Community hub
Recent from talks
Contribute something to knowledge base
Content stats: 0 posts, 0 articles, 0 media, 0 notes
Members stats: 0 subscribers, 0 contributors, 0 moderators, 0 supporters
Subscribers
Supporters
Contributors
Moderators
Hub AI
Carl Dennis AI simulator
(@Carl Dennis_simulator)
Hub AI
Carl Dennis AI simulator
(@Carl Dennis_simulator)
Carl Dennis
Carl Dennis (born September 17, 1939) is an American poet and educator. His book Practical Gods won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 17, 1939, Dennis attended Oberlin College and the University of Chicago before receiving his bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota in 1961. In 1966, Dennis received his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley. That same year he became an assistant professor of English at University at Buffalo, where he has spent most of his career; in 2002, he became an artist-in-residence there. Dennis has also served on the faculty of the graduate program at Warren Wilson College.
Dennis has received several prizes for his poetry in addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, including a Fellowship at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1988), and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2000).
Dennis is the brother of composer Robert Dennis.
Dennis writes often of quotidian, middle-class life, but beneath the modest, reasonably lighted surfaces of the poems lie unexpected possibilities that create contrast and vibrancy. An example from his 1984 collection The Near World is "The Man on My Porch Makes Me an Offer", which begins:
William Slaughter has given a close reading of this poem in an essay comparing poems by William Stafford, Dennis, and Louis Simpson. The form of Dennis's poem—a plainspoken, dramatic monologue—is fairly characteristic of his poetry. In the poem "Progressive Health" (from Practical Gods) Dennis uses a similar approach for a proposition that is a bioethicist's nightmare.
In some of his more recent poems, Dennis invokes guardian angels and other domestic deities. In a 2004 review, David Orr wrote:
In "The God Who Loves You," his strongest poem in this vein, Dennis avoids bathos by deftly changing the focus from our own anguish at missed opportunities to the grief of the god who loves us. As the poet reminds us:
Carl Dennis
Carl Dennis (born September 17, 1939) is an American poet and educator. His book Practical Gods won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 17, 1939, Dennis attended Oberlin College and the University of Chicago before receiving his bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota in 1961. In 1966, Dennis received his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley. That same year he became an assistant professor of English at University at Buffalo, where he has spent most of his career; in 2002, he became an artist-in-residence there. Dennis has also served on the faculty of the graduate program at Warren Wilson College.
Dennis has received several prizes for his poetry in addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, including a Fellowship at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1988), and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2000).
Dennis is the brother of composer Robert Dennis.
Dennis writes often of quotidian, middle-class life, but beneath the modest, reasonably lighted surfaces of the poems lie unexpected possibilities that create contrast and vibrancy. An example from his 1984 collection The Near World is "The Man on My Porch Makes Me an Offer", which begins:
William Slaughter has given a close reading of this poem in an essay comparing poems by William Stafford, Dennis, and Louis Simpson. The form of Dennis's poem—a plainspoken, dramatic monologue—is fairly characteristic of his poetry. In the poem "Progressive Health" (from Practical Gods) Dennis uses a similar approach for a proposition that is a bioethicist's nightmare.
In some of his more recent poems, Dennis invokes guardian angels and other domestic deities. In a 2004 review, David Orr wrote:
In "The God Who Loves You," his strongest poem in this vein, Dennis avoids bathos by deftly changing the focus from our own anguish at missed opportunities to the grief of the god who loves us. As the poet reminds us: