Alicia Suskin Ostriker (born November 11, 1937) is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.
Alicia is married to the noted astronomer Jeremiah Ostriker who taught at Princeton University (1971–2001). She currently teaches poetry in New England College's Low-Residency MFA Program.

Early life

Ostriker was born in Brooklyn, New York to David Suskin and Beatrice Linnick Suskin. Her mother read her Shakespeare, and Alicia began writing poems at an early age. Ostriker went to high school at Ethical Culture Fieldston School

Ethical Culture Fieldston School

The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, known as "Fieldston", is a private "independent" school in New York City and a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. It has about 1600 students and a staff of 400 people , led by Dr. Damian J...

 in 1955.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University

Brandeis University

Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...

 (1959), and an M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

. Her doctoral dissertation, on the work of William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, became her first book, Vision and Verse in William Blake (1965).

Career and work

She began her teaching career at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 in 1965 and has served as a professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of English there since 1972. In 1969 her first collection of poems, Songs, was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston

Holt, Rinehart and Winston

Holt McDougal is an American publishing company, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, that specializes in textbooks for use in secondary schools. Holt, Rinehart and Winston was a division of Harcourt Education...

.
Her fourth book of poems, The Mother-Child Papers (1980), a feminist classic, was inspired by the birth of her son during the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

 and weeks after the Kent State shootings

Kent State shootings

The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre—occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970...

 ;throughout, she juxtaposes musings about motherhood with musings about war.

Ostriker's books of nonfiction explore many of the same themes manifest in her verse. They include Writing Like A Woman (1983), which explores the poems of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

, Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967...

, H.D.

H.D.

H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...

, May Swenson

May Swenson

Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson was an American poet and playwright...

 and Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

, and The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (1994), which approaches the Torah

Torah

Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...

 with a midrashic sensibility. She wrote the introduction to the collected works of Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...

 entitled Empire of Dreams (1994).

Ostriker’s sixth collection of poems, The Imaginary Lover (1986), won the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America. The Crack in Everything (1996) was a National Book Award

National Book Award

The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...

 finalist, and won the Paterson Poetry Award and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award. The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998 was also a 1998 National Book Award finalist.

Ostriker’s most recent nonfiction book is Dancing at the Devil’s Party (2000), where she examines the work of poets from Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

 to Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.-Early years:...

. Early in the introduction to the book, she disagrees with W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

’s assertion that poetry makes nothing happen. Poetry, Ostriker writes, "can tear at the heart with its claws, make the neural nets shiver, flood us with hope, despair, longing, ecstasy, love, anger, terror [.]”

Further reading

• Poets on the Psalms featuring Alicia Ostriker. Edited by Lynn Domina (Trinity University Press, 2008).
• Sin:Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad. ISBN 978-1-55728-948-3
• No Heaven (Pitt Poetry Series) ISBN 0-8229-5875-9
• The Crack In Everything (Pitt Poetry Series) ISBN 0-8229-5593-8
• The Mother/Child Papers. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-8229-6033-1