Catharine Savage Brosman (born 1934) is an American poet, essayist, and scholar of French literature and a former professor at Tulane University, where she held the Gore Chair of French Studies.
Catharine Savage Brosman (born 1934) is an American poet, essayist, and scholar of French literature and a former professor at Tulane University, where she held the Gore Chair of French Studies.
Brosman was born in Denver; she spent her girlhood there and in Alpine, Texas. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Rice University (then The Rice Institute) with a B.A. in Romance languages (1955) and an M.A. in French (1957). She then studied in France as a Fulbright scholar. She took her Ph.D. in French from Rice in 1960. She taught French at Rice, Sweet Briar College, the University of Florida, and Mary Baldwin College before settling at Tulane University in 1968, where she was appointed full professor in 1972.
In 1990 Brosman was named Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities for one term; she occupied the Gore Chair of French Studies from 1992 until her retirement as professor emerita as of 1997. She served also as visiting professor at the University of Sheffield in 1996 and was named Honorary Research Professor there.
Brosman has published numerous single-authored and edited books on French literature, including five volumes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Her poems have been published by journals in the United States and in England and France (in translation). In addition to the volumes listed below, she has published four chapbooks of verse, and her poems have been reprinted in anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times . She has also published translations of French poets.
After living in New Orleans for nearly forty years, she moved to Houston at the end of 2007. Many of the poems in Breakwater and On the Old Plaza were inspired by Brosman's remarriage in 2008 to her first husband, Patric Savage.
Brosman’s first creative work was hailed by critics for its vision and craftsmanship, as a profile in Contemporary Authors showed. [1] John Irwin Fischer spoke of Watering as “a community of individual verse shaped toward a vision of man which acknowledges both his uniqueness and his role in some still dark harmony.”. [2] Another reviewer called the collection “understated, splendidly wrought.” [3] D. E. Richardson, one of several reviewers who have mentioned Emily Dickinson in connection with Brosman, wrote that she “convinces us in the way of the old meditative landscape poetry that nature is full of human meanings which we must notice lest we fail as human souls.” [4] Vassar Miller called the book “a delightful shock” and remarked that Brosman had “only one way to go—up.” [5]
Subsequent assessments have been similarly favorable. Reviewing her second collection, Donald Stanford praised the form, “her own special kind of free verse—sensitive, perceptive, subtly rhythmical—quite superior to that of most practitioners of the medium.” [6] Concerning her third book, David Slavitt noted, “She started out well and keeps getting better... Why she hasn’t been laden with honors and awards is an unfathomable mystery to me.” [7] Gray Jacobik wrote that the New Mexico poems in that book “capture the radiance of that place better than any I have ever read that use the American Southwest for a setting.” [8] Reviewing Places in Mind, David Middleton asserted that Brosman was still at the height of her powers and singled out for commendation the poem “Crab Cakes.” [9] In starred reviews for Booklist, Ray Olson commended the “exceptionally well crafted” poems in The Muscled Truce and wrote that Range of Light stood “with much of Mary Austin and certain pages of Willa Cather among the finest poetry” of the American west. [10] Olson later called Brosman “one of the most elegant contemporary poets.” [11] In a review article, James Matthew Wilson called Breakwater "stunning," "a formidable collection," "one of the most intelligently unified, elegantly composed, and morally compelling books of poems I have read in years." [12] In a review of On the Old Plaza for Booklist, Ray Olson wrote, "Each poem, whatever its particular excellences, affords the company of one of the most delightfully acute, witty, and capable poets now writing." [13]
Brosman’s two volumes of creative prose have likewise been praised. Patrick Henry wrote of the “metaphysical self-consciousness” visible in The Shimmering Maya. [14] Sue Halpern said of Brosman’s writing in the collection that “her most powerful words are her most lyrical, the ones that honor the land.” Reviewing Finding Higher Ground, [15] Susan Meyers commended the author’s “intelligence, spirit, and vision.” [16]
Brosman received several teaching awards at Rice and at Tulane; she won the Tulane Liberal Arts and Science Research Prize in 1989; and she has been given various poetry prizes. She was short-listed by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities peer-review process for the position of poet laureate of Louisiana in 2003 and again in 2007. [17] She was awarded the Hugh Scott Cameron Prize by Rice in 1995 and was named a Distinguished Alumna in 2000.
Marly Youmans is an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Her work reflects certain recurring themes such as nature, magic, faith and redemption, and often references visual art.
Claudia Emerson was an American poet. She won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection Late Wife, and was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Tim Kaine in 2008.
David Kirby is an American poet and the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University (FSU).
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former poet laureate of Connecticut. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Frost Medal. From 1978 to 1994 she published under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek. She is the author or translator of over twenty books and five chapbooks of poetry for adults and children. While most of her work deals with historical subjects, in 2014 she published a memoir, named one of NPR's Best Books of 2014, entitled How I Discovered Poetry.
Brendan James Galvin is an American poet. His book, Habitat: New and Selected Poems 1965–2005, was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award.
Susan Wood is an American poet and the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English at Rice University.
Margaret Gibson is an American poet.
Sally Van Doren is an American poet and visual artist from St. Louis, Missouri. She was awarded the 2007 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for her first collection of poems. Her third book of poems, Promise, was released in August 2017.
Nicole Ruth Cooley is an American poet. She has authored six collections of poems, including Resurrection, Breach, Milk Dress, and Of Marriage. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Field, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, The Paris Review, PEN America, The Missouri Review, and The Nation. She co-edited, with Pamela Stone, the "Mother" issue of Women's Studies Quarterly.
Kate Daniels is an American poet.
James Brasfield is an American poet and translator.
Terry Randolph Hummer is an American poet, critic, essayist, editor, and professor. His most recent books of poetry are After the Afterlife and the three linked volumes Ephemeron, Skandalon, and Eon. He has published poems in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The Literati Quarterly, Paris Review, and Georgia Review. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship inclusion in the 1995 edition of Best American Poetry, the Hanes Prize for Poetry, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and three Pushcart Prizes.
Beth Ann Gylys is a poet and professor of English and Creative Writing at Georgia State University. She has published five poetry collections, three of which have won awards.
Brenda Marie Osbey is an American poet. She served as the Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2005 to 2007.
Walker Dabney Stuart III is an American poet.
Kelly Cherry was a novelist, poet, essayist, professor, and literary critic and a former Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010–2012). She was the author of more than 30 books, including the poetry collections Songs for a Soviet Composer, Death and Transfiguration, Rising Venus and The Retreats of Thought. Her short fiction was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South, and won a number of awards.
Jacqueline Osherow is an American poet, and Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah.
Ava Leavell Haymon was the 2013–2015 Poet Laureate of Louisiana.
The literature of Louisiana, United States, includes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Representative authors include Kate Chopin, Alcée Fortier, Ernest Gaines, Walker Percy, Anne Rice and John Kennedy Toole.
Jennifer Reeser is an American New Formalist poet of Native American descent. She is the author of several poetry collections, including An Alabaster Flask (2003), Winterproof (2005), Sonnets from the Dark Lady and Other Poems (2012), The Lalaurie Horror (2013), Indigenous (2019), and Strong Feather (2022). Similarly to Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, and Rhina Espaillat, she has also served as a teacher and mentor at the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference. Poet X.J. Kennedy praised Reeser's first poetry collection, which he said, "ought to have been a candidate for a Pulitzer."
 |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
