Ralph Salisbury

Last updated
Ralph James Salisbury
BornJanuary 24, 1926
DiedOctober 9, 2017
Occupation(s)Poet, Writer, Editor, Professor
SpouseIngrid Wendt
Children3

Ralph James Salisbury (January 24, 1926 - October 9, 2017) was an American poet. [1] His poem "In the Children's Museum in Nashville" was published in The New Yorker in 1960, making him one of the first self-identified Native American poets to receive national attention. His autobiography So Far, So Good won the 2012 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. His book Light from a Bullet Hole: Poems New and Selected was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. [2]

Contents

Early life

Ralph Salisbury was born in 1926 on a farm in Fayette County in northeast Iowa to an Irish American mother and a father he claimed had English, Cherokee, and Shawnee ancestry, [3] who raised him on a farm with no electricity or running water. [4] Although he identified as Native American, he was not enrolled in any Nation nation. [5] He survived a lightning strike at the age of 15. [6] A year after graduating from Aurora (Iowa) High School at age 16, he enlisted in the Air Force and was trained as an aerial gunman, completing his training within days of the end of World War Two. [7] The G.I Bill enabled him to enroll in the North Iowa Teachers College and, later, the University of Iowa, where he studied with Robert Lowell and earned a MFA degree. [8]

Awards

Bibliography

Autobiography

Published poetry collections

Prose

Translations

Poesie Da Un Retaggio Cherokee, Multimedia Edizioni, Salerno, Italy 1995, Tr. Prof. Fedora Giordano.

Death

Salisbury died peacefully on October 9, 2017. He was survived by his wife, Ingrid Wendt, and three children: Jeffrey Salisbury, Brian Salisbury, and Martina Salisbury. [11]

Related Research Articles

Theodore J. Kooser is an American poet. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. Kooser was one of the first poets laureate selected from the Great Plains, and is known for his conversational style of poetry.

Lewis Putnam Turco is an American poet, teacher, and writer of fiction and non-fiction. Turco is an advocate for Formalist poetry in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Doty</span> American poet and memoirist (born 1953)

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paula Gunn Allen</span> American poet

Paula Gunn Allen was an American poet, literary critic, activist, professor, and novelist. Of mixed-race European-American, Arab-American, and Native American descent, she identified with her mother's people, the Laguna Pueblo. Gunn Allen wrote numerous essays, stories and poetry with Native American and feminist themes, and two biographies of Native American women. She edited four collections of Native American traditional stories and contemporary writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diane Glancy</span> American writer and professor

(Helen) Diane Glancy is an American poet, author, and playwright.

Maurice Frank Kenny was an American poet who identified as Mohawk descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joy Harjo</span> American Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Angel</span> American poet and educator (1951–2020)

Ralph Angel was an American poet and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Collins (poet)</span> American poet

Martha Collins is a poet, translator, and editor. She has published eleven books of poetry, including Casualty Reports, Because What Else Could I Do, Night Unto Night, Admit One: An American Scrapbook, Day Unto Day, White Papers, and Blue Front, as well as two chapbooks and four books of co-translations from the Vietnamese. She has also co-edited, with Kevin Prufer and Martin Rock, a volume of poems by Catherine Breese Davis, accompanied by essays and an interview about the poet’s life and work.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American poet and editor. Her debut book, Dog Road Woman, won the American Book Award and was the first finalist of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Diane DeCora Award. Since then, she has written five more books and edited eight anthologies. She is known for addressing issues of culture, prejudice, rights, the environment, peace, violence, abuse, and labor in her poetry and other creative works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeanne Larsen</span> American poet

Jeanne Larsen is a poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. Much of her work shows the growing influence of Buddhist perspectives on U.S. literature. This includes not only the poetry and creative nonfiction, but also the novels in her Avalokiteśvara trilogy: Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, and Manchu Palaces.

Floyd Skloot is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Some of his work concerns his experience with neurological damage caused by a virus contracted in 1988.

Joe Bonomo is an American essayist and music writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy K. Pearson</span> American poet (born 1969)

Nancy K. Pearson is an American poet. She is the author of The Whole by Contemplation of a Single Bone and Two Minutes of Light.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carmen Giménez</span> American writer and editor

Carmen Giménez, also known as Carmen Giménez Smith, is an American poet, writer, and editor.

Donald Morrill is an American poet, novelist and non-fiction writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ned Balbo</span> American poet

Ned Balbo is an American poet, translator, and essayist.

Suzanne S. Rancourt is a poet and veteran of both the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army as well being an Abenaki and Huron descendant. She was born and raised in west central Maine. She has written a collection of poetry called Billboard in the Clouds, which won the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas First Book Award in 2001, and some of her other work also appears in The Journal of Military Experience, Volume II. Her work has also been published in the literary journals Callaloo and The Cimarron Review, as well as many other anthologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Tredinnick</span> Australian poet, essayist and teacher (born 1962)

Mark Tredinnick is an Australian poet, essayist and teacher. Winner of the Montreal International Poetry Prize in 2011 and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition in 2012. He is the author of thirteen books, including four volumes of poetry ; The Blue Plateau;The Little Red Writing Book and Writing Well: the Essential Guide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Lazar (author)</span>

David Lazar is an American writer and editor, primarily known as an essayist. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he has been involved in the development of "creative nonfiction" in the United States, creating graduate programs, writing theoretically about the essay, and mentoring and publishing many subsequent writers of note.

References

  1. "Ralph Salisbury", Poetry Foundation article. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/ralph-salisbury
  2. "Ralph Salisbury". The After Life. Retrieved 21 February 2018.
  3. "Ralph James Salisbury (1926-2017)". oregonencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
  4. "Ralph Salisbury | Creative Writing Program". crwr.uoregon.edu. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
  5. Glancy, Diane; Rodriguez, Lina (2023). Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. p. 212. ISBN   978-1496235008.
  6. "Ralph Salisbury | Creative Writing Program". crwr.uoregon.edu. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
  7. Giordano, Fedora (2013). "Native Americans and Modern Wars in the Work of Ralph Salisbury, A Cherokee Volunteer in World War II." (PDF). La guerra e le armi nella letteratura in inglese del Novecento. Folena, Lucia, ed. Torino: Trauben. pp. 57–73. ISBN   9788866980384. OCLC   869737179.
  8. Salisbury, Ralph (1987). "Between Lightning and Thunder". I tell you now : autobiographical essays by Native American writers. Swann, Brian, and Krupat, Arnold, eds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp.  16. ISBN   0803227140. OCLC   14411823.
  9. "2015 Special Awards Announced | Literary Arts". literary-arts.org. Retrieved 2017-10-14.
  10. Salisbury, Ralph (2012). "2012 - So Far, So Good". riverteethjournal.com/contests/previous-winners-pages/2012-so-far-so-good.
  11. "Ralph Salisbury - Creative Writing Program". crwr.uoregon.edu.