David Biespiel
Encyclopedia
David Biespiel is an American poet who was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma
, raised in Houston, Texas
, and educated at Stanford University
, University of Maryland
, and Boston University
. He is the founder of the Attic Institute in Portland, Oregon
, an independent literary studio that is the home for creative writing
workshops and individual consultations for over 500 writers each year.
and Bruce Kimball
, and later coached and developed regional and national champions and finalists in diving.
in the early 1980s, Biespiel was one of the central figures of Glenville, a nexus of young activists, artists, educators, conservationists, musicians, and writers that included Rick Gifford, Paul Ruest, G. Nicholas Keller, Jeff Smith, Laura Sydell
, Dayton Marcucci, Marc Maron
, Mark Lurie, Laurie Geltman
, and Jade Barker. He began publishing poems and essays in 1986 after moving to remote Brownsville, Vermont
. From 1988-1993 he lived and wrote in Washington, DC, and from 1993-1995 in San Francisco. He has lived in Portland, Oregon
since 1995.
He is a contributor to American Poetry Review, The New Republic
, Poetry
, and Slate
. After reviewing poetry for nearly fifteen years in journals and newspapers, including in The Washington Post
, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times
, he has been, since January 2003, the poetry columnist for The Oregonian
. His monthly column is the longest running newspaper column on poetry
in the U.S.
In 1999, he founded the Attic Institute. The institute is a haven for writers and a unique knowledge studio dedicated to engaging ways to create, explore, and innovate, to generate and participate in important and lively conversation, and to reflect on ideas, the imagination, and civic life, as well as on artistic, cultural, and social experience. With its writers' workshops and individual consultations, the Attic Institute has become the focal point for a vibrant literary community in Portland. Writers have seeded collaborations, writing groups, magazine start-ups, and literary friendships. They have signed with publishers and agents, been accepted into residencies and graduate programs, and embarked on literary enterprises of their own. Willamette Week
named the Attic Institute the most important school of writers in Portland.
In 2005 he was named editor of Poetry Northwest
—one of the nation's most prestigious magazines devoted exclusively to poetry. Appointed by the University of Washington to revive the journal after it shuttered its doors in 2002 following four decades of continuous publication, Biespiel moved the magazine's offices to Portland, and is widely credited with reviving the magazine to national prominence. He served as editor until 2010.
Since 2008 Biespiel has been a prominent contributor to The Politico
's Arena, a cross-party, cross-discipline daily conversation about politics and policy among current and former members of Congress, governors, mayors, political strategists and scholars.
In 2009 he helped formed the trio Incorporamento. The artistic group includes Biespiel, Oregon Ballet Theater
principal dancer Gavin Larsen, and musician Joshua Pearl. Incorporamento debuted its first pieces of original poetry, dance, and music on January 10, 2010, at the Fertile Ground Festival.
In 2010 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle
where he serves as a judge for the annual NBCC book awards.
He has taught creative writing
and literature
throughout the United States
, including at George Washington University
, University of Maryland
, Stanford University
, Portland State University
, and Lynchburg College
as the Richard H. Thornton Writer in Residence. He currently divides his teaching among the M.F.A. Program at Pacific Lutheran University
, Oregon State University
, and Wake Forest University
, where he is poet in residence in the fall.
His first book, Shattering Air, published in 1996 when Biespiel was 32, is a book of autobiographical quietness composed in variegated blank verse. It was one of the last books published by the iconic American poetry editor and founder of BOA Editions, Al Poulin, Jr. "It is a test of the seamlessness of his art that David Biespiel so constantly finds the 'ruminant undercurrents' of his subjects without ever sacrificing their actuality," Stanley Plumly
wrote in his Introduction to the book. "And it is all the more remarkable in a first book that this undercurrent -- what Wordsworth once called 'the imminent soul in things' -- should so effectively supersede appearances. If this sounds a grand prescription, in Biespiel's hands it is not." Publisher's Weekly characterized the debut collection as "sustained by a search for transcendent, intuitive truths." From Chelsea: “Biespiel has a gift for transformation. He can make a command sound like an incantation. He can create psalm-like beauty from the repetition of a simple phrase. One must note the instances of raw brilliance.” And poet A.V. Christie praised the book in The Journal
for being "poems of quiet grandeur and nobility [that] bring to mind an out-of-the-self Keatsian sensibility.”
