was named VCU's Outstanding Faculty Award Winner^[7]^[8]
2008 Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize.
2013 Poets' Prize

Works

Poetry Books

World Tree. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2011. ISBN 978-0-8229-6142-0.
Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982-2004. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-8229-5917-5.
Spirit Cabinet. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8229-5776-8.
The Falling Hour. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1997. ISBN 978-0-8229-3995-5.
Late Empire. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-8229-3793-7.
Mystery Train. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1990. ISBN 978-0-8229-3637-4.
Glassworks. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1987. ISBN 978-0-8229-3553-7.
Icehouse Lights. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1982. ISBN 978-0-300-02816-4.

Essays

From the Valley of Making: Essays on the Craft of Poetry. University of Michigan Press. 2015. ISBN 978-0-472-07250-7.
Strange Good Fortune (Arkansas, 2001)^[9]
"The Language of My Former Heart" : The Memory-Narrative In Recent American Poetry (Published in Green Mountains Review 1988)

Edited

Lynda Hull (1995). David Wojahn (ed.). The Only World. HarperPerennial. ISBN 978-0-06-095112-2.
Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry, with Jack Myers (Southern Illinois University, 1991)

References

^ Book description at Amazon.com Accessed on June 19, 2007.
^ University of Pittsburgh Press Archived 2007-06-17 at the Wayback Machine Accessed on June 19, 2007.
^ Virginia Commonwealth University press release Archived 2007-04-26 at the Wayback Machine Accessed on June 17, 2007.
^ Union Institute & University press release Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine Accessed on June 17, 2007
^ Blackbird Accessed June 17, 2007.
^ Henderson, Bill; Levine, Philip; Wojahn, David (30 March 1986). The Pushcart Prize XI: Best of the Small Presses ... with an Index to the First Eleven Volumes ; an Annual Small Press Reader. Pushcart Press. ISBN 9780916366391 – via Google Books.
^ "University to honor outstanding faculty at 26th Convocation". vcu.edu.
^ "12 college teachers honored in Virginia". The Richmond Times Dispatch. January 27, 2009. Archived from the original on September 18, 2012.
^ University of Arkansas Press. Accessed June 17, 2007.

External links

This page was last edited on 6 April 2024, at 16:23

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