A. E. Stallings

Last updated
A. E. Stallings
Born (1968-07-02) July 2, 1968 (age 55)
Decatur, Georgia, U.S.
OccupationPoet
Education University of Georgia (AB)
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (MSt)
Literary movement New Formalism

Alicia Elsbeth Stallings (born July 2, 1968) [1] is an American poet, translator, and essayist.

Contents

Stallings has published five books of original verse: Archaic Smile (1999), Hapax (2006), Olives (2012), Like (2018), and This Afterlife (2022). She has published verse translations of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) and Hesiod's Works and Days , both with Penguin Classics, and a translation of The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice.

She has been awarded the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, [2] a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship [3] and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry [4] and the National Book Critics Circle Award. [5] Stallings is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. [6] On June 16, 2023, she was named the University of Oxford's 47th Professor of Poetry. [7] [8]

Background

Stallings was born and raised in Decatur, Georgia [1] and studied classics at the University of Georgia (A.B., 1990) and the Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (MSt in Latin Literature, 1991). She is an editor with the Atlanta Review . In 1999, Stallings moved to Athens, Greece. She is the Poetry Program Director of the Athens Centre [9] and teaches regularly at the Sewanee Summer Writers' Workshop and the West Chester University Poetry Conference. [10] She is married to the journalist John Psaropoulos.

Writing

Works

Poetry

Stallings's poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, [11] The Sewanee Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, Poetry, [12] and Poetry Review. She also contributes essays and reviews to the American Scholar, The Hudson Review, [13] the London Review of Books, [14] Parnassus, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Review, the TLS, the Wall Street Journal, and the Yale Review. Stallings work is widely anthologized, and has been included in the Best American Poetry in 1994, 2000, and 2015, and in the Best of the Best American Poetry (edited by Robert Pinsky). Stallings's poetry uses traditional form and has been associated with New Formalism. [15]

Her first book-length collection of poetry, Archaic Smile, was published in 1999 by Northwestern University Press and in 2022 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux; it won the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award. [16] In 2006, she published her second book-length collection of poetry, Hapax, also with Northwestern; it was awarded the 2008 Poets' Prize, awarded annually to the best book of verse published by an American during the preceding year, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Benjamin H. Danks Award. [17] Her third book-length collection, Olives, was published in 2012 with Northwestern; it was a finalist for that year's National Book Critics Circle Award. She published her fourth book-length collection, Like, in 2018, with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. It was a finalist for that year's Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. In 2022, Stallings published a selection of published poems, This Afterlife, also with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in the United States and Carcanet in the United Kingdom.

Translations & essays

Stallings is also a gifted translator, and has translated works written in Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, and Latin. In 2007, she published a translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura into rhyming fourteeners. The translation was introduced by distinguished classicist Richard Jenkyns and was published by Penguin; reviewing the book in the TLS, classicist and critic Peter Stothard called it "one of the most extraordinary classical translations of recent times." [18]

In 2017, Stallings published a verse translation of Hesiod's Works and Days , including an introductory essay and endnotes, also with Penguin. Classicist, critic, and poet Peter MacDonald characterized it as a "superb creation" and praised Stallings's "mastery of a characteristic voice" for Hesiod, while also noting the virtues of her "persuasively argued and brilliant Introduction". [19]

Stallings has also translated the Battle between the Frogs and the Mice, a parody of Homer widely regarded be a Hellenistic epyllion, into rhyming iambic pentameters; accompanied by illustrations from Grant Silverstein, it was published by Paul Dry in 2019. [20] In her review of the translation, poet Ange Mlinko wrote: "It shouldn’t be so rare for a poet to be serious and to sparkle at the same time, but Stallings is one of the few." [20]

Reception

In nominating Stallings for the position of Oxford Professor of Poetry in 2015, British literary critic and scholar Sir Christopher Ricks wrote: "The poems of A. E. Stallings are never less than the true voice of feeling, and always more ... she is able to realize in her poems the myriad minds of Europe." [21] The MacArthur Fellowship committee praised her "mastery" of poetic form, declaring that: "[t]hrough her technical dexterity and graceful fusion of content and form, Stallings is revealing the timelessness of poetic expression and antiquity's relevance for today." [22]