Biespiel's second major collection, Wild Civility, published in 2003, marks a dramatic shift in both style and formal intensity from the poems in Shattering Air. The major achievement of the book is Biespiel's invention of his "American sonnet." These explosive and innovative nine-line dramatic monologues are variations on the historic English and Italian sonnet and rumble across the page with a jazzy linguistic verve that recalls the paintings of Jackson Pollack and the poetry of Walt Whitman
. From the University of Washington Press: "Using with revelatory precision the vocabularies of history, science, art, sport, philosophy, religion, literature, government, and domestic life, Biespiel has crafted a hip, musical, elastic language that travels the registers of expression: lush and coarse, gaudy and austere, pliant and rigidly tough. The civility of the poems is the form; the wildness is the bristling energy of the language. Passionate, resilient, rich with wit and word play, these poems affirm David Biespiel’s increasing stature as a poet of remarkable accomplishment." Writing in Poetry (magazine)
, David Orr cited “Biespiel’s best poems in this untraditional vein" as the ones with the "clearest connection to lyric poetry.” Michael Collier
praised the book for demonstrating "the pure and powerful recombinant energy of language that is the essence of lyric poetry."
The Book of Men and Women, Biespiel's third major book, was hailed by the Poetry Foundation
as one of the best books of the year for 2009. The book also was honored with the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry
in 2011, selected by Robert Pinsky
, who praised Biespiel as a poet who had "mastered his own grand style." Continuing the expressionistic style coupled with sharp lines and stanzas so prevalent in Wild Civility, Biespiel crafted a book that uses luxurious language as a means to deal with matters of tremendous human tautness. From the University of Washington Press: "The Book of Men and Women...confronts the frailties of love and desire with unflinching intimacy and gratitude." In his essay-review, "A Good Long Scream," published in Poetry
, critic Nate Klug praises Biespiel's "ferocious" imagination and his "quirky, alliterative idiom that produces many memorable phrases...A reviewer of Cormac McCarthy once called the novelist’s work 'a good, long scream in the ear.' The Book of Men and Women, with its rogue characters and laundry lists of loss, pursues a similar effect. Biespiel’s bristly voice is the first thing most readers will note, and indeed his writing is successful to the degree that this voice performs—that is, remains rhetorically compelling—throughout the course of the poem."
. Writing about the importance of citizen-poets, Biespiel contends that:
"Beyond the essential concern for writing poems, the poet’s role must also include public participation in the life of the Republic. By and large, poets have lived by the creed that this sort of exposure can be achieved only through the making of poems, that to be civically engaged in any other fashion would poison the creative self. But while poems are the symbolic vessels for the imagination and metaphor, there are additional avenues to speak to the tribe. The function of the poet may be to mythologize experience, but another function is to bring a capacity for insight—including spiritual insight—into contact with the political conditions of existence. The American poet must speak truth to power and interpret suffering. And just as soon as the American poet actually speaks in public about civic concerns other than poetry, both American poetry and American democracy will be better off for it."
Controversy spread from the Poetry Foundation
to The Huffington Post
, with Garrett Hongo
, Stephen Burt
, Terrance Hayes
, Daisy Fried
and others commenting on the essay online and in print. While Terrance Hayes lauded the essay's intentions by writing that "I’m absolutely interested in poets who are doing exactly what Biespiel proposes," critic Stephen Burt contended that Biespiel's claims are "bad for our poetry."
In the March 11, 2010 online edition of The New York Times
, Gregory Cowles covered the ongoing debate and commented, "I’m struck by the plaintive note that hums just beneath Biespiel’s argument: as much as it’s a rousing call to political action, his essay is also an eloquent statement of the anxiety of irrelevance." Cowles compares Biespiel's concerns to similar ones expressed by fiction writer David Foster Wallace
: "For Biespiel, poetry doesn’t matter because poets aren’t political enough. For Wallace, poetry doesn’t matter because poets have neglected the common reader."
