POET

Carl Dennis (1939 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Carl Dennis's first book was published in 1974. Readers of his poetry may identify his writing by his warm, narrative style that often centers on the usual happenings of daily life. Other poets, or aspiring poets, may know him through his critical writing about the craft.

Meetings with Time is a book of "quiet, ruminative poems. . .in which philosophical speculations open out into every day experience," according to a Publishers Weekly review. Despite feeling that "communication gives way to solipsism," the reviewer applauded the poet's breadth of subject matter.

In a review of Ranking the Wishes, Charles Guenther of St. Louis Post-Dispatch described Dennis as "one of the most eloquently communicative poets." He defined the poems in this collection as having a "finely spun narrative style," adding that the poet is able to "make a point concretely without philosophical effusions." Guenther specifically praised Dennis for his "precise, fresh imagery" and his ability to "reflect wisdom, a high talent, and strong character" through his poems. John Taylor of Poetry praised Ranking of Wishes, explaining, "Dennis's free-verse meditations on free will and destiny, on regret and self-acceptance, on second-guessing and enlarging 'the thin verge of the moment' indeed scrutinize the past and present with a Hamlet-like relentlessness that at the same time is remarkably soft-toned, the poet's emotions shimmering right at the surface of the language." In writing about how people think about their pasts, Dennis demonstrates "how labyrinthine can be the process of summing-up at mid-life," although Taylor is quick to note that he does so without lapsing into simple nostalgia. Taylor concludes that Dennis leaves the reader with a message: "Searching himself for a way to transcend loss and longing, Dennis suggests that, at the least, 'the sweet water of grace' may 'flow' if one learns to 'cross the border' and live in and for the present moment." Upon publication of Practical Gods, critics again praised Dennis for his ability to communicate with the reader, culminating with a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2002. Donna Seaman of Booklist referred to the poems as "plainspoken and resonant." She went on to say that in this "lucid, canny, and warmly funny" volume, Dennis "writes piquantly" about the idiosyncrasies of everyday people.

Poetry as Persuasion is Dennis's contribution to the field of literary criticism. As Reagan Upshaw of Bloomsbury Review wrote, "most of the book gives advice on how to achieve the passion, discrimination, and inclusiveness that Dennis asserts are the virtues we demand in poems that we find convincing." The book explores, among other things, the various methods of creating the voice of a poem, including the use of irony, the mock heroic, and myth. Upshaw praised the book for being "refreshingly free of cant and jargon," adding that Dennis' s advice to poets is "always practical."

Dennis told Contemporary Authors: "I don't see myself as belonging to any particular school of poetry. Yeats was the most important early influence, but I hope that his presence is now very difficult to detect. Like him I'm interested in making my poems sound like actual speech, something that one might actually say out loud to a single listener. In Yeats's day this meant avoiding poetical ornament and mechanical rhythms. Today it also means avoiding poetry that is either too private (concerned with the play of the writer's own mind and not with an actual subject outside himself) or too public (not concerned with the particular context of speaker and listener in a dramatic situation)."

CAREER

State University of New York at Buffalo, assistant professor, 1966-71, associate professor, 1971-76, professor of English, 1976-2001, artist-in-residence, 2001—.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poetry as Persuasion, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 2001.

POETRY

House of My Own, Braziller, 1974.
Climbing Down, Braziller, 1976.
Signs and Wonders, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1979.
The Near World, Quill (New York, NY), 1985.
The Outskirts of Troy, W. Morrow (New York, NY), 1988.
Meetings with Time, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1992.
Ranking the Wishes, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1997.
Practical Gods, Penguin Poets (New York, NY), 2001.
New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004, Penguin Poets (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to numerous periodicals, including Atlantic Monthly, American Poetry Review, Ironwood, Kenyon Review, New Republic, Paris Review, New Yorker, Poetry, and Salmagundi. Selected anthologies in which his poems have appeared are Best American Poetry 1992, edited by Charles Simic, Scribners, 1992; Best American Poetry 1993, edited by Louise Gluck, Scribners, 1993; Best American Poetry 1997, edited by James Tate, Scribners, 1997; Best Amerian Poetry 2002, edited by Yusef Komunyakaa, Scribners, 2003; Bread Loaf Anthology of Poetry, edited by Robert Pack, Sidney Lea, and Jay Parini, University Press of New England, 1985; Poems for a Small Planet, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini, University Press of New England, 1993; Pushcart Anthology, Pushcart Press, 1995; Pushcart Anthology, Pushcart Press, 1998; Pushcart Anthology, Pushcart Press, 2002; and Orpheus and Company, edited by Deborah Denicola, University Press of New England, 1999.