Poet Dana Gioia described Archaic Smile as "a debut of genuine distinction...Stallings displays extraordinary powers of invention and delight." [16] Able Muse, a formalist online poetry journal, noted that, "For all of Stallings' formal virtuosity, few of her poems are strictly metrically regular. Indeed, one of the pleasant surprises of Archaic Smile is the number of superb poems in the gray zone between free and blank verse." [23] Her work has been favorably compared to the poetry of Richard Wilbur and Edna St. Vincent Millay. [24]

In a review of her collection Olives, Publishers Weekly stated that they were most impressed with those poems that were not responses to ancient mythology, noting, "When she unleashes her technical gifts upon poems in which she builds a new narrative instead of building upon an old one, Stallings achieves a restrained, stark poise that is threatening even by New Formalism standards." [25]

Reviewing This Afterlife for the New York Times, poet and critic David Orr observed: "The main thing Stallings has going for her is that she’s good at writing poems. In particular, she’s good at writing the sort of poetry that evokes the word 'good,' rather than, for instance, 'brave' or 'disorienting.'" [26] In its review of This Afterlife, The New Yorker wrote: "Stallings’s formal ingenuity lends a music to her philosophically and narratively compelling verse. She draws inspiration from daily domestic life and from the mythology and history of Greece...crafting clever yet profound meditations on love, motherhood, language, and time." [27]

Awards

Stallings has received extensive recognition for her original poetry. Her debut poetry collection, Archaic Smile, was awarded the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award and was a finalist for both the Yale Younger Poets Series and the Walt Whitman Award. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994, 2000, 2015, 2016, and 2017. She has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, the 2004 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the James Dickey Prize.

Her second collection, Hapax (2006), was awarded the 2008 Poets' Prize. [28] In 2012, her third collection, Olives, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. [5] Her fourth collection, Like, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. [4] In April 2023, a volume of her selected works, This Afterlife, was shortlisted for the 2023 Runciman Award. [29]

Stallings has also won acclaim for her translations. In 2010, she was awarded the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. Her translation of Hesiod's Works and Days was shortlisted for the 2019 Runciman Award. [30]

In 2011, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship, [2] received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship [3] and was named a Fellow of United States Artists. [31] Stallings is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. [6]

In 2023, Stallings was elected as the 47th Oxford Professor of Poetry. [7] [8]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Bishop</span> American poet and short-story writer (1911–1979)

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Brodsky</span> Russian poet (1940–1996)

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, in 1940, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at Mount Holyoke College, and at universities including Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Muldoon</span> Irish poet

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Cole</span> American poet

Henri Cole is an American poet, who has published many collections of poetry and a memoir. His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic.

Frederick Seidel is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witter Bynner</span> American author (1881–1968)

Harold Witter Bynner, also known by the pen name Emanuel Morgan, was an American poet and translator. He was known for his long residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and association with other literary figures there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Wright (poet)</span> American writer; University of Virginia professor

Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac. From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. K. Williams</span> American poet, critic and translator (1936–2015)

Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Kleinzahler</span> American poet (born 1949)

August Kleinzahler is an American poet.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lydia Davis</span> American novelist

Lydia Davis is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Swann's Way by Marcel Proust and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Phillips</span> American writer and poet (born 1959)

Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.

Spencer Reece is a poet and presbyter who lives in Madrid, Spain. He graduated from Wesleyan University (1985). Reece received his M.A. from the University of York, England, his M.T.S. from the Harvard Divinity School, and a M.Div. from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale Divinity School. At Wesleyan, Spencer took a class in writing verse with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Annie Dillard, whom he describes as "an early encourager," along with James Merrill, the Stonington poet with whom Spencer corresponded.

Jean Valentine was an American poet and the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.

David Russell Ferry was an American poet, translator, and educator. He published eight collections of his poetry and a volume of literary criticism. He won the National Book Award for Poetry for his 2012 collection Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Cole</span> American poet

Peter Cole is a MacArthur-winning poet and translator who lives in Jerusalem and New Haven. Cole was born in 1957 in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended Williams College and Hampshire College, and moved to Jerusalem in 1981. He has been called "one of the handful of authentic poets of his own American generation" by the critic Harold Bloom. In a 2015 interview in The Paris Review, he described his work as poet and translator as "at heart, the same activity carried out at different points along a spectrum."

Ange Mlinko is an American poet and critic. The author of six books of poetry, Mlinko was named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2014–15. She teaches poetry at the University of Florida, and is the poetry editor of Subtropics. Her most recent book, Venice, was published in April 2022.

Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet.

Maureen McLane is an American poet, critic, and professor. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clare Cavanagh</span> American literary critic, Slavist and translator

Clare Cavanagh is an American literary critic, a Slavist, and a translator. She is the Frances Hooper Professor in the Arts and Humanities and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. An acclaimed translator of contemporary Polish poetry, she is currently under contract to write the authorized biography of Czesław Miłosz. She holds a B.A from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an M.A. and PhD from Harvard University. Before coming to Northwestern University, she taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her work has been translated into Russian, Polish, Hungarian, French, Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese.

References

  1. 1 2 Stallings, A. E. (10 March 2006). Hapax. Northwestern University Press. ISBN   9780810151710 . Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  2. 1 2 "A. E. Stallings". www.gf.org. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
  3. 1 2 Lee, Felicia R. (20 September 2011). "MacArthur Foundation Announces Winners of 'Genius' Awards". The New York Times.
  4. 1 2 "The Pulitzer Prizes".
  5. 1 2 John Williams (January 14, 2012). "National Book Critics Circle Names 2012 Award Finalists". The New York Times . Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  6. 1 2 "List of Active Members of American Academy of Arts & Sciences" (PDF).
  7. 1 2 "A E Stallings nominated for Professorship of Poetry". Institute of Classical Studies. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
  8. 1 2 "Tweet by the University of Oxford's Faculty of English".
  9. ↑ "Alicia E. Stallings, Director of the Athens Centre poetry program, wins the "genius grant"!". Athens Centre. 21 September 2011. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
  10. ↑ "A. E. Stallings | Georgia Writer's Hall of Fame". www.georgiawritershalloffame.org. Retrieved 2023-05-15.
  11. ↑ "You searched for A. E. STALLINGS – TheTLS". TheTLS. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
  12. ↑ "A. E. Stallings". poetryfoundation.org. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  13. ↑ "A.E. Stallings | The Hudson Review". hudsonreview.com. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  14. ↑ Stallings, A.E. "A.E. Stallings · LRB". London Review of Books. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  15. ↑ ""Interview with A. E. Stallings" by Ginger Murchison". Cortland Review. February 2002. Archived from the original on 17 May 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
  16. 1 2 "University of Evansville : Title". 2009-08-13. Archived from the original on 2009-08-13. Retrieved 2023-05-15.
  17. ↑ "Benjamin H. Danks Award – American Academy of Arts and Letters". artsandletters.org. Retrieved 2023-05-15.
  18. ↑ Lucretius. The Nature of Things.
  19. ↑ "A Review of A.E. Stallings' translation of Hesiod's Works and Days - Literary Matters". 2019-02-18. Retrieved 2023-05-15.
  20. 1 2 Mlinko, Ange (2020-07-16). "A Nony Mouse". London Review of Books. Vol. 42, no. 14. ISSN   0260-9592 . Retrieved 2023-05-15.
  21. ↑ "Ricks". aestallings. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  22. ↑ "A. E. Stallings - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  23. ↑ "Archaic Smile by A. E. Stallings - reviewed by A. M. Juster - Poetry at Able Muse - Symposium Issue". ablemuse.com. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  24. ↑ "Eight Takes: Fenton, Strand, Hopler, Zukofsky, Stallings, Voigt, Kinnell, Wojahn". poetryfoundation.org. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  25. ↑ "Fiction Book Review: Olives by A.E. Stallings. /TriQuarterly, $16.95 trade paper (80p) ISBN 978-0-81015-226-7". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  26. ↑ Orr, David (2023-01-13). "An Artisan in Verse, Whose Poems Shimmer and Resound". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  27. ↑ "Briefly Noted". The New Yorker. 2023-01-23. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  28. ↑ "Staff & Contacts". Atlanta Review. Archived from the original on 2016-08-02. Retrieved 2016-08-06.
  29. ↑ "Runciman Award – The best of Greece". runcimanaward.org. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  30. ↑ "An excerpt from Hesiod's Works and Days, translated by A. E. Stallings". runcimanaward.org. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  31. ↑ "United States Artists" . Retrieved 26 August 2015.
External audio
Nuvola apps arts.svg Conversation: A.E. Stallings, Poet and Translator Inspired by the Classics, PBS Newshour, Jeffrey Brown, September 30, 2011
Nuvola apps arts.svg In Greece, Getting By On The Brink Of A Financial Meltdown, For the Record, Rachel Martin, April 5, 2015
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.