Responding to the controversy, Biespiel wrote in the July/August 2010 issue of Poetry (magazine)
: "I hold that poets retain a special stature in the human community. The greatest title in a democracy is neither president nor poet. It is citizen. And so I stand with those who see not just the nobility of, but the pragmatic need for, fusing the citizen with the poet."
On December 2, 2010, "This Land Is Our Land" was cited by the Poetry Foundation
as one of the top read articles on its website.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, raised in Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
, and educated at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, and Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
. He is the founder of the Attic Institute in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, an independent literary studio that is the home for creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
workshops and individual consultations for over 500 writers each year.
Biography
David Biespiel—pronounced buy-speel—attended Beth Yeshurun, the oldest Jewish school in Houston. Reared in a family that valued athletic excellence (one brother was a member of the United States Gymnastics team), he competed in the U.S. Diving Championships against Olympians Greg LouganisGreg Louganis
Gregory "Greg" Efthimios Louganis is an American Olympic diver and author.He received the James E. Sullivan Award from the Amateur Athletic Union in 1984 as the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States....
and Bruce Kimball
Bruce Kimball
Bruce D. Kimball is an American diver and coach. He won a silver medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics....
, and later coached and developed regional and national champions and finalists in diving.
Career
David Biespiel has been called "a big thinker, a doer, and a hard-charging literary force." Living in BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in the early 1980s, Biespiel was one of the central figures of Glenville, a nexus of young activists, artists, educators, conservationists, musicians, and writers that included Rick Gifford, Paul Ruest, G. Nicholas Keller, Jeff Smith, Laura Sydell
Laura Sydell
Laura Sydell reports on Digital Culture for NPR. She was born in New Jersey, and is a former senior technology reporter for Public Radio International's Marketplace, and a regular reporter on for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition...
, Dayton Marcucci, Marc Maron
Marc Maron
Marc Maron is an American stand-up comedian and podcast host.He has been host of The Marc Maron Show, and co-host of both Morning Sedition, and Breakroom Live, all politically-oriented shows, produced under the auspices of Air America Media. He was also the host of Comedy Central's Short Attention...
, Mark Lurie, Laurie Geltman
Laurie Geltman
Laurie Geltman , is an American rock singer/songwriter. She studied at the Berklee College of Music as a film score major, and began performing in the early 1990s with the experimental rock group Vasco da Gama. After that, she began her solo career...
, and Jade Barker. He began publishing poems and essays in 1986 after moving to remote Brownsville, Vermont
Brownsville, Vermont
Brownsville is an unincorporated village in West Windsor, Vermont, United States. Located on State Route 44, the village houses a number of administrative offices for the town of West Windsor....
. From 1988-1993 he lived and wrote in Washington, DC, and from 1993-1995 in San Francisco. He has lived in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
since 1995.
He is a contributor to American Poetry Review, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, Poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, and Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
. After reviewing poetry for nearly fifteen years in journals and newspapers, including in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, he has been, since January 2003, the poetry columnist for The Oregonian
The Oregonian
The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...
. His monthly column is the longest running newspaper column on poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
in the U.S.
In 1999, he founded the Attic Institute. The institute is a haven for writers and a unique knowledge studio dedicated to engaging ways to create, explore, and innovate, to generate and participate in important and lively conversation, and to reflect on ideas, the imagination, and civic life, as well as on artistic, cultural, and social experience. With its writers' workshops and individual consultations, the Attic Institute has become the focal point for a vibrant literary community in Portland. Writers have seeded collaborations, writing groups, magazine start-ups, and literary friendships. They have signed with publishers and agents, been accepted into residencies and graduate programs, and embarked on literary enterprises of their own. Willamette Week
Willamette Week
Willamette Week is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Portland, Oregon, United States. It features reports on local news, politics, sports, business and culture....
named the Attic Institute the most important school of writers in Portland.
