James Whitehead (poet)
Encyclopedia
James Tillotson Whitehead (March 15, 1936 St. Louis, Missouri
- August 16, 2003 Fayetteville, Arkansas
) was an American poet and novelist. He published four books of poetry and one critically acclaimed novel, Joiner.
Whitehead then joined his college friend William Harrison
in founding the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. They were soon joined by poet Miller Williams
, and the three men continued to build what would become one the nations most distinguished writing programs. Whitehead taught at Arkansas for 34 years, from 1965-1999. In 2003 he died on the 44th anniversary of his marriage with Guendaline Graeber Whitehead, with whom he had seven children. He was 67.
Whitehead’s only published novel, Joiner, came in 1971. The story about an intellectual NFL tackle from segregated Mississippi received wide acclaim from the most respected reviewers including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. In reviewing the book for Times, novelist R. V. Cassill, wrote: "What Whitehead has achieved is to sound the full range of the Deep South's exultation and lament. Once again, we are told that Mississippi is our Ireland, in literature and politics. His tirade makes an awesome, fearful and glorious impact on the mind and ear." Many people, including President Jimmy Carter considered Joiner to be “one of the South’s best novels.”
Whitehead was constantly revising and experimenting, sometimes to a fault. Literary critic James S. Baumlin, on reading Whitehead’s cache of unpublished manuscripts, describes Whitehead’s “torturous writing process”:
Whitehead published four books of poetry: "Domains," "Local Men," "Actual Size" and "Near at Hand."
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
- August 16, 2003 Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville is the county seat of Washington County, and the third largest city in Arkansas. The city is centrally located within the county and is home to the University of Arkansas. Fayetteville is also deep in the Boston Mountains, a subset of The Ozarks...
) was an American poet and novelist. He published four books of poetry and one critically acclaimed novel, Joiner.
Biography
James Whitehead was born in St. Louis in 1936. He grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, where his family moved after World War II. Standing six foot 5 inches, and known as “Big Jim” he received a football scholarship at Vanderbilt University. However, a serious injury there dashed any hopes he had of a professional career. Instead, he focused on his studies, earning a bachelors degree in philosophy, then staying for a masters in English. He then went to the University of Iowa where he acquired an M.F.A. in creative writing.Whitehead then joined his college friend William Harrison
William Harrison (author)
William Neal Harrison is an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter perhaps best known for writing the short story Roller Ball Murder which was made into the movie Rollerball in 1975....
in founding the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. They were soon joined by poet Miller Williams
Miller Williams
Miller Williams is an American contemporary poet, as well as a translator and editor. He has authored over twenty-five books and won several awards for his poetry. His accomplishments have been chronicled in Arkansas Biography. He is perhaps best known for reading a poem at President Clinton's...
, and the three men continued to build what would become one the nations most distinguished writing programs. Whitehead taught at Arkansas for 34 years, from 1965-1999. In 2003 he died on the 44th anniversary of his marriage with Guendaline Graeber Whitehead, with whom he had seven children. He was 67.
Whitehead’s only published novel, Joiner, came in 1971. The story about an intellectual NFL tackle from segregated Mississippi received wide acclaim from the most respected reviewers including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. In reviewing the book for Times, novelist R. V. Cassill, wrote: "What Whitehead has achieved is to sound the full range of the Deep South's exultation and lament. Once again, we are told that Mississippi is our Ireland, in literature and politics. His tirade makes an awesome, fearful and glorious impact on the mind and ear." Many people, including President Jimmy Carter considered Joiner to be “one of the South’s best novels.”
Whitehead was constantly revising and experimenting, sometimes to a fault. Literary critic James S. Baumlin, on reading Whitehead’s cache of unpublished manuscripts, describes Whitehead’s “torturous writing process”:
- Whitehead was an obsessive reviser, who would give a day’s worrying to a single word or rhythm. Such care served him well when writing poetry, given the genre’s linguistic concentration; when he wrote fiction, however, this same process led to near-paralysis—to hundreds (literally) of drafts, most starting from scratch, each subtly different from the rest, all drawing on the man’s considerable poetic powers.
Whitehead published four books of poetry: "Domains," "Local Men," "Actual Size" and "Near at Hand."
Works
- Domains, Louisiana State University Press, 1966
- Local Men, University of Illinois Press, 1979, ISBN 9780252007637
- Actual Size Trilobite Press, 1985 (poetry chapbook)
- Near at Hand, University of Missouri Press, 1993, ISBN 9780826208781
- Joiner, Knopf, 1971, ISBN 9780394431437; University of Arkansas Press, 1991, ISBN 9781557282040 (novel)
- The panther: posthumous poems, Editor Michael Burns, University of Arkansas Press, 2008, ISBN 9780913785126
- For, from, about James T. Whitehead: poems, stories, photographs, and recollections, Editor Michael Burns, Photographer Bruce West, Moon City Press, 2009, ISBN 9780913785157
Awards
- 1972 Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in Fiction - Robert Frost Fellowship in Poetry, from Bread Loaf Writers' ConferenceBread Loaf Writers' ConferenceThe Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is a writers' conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont...
External links
- "Memories of UA educator live in new book", Northwest Arkansas Times, July 12, 2009