Sherod Santos: "A Writer's Life"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Sherod Santos’s “A Writer’s Life,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2003-2004 issue (Volume V, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Sherod Santos is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Perishing (W.W. Norton, 2003). His collection of poems, The Pilot Star Elegies (1999), which won a Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and The New Yorker Book Award. His other honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the B.F. Connors Long Poem Prize from the Paris Review, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, the Oscar Blumenthal Prize from Poetry magazine, and the Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poetry Prize. Santos has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

His book of essays on poetry and poetics, A Poetry of Two Minds, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, New Yorker, Paris Review, Parnassus, Poetry, and Yale Review.

In 2005 Santos published a collection of translations, Greek Lyric Poetry, which was awarded the Umhoefer Prize for Achievement in the Humanities. Andrew Mulvania conducts an interview with Santos in Volume V, Number 1 of VPR, which also contains my extended review of his work, “The Fundamental Desire to Sing: Two Decades of Poetry by Sherod Santos.” After the spring 2007 semester, Sherod Santos retired as Curators’ Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Missouri.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.