In 2005 he was named editor of Poetry Northwest
Poetry Northwest
Poetry Northwest was founded as a quarterly, poetry-only journal in 1959 by Errol Pritchard, with Carolyn Kizer, Richard Hugo, and Nelson Bentley as co-editors...
—one of the nation's most prestigious magazines devoted exclusively to poetry. Appointed by the University of Washington to revive the journal after it shuttered its doors in 2002 following four decades of continuous publication, Biespiel moved the magazine's offices to Portland, and is widely credited with reviving the magazine to national prominence. He served as editor until 2010.
Since 2008 Biespiel has been a prominent contributor to The Politico
The Politico
The Politico is an American political journalism organization based in Arlington, Virginia, that distributes its content via television, the Internet, newspaper, and radio. Its coverage of Washington, D.C., includes the U.S. Congress, lobbying, media and the Presidency...
's Arena, a cross-party, cross-discipline daily conversation about politics and policy among current and former members of Congress, governors, mayors, political strategists and scholars.
In 2009 he helped formed the trio Incorporamento. The artistic group includes Biespiel, Oregon Ballet Theater
Oregon Ballet Theater
Oregon Ballet Theatre is a ballet company in Portland, Oregon, United States.- History :The company is the result of the 1989 merger of Ballet Oregon and Pacific Ballet Theater...
principal dancer Gavin Larsen, and musician Joshua Pearl. Incorporamento debuted its first pieces of original poetry, dance, and music on January 10, 2010, at the Fertile Ground Festival.
In 2010 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle
National Book Critics Circle
The National Book Critics Circle is an American tax-exempt organization for active book reviewers. Its flagship is the National Book Critics Circle Award....
where he serves as a judge for the annual NBCC book awards.
He has taught creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
throughout the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, including at George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
, University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, Portland State University
Portland State University
Portland State University is a public state urban university located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1946, it has the largest overall enrollment of any university in the state of Oregon, including undergraduate and graduate students. It is also the only public university in...
, and Lynchburg College
Lynchburg College
Lynchburg College is a private college in Lynchburg, Virginia, USA, related by covenant to the Christian Church with approximately 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students. The Princeton Review lists it as one of the 368 best colleges in the nation...
as the Richard H. Thornton Writer in Residence. He currently divides his teaching among the M.F.A. Program at Pacific Lutheran University
Pacific Lutheran University
Pacific Lutheran University is located in Parkland, a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. In September 2009, PLU had a student population of 3,582 and approximately 280 full-time faculty...
, Oregon State University
Oregon State University
Oregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are more than 200 academic degree programs offered through the...
, and Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University is a private, coeducational university in the U.S. state of North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, is...
, where he is poet in residence in the fall.
Poetry
David Biespiel is one of his generation's most inventive formalists. The hallmark of his poems is an intricate blending of traditional formal elements with contemporary free verse action that has earned him praise as a "true poetic innovator."His first book, Shattering Air, published in 1996 when Biespiel was 32, is a book of autobiographical quietness composed in variegated blank verse. It was one of the last books published by the iconic American poetry editor and founder of BOA Editions, Al Poulin, Jr. "It is a test of the seamlessness of his art that David Biespiel so constantly finds the 'ruminant undercurrents' of his subjects without ever sacrificing their actuality," Stanley Plumly
Stanley Plumly
Stanley Plumly is an American poet, who is professor of English and director of University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program....
wrote in his Introduction to the book. "And it is all the more remarkable in a first book that this undercurrent -- what Wordsworth once called 'the imminent soul in things' -- should so effectively supersede appearances. If this sounds a grand prescription, in Biespiel's hands it is not." Publisher's Weekly characterized the debut collection as "sustained by a search for transcendent, intuitive truths." From Chelsea: “Biespiel has a gift for transformation. He can make a command sound like an incantation. He can create psalm-like beauty from the repetition of a simple phrase. One must note the instances of raw brilliance.” And poet A.V. Christie praised the book in The Journal
The Journal
The Journal was a popular current affairs newsmagazine on CBC Television from 1982 to 1992. It aired weeknights at 10:22 pm, following The National at 10:00 pm, and expanding on stories presented on there with in-depth interviews, documentaries, and televised "town hall" meetings...
for being "poems of quiet grandeur and nobility [that] bring to mind an out-of-the-self Keatsian sensibility.”
