Life and career

Powell lived in various places growing up, then graduated high school from Lindhurst High School

Lindhurst High School

Lindhurst High School is located in Olivehurst, California, USA. It is one of two high schools in the Marysville Joint Unified School District and draws students from the communities of Olivehurst, Linda, Plumas Lake, and Marysville...

 in Linda, California

Linda, California

Linda is a census-designated place in Yuba County, California, United States. The population was 17,773 at the 2010 census, up from 13,474 at the 2000 census...

. He then worked in a number of jobs before eventually settling in Santa Rosa, California

Santa Rosa, California

Santa Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. The 2010 census reported a population of 167,815. Santa Rosa is the largest city in California's Wine Country and fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont and 26th...

, where he attended Sonoma State University

Sonoma State University

Sonoma State University is a public, coeducational business and liberal arts college affiliated with the California State University system. The main campus is located in Rohnert Park, California, United States and lies approximately south of Santa Rosa and north of San Francisco...

. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1991 and a master's in 1993. Not long after completing his graduate work at Sonoma State, he entered the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa

University of Iowa

The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...

.

In 1996, he graduated from Iowa and began a career as a poet and university professor. Powell has taught at a number of different universities, including Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, Sonoma State University

Sonoma State University

Sonoma State University is a public, coeducational business and liberal arts college affiliated with the California State University system. The main campus is located in Rohnert Park, California, United States and lies approximately south of Santa Rosa and north of San Francisco...

, San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...

, and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, where he served as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry. In 2004, Powell left Harvard for The University of San Francisco, where he teaches in the English department.

Awards and recognition

In addition to serving as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard (itself a recognition of both creative and scholarly talent), Powell has won the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America

Poetry Society of America

The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists including Witter Bynner. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the have included such renowned writers as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent...

, a grant for the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, and a Paul Engle

Paul Engle

Paul Engle , noted American poet, editor, teacher, literary critic, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered as the long-time director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and as founder of the International Writing Program , both at the University of Iowa.-Life:Engle is often mistakenly...

 Fellowship. His second collection, Lunch, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and his third book, Cocktails, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

National Book Critics Circle Award

The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....

 for Poetry.

On February 3, 2010, after the publication of Chronic in 2009, Claremont Graduate University announced that Powell had won its prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.
Chronic also won the 2009 Northern California Book Award and the 2009 California Book Award.

He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.

Work

Considered by some an experimental poet, Powell mixes both conventional and non-conventional techniques. For example, his early poems do not have titles; the first lines serve as the poems' working titles. He also does not capitalize the first letter of a new sentence. In this sense, he is reminiscent of E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...

; however Powell's poems are more edgy. His work often moves back and forth between popular culture like movies and music and more complicated themes like religion and AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

; he uses numerous rhetorical devices, especially puns, as bridges between these two spheres of experience. Powell's first three books of poems are considered a kind of trilogy on the AIDS epidemic.

Writing in the New York Times, critic Stephen Burt said of Powell's work, "No accessible poet of his generation is half as original, and no poet as original is this accessible."

Poetry

• Cocktails, Graywolf Press
  Graywolf Press
  Graywolf Press is an independent, non-profit publisher located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Founded on a dedication to the creation and promotion of thoughtful and imaginative contemporary literature essential to a vital and diverse culture, Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.Now...
  
  , 2004, ISBN 9781555973957
• Chronic, Graywolf Press, 2009, ISBN 9781555975166

Translation

• Cocktails, Luxbooks, 2009, ISBN: 9783939557364 - A bilingual selection from Powell's four collections has been published in Germany.

External links

• Two poems in Triquarterly
• Eleven poems by D. A. Powell at the Poetry Foundation
• Interview with D. A. Powell in Nashville Review
• Doug Powell page at the Here Comes Everybody Blog
• A Poetry Reading by Powell from The New York Times
• Panic in the Year Zero, a new poem for Harvard Class Day, "Panic in the Year Zero", May 26, 2010.
• Interview about Powell's "corydon and alexis, redux"