James Richardson (poet)
Encyclopedia
Career & Education
James Richardson an American poet and critic. He is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Princeton UniversityPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, where he has taught since 1980. He grew up in Garden City, New York
Garden City, New York
Garden City is a village in the town of Hempstead in central Nassau County, New York, in the United States. It was founded by multi-millionaire Alexander Turney Stewart in 1869, and is located on Long Island, to the east of New York City, from mid-town Manhattan, and just south of the town of...
and attended Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, graduating summa cum laude in 1971. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
in 1975.
Richardson is the author of several collections of poetry, criticism, and aphorisms, and has been awarded or nominated for some of the top awards in American literature, including the Jackson Poetry Prize, the 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...
, and 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....
.
His work has appeared in multiple editions of The Best American Poetry, and in publications including The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Slate.
Awards
- Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Robert H. Winner Award, Poetry Society of AmericaPoetry Society of AmericaThe 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...
- Cecil Hemley Award, Poetry Society of AmericaPoetry Society of AmericaThe 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...
- Emily Dickinson AwardWriter Magazine/Emily Dickinson AwardThe Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award is given once a year to a member of the Poetry Society of America "to honor the memory and poetry of Emily Dickinson, for a poem inspired by Dickinson though not necessarily in her style." The winner receives a $250 prize.-Winners:*2010: Marlene Rosen Fine,...
, Poetry Society of AmericaPoetry Society of AmericaThe 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... - NEH Fellowship
- New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship
- 1991 National Poetry SeriesNational Poetry SeriesThe National Poetry Series is an American literary awards program.Every year since 1979 it has sponsored the publication of five books of poetry...
- National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, for Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms
- 2010 National Book Award finalist for By the Numbers
- 2011 Jackson Poetry Prize
Reviews
James Richardson became an academic and a poet by the usual means, but he is, by his own admission, an accidental aphorist. He regarded Vectors (2001), his book of five hundred aphorisms and “ten-second essays,” during its construction as “often… more as a questionable habit than as a book in progress.” The book became a cult favorite almost immediately.
It is easy to see why some would call James Richardson a “nature poet”; not only do his poems, and especially his early ones, draw on fairly common images and the phenomena of the physical world, he also shows a likeably human relationship to his environment, the kind we tend to imagine Wordsworth had—this work is feeling and respectful, written very much from open-minded observation and experience.