Biespiel's second major collection, Wild Civility, published in 2003, marks a dramatic shift in both style and formal intensity from the poems in Shattering Air. The major achievement of the book is Biespiel's invention of his "American sonnet." These explosive and innovative nine-line dramatic monologues are variations on the historic English and Italian sonnet and rumble across the page with a jazzy linguistic verve that recalls the paintings of Jackson Pollack and the poetry of 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...
. From the University of Washington Press: "Using with revelatory precision the vocabularies of history, science, art, sport, philosophy, religion, literature, government, and domestic life, Biespiel has crafted a hip, musical, elastic language that travels the registers of expression: lush and coarse, gaudy and austere, pliant and rigidly tough. The civility of the poems is the form; the wildness is the bristling energy of the language. Passionate, resilient, rich with wit and word play, these poems affirm David Biespiel’s increasing stature as a poet of remarkable accomplishment." Writing in Poetry (magazine)
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
, David Orr cited “Biespiel’s best poems in this untraditional vein" as the ones with the "clearest connection to lyric poetry.” Michael Collier
Michael Collier (poet)
Michael Robert Collier is an American poet, teacher, creative writing program administrator and editor. He has published five books of original poetry, a translation of Euripedes' Medea, a book of prose pieces about poetry, and has edited three anthologies of poetry. From 2001 to 2004 he was the...
praised the book for demonstrating "the pure and powerful recombinant energy of language that is the essence of lyric poetry."
The Book of Men and Women, Biespiel's third major book, was hailed by the Poetry Foundation
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation is a Chicago-based American foundation created to promote poetry in the wider culture. It was formed from Poetry magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ruth Lilly....
as one of the best books of the year for 2009. The book also was honored with the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry
Oregon Book Award
The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually by Literary Arts, Inc. for "the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama and young readers literature." -History:...
in 2011, selected by Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry...
, who praised Biespiel as a poet who had "mastered his own grand style." Continuing the expressionistic style coupled with sharp lines and stanzas so prevalent in Wild Civility, Biespiel crafted a book that uses luxurious language as a means to deal with matters of tremendous human tautness. From the University of Washington Press: "The Book of Men and Women...confronts the frailties of love and desire with unflinching intimacy and gratitude." In his essay-review, "A Good Long Scream," published in Poetry
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
, critic Nate Klug praises Biespiel's "ferocious" imagination and his "quirky, alliterative idiom that produces many memorable phrases...A reviewer of Cormac McCarthy once called the novelist’s work 'a good, long scream in the ear.' The Book of Men and Women, with its rogue characters and laundry lists of loss, pursues a similar effect. Biespiel’s bristly voice is the first thing most readers will note, and indeed his writing is successful to the degree that this voice performs—that is, remains rhetorically compelling—throughout the course of the poem."
Controversy
In 2010, Biespiel sparked a national debate about the relationship between poets and democracy with the publication of his essay, "This Land Is Our Land," in Poetry (magazine)Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
. Writing about the importance of citizen-poets, Biespiel contends that:
"Beyond the essential concern for writing poems, the poet’s role must also include public participation in the life of the Republic. By and large, poets have lived by the creed that this sort of exposure can be achieved only through the making of poems, that to be civically engaged in any other fashion would poison the creative self. But while poems are the symbolic vessels for the imagination and metaphor, there are additional avenues to speak to the tribe. The function of the poet may be to mythologize experience, but another function is to bring a capacity for insight—including spiritual insight—into contact with the political conditions of existence. The American poet must speak truth to power and interpret suffering. And just as soon as the American poet actually speaks in public about civic concerns other than poetry, both American poetry and American democracy will be better off for it."
