Dorianne Laux

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Bio

Dorianne Laux’s latest book is Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected (W.W. Norton, 2019).  Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, winner of The Paterson Prize, is available from W.W. Norton. Her fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake (Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary) What We Carry (finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award) and Smoke, as well as two fine small press editions, The Book of Women, and Dark Charms, both from Red Dragonfly Press. Co-author of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, she’s the recipient of three Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.

Widely anthologized, her work has appeared in the Best of APR, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and The Best of the Net. In 2001, she was invited by late Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz to read at the Library of Congress. Her poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Dutch, Afrikaans and Brazilian Portuguese, and her selected works, In a Room with a Rag in my Hand, have been translated into Arabic by Camel/Kalima Press. In 2014 singer/songwriter Joan Osborne adapted her poem, “The Shipfitter’s Wife” and set it to music on her newest release, “Love and Hate”. Ce que nous portons (What We Carry,) translated by Helene Cardona, has just been published by Editions du Cygne Press, Paris.

Projects

The presentation of the poem in public spaces

The memorization of poetry

Responsibilities

Program Director, Creative Writing

Research and Teaching

Reading Series

Graduate Thesis Advisor

Office Hours

• Mon: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
• Wed: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Research Publications

Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected (W.W. Norton)

The Book of Men (W.W. Norton)

Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton)

Smoke (BOA Editons, Ltd.)

What We Carry (BOA Editions, Ltd.)

Awake (Carnegie-Mellon Contemporary Classics)

The Book of Women, Dark Charms and Superman: The Chapbook (Red Dragonfly Press)

In a Room with a Rag in My Hand, Selected Poems (Arabic, Kalima Press)

Ce que nous portons (What We Carry,) translated by Helene Cardona (Editions du Cygne Press, Paris).

The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton)

Funded Research

Guggenheim Fellowship

NEA Fellowship

VCCA Fellowship

Summer Research Grant

Presentations

The Marriage of Music and Meaning (Getting Poetry by Heart)

The Architecture of the Free-Verse Poem

The NEW New York School of Poets: The Children of Frank O’Hara

A Close Reading of Mark Doty’s “A Green Crab’s Shell”

The Becomming of a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” and Robert Wrigley’s “Horseflies”

Area(s) of Expertise

Contemporary American Poetry, Women's Poetry, Poetry of Work and Class, The Poetry of Sex and Death, Narrative Design in Poetry and Short Fiction, Close Readings, The Broadside