Controversy spread from the Poetry Foundation
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation is a Chicago-based American foundation created to promote poetry in the wider culture. It was formed from Poetry magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ruth Lilly....
to The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
, with Garrett Hongo
Garrett Hongo
Garrett Hongo is a Yonsei, fourth-generation Japanese American academic, poet and academic. The work of this Pulitzer-nominated writer draws on Japanese American history and own experiences.-Educational background:...
, Stephen Burt
Stephen Burt
Stephen Burt is a literary critic, poet, and a professor who teaches at Harvard University.-Elliptical Poetry:Burt received significant attention for coining the term "elliptical poetry" in a 1998 book review of Susan Wheeler's book, Smokes, in Boston Review magazine...
, Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes is a prize-winning American poet. His recent poetry collection Lighthead won the National Book Award for Poetry...
, Daisy Fried
Daisy Fried
-Life:She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1989.Her work has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Threepenny Review, Triquarterly....
and others commenting on the essay online and in print. While Terrance Hayes lauded the essay's intentions by writing that "I’m absolutely interested in poets who are doing exactly what Biespiel proposes," critic Stephen Burt contended that Biespiel's claims are "bad for our poetry."
In the March 11, 2010 online edition of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Gregory Cowles covered the ongoing debate and commented, "I’m struck by the plaintive note that hums just beneath Biespiel’s argument: as much as it’s a rousing call to political action, his essay is also an eloquent statement of the anxiety of irrelevance." Cowles compares Biespiel's concerns to similar ones expressed by fiction writer David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
: "For Biespiel, poetry doesn’t matter because poets aren’t political enough. For Wallace, poetry doesn’t matter because poets have neglected the common reader."
Responding to the controversy, Biespiel wrote in the July/August 2010 issue of Poetry (magazine)
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
: "I hold that poets retain a special stature in the human community. The greatest title in a democracy is neither president nor poet. It is citizen. And so I stand with those who see not just the nobility of, but the pragmatic need for, fusing the citizen with the poet."
On December 2, 2010, "This Land Is Our Land" was cited by the Poetry Foundation
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation is a Chicago-based American foundation created to promote poetry in the wider culture. It was formed from Poetry magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ruth Lilly....
as one of the top read articles on its website.
Poetry
- The Book of Men and Women, 2009 (Named 'Best Poetry of the Year' by the Poetry Foundation; winner of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry, selected by Robert Pinsky)
- Wild Civility, 2003
- Pilgrims & Beggars, 2002 (Awarded the Portlandia Prize)
- Shattering Air, 1996
Edited Collections
- Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets, 2006 (Awarded the Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Award)
- Artists' Communities, 1996
Fellowships
- Lannan Fellowship, 2007
- National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe 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...
, 1997 - Stegner FellowshipStegner FellowshipThe Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. The award is named after American Wallace Stegner , an historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and Stanford faculty member who founded the university's creative writing program. Ten...
, 1993–1995
External links
- Online interview about the founding of the Attic: http://atticwritersworkshop.com/node/87/
- Podcast interview with Brenda Subraman: http://google.com/search?q=cache:C-c5GM1FWvEJ:www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/3897662+david+biespiel&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=45&gl=us&client=safari
- Podcast interview on Cloudy Day Art: http://www.cloudydayart.com/2006/09/17/cloudy-day-art-64-interview-with-poet-david-biespiel/
- Blog Talk Radio interview on The Joe Milford Poetry Show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joe-milford-show/2009/10/01/joe-milford-hosts-david-biespiel
- Poetry Foundation selection of poems and prose: http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80745
- Recent pieces for Politico's Arena: http://www.politico.com/arena/bio/david_biespiel.html
- Listen to David Biespiel read the poem "Though Your Sins Be Scarlet" on SlateSlate (magazine)Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
: http://www.slate.com/id/2199845/ - Watch David Biespiel read the poem "Hallucinations: Mushrooms": http://college.up.edu/english/default.aspx?cid=2056&pid=638