POET

Marilyn Nelson Waniek (1946 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Aframerican poet Marilyn Nelson, who dropped the "Waniek" from her name in 1995, writes in a variety of styles about many subjects. She has also written verse for children and translated poetry from Danish and German. Kirkland C. Jones in the Dictionary of Literary Biography called Nelson "one of the major voices of a younger generation of black poets."

Nelson's first collection, For the Body, focuses on the relationships between individuals and the larger social groupings of family, extended family, and society. Using domestic settings and memories of her own childhood, Nelson fashions poetry which "sometimes sings, sometimes narrates," as Jones described it. In Mama's Promises, Nelson continues experimentation with poetic forms in poems about a woman's role in marriage and society, but she utilizes stanzaic division more than in her previous work. The poems in Mama's Promises also seem to bear a cumulative theological weight, as the "Mama" named in each poem is revealed in the last poem to be God.

In The Homeplace Nelson turns her attention to the history of her own family, telling their story from the time of her great-great-grandmother to the present in a series of interconnected poems ranging in style from traditional forms to colloquial free-verse. Some critics praised the variety of poetic expression which Nelson displays. "The sheer range of [Nelson's] voice," Christian Wiman wrote in Shenandoah, "is one of the book's greatest strengths, varying not only from poem to poem, but within individual poems as well." Suzanne Gardinier, reviewing the book for Parnassus, found that through her poems Nelson "reaches back through generations hemmed in on all sides by slavery and its antecedents; all along the way she finds sweetness, and humor, and more complicated truth than its disguises have revealed."

In her poetry for children, Nelson also writes of family situations, although in a humorous manner. Her collection The Cat Walked through the Casserole and Other Poems for Children, written with Pamela Espeland, contains poems about domestic problems and pleasures. The title poem, for example, tells of the family dog and cat and the trouble they cause throughout the neighborhood, leading the mother to decide that they must go. Such poems as "Grampa's Whiskers," and "When I Grow Up," also focus on family life in a light-hearted manner.

Although biblical allusions appear in even her earliest poems, only with the collection Magnificat does Nelson write directly of spiritual subjects. Inspired by her friendship with a Benedictine monk, Nelson tells of her religious awakening to a more profound sense of Christian devotion. Writing in Multicultural Review, Mary Walsh Meany found Nelson's voice—"humorous, earthy, tender, joyous, sorrowful, contemplative, speculative, attached, detached, sometimes silent"—to be what "makes the poems wonderful." A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Nelson's "passion, sincerity and self-deprecating humor will engage even the most skeptical reader."

In The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, Nelson's poems embrace numerous themes, including the changing nature of love, racism, motherhood, marriage, and domesticity. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the collection of poems "stirring" and noted: "Strongest is Section III; its poems, grappling with evil and filled with biblical and philosophical references, demonstrate a luminous power." Writing in America, Edward J. Ingebretsen commented that he was drawn to Nelson's humorous poems. "Nelson is at her best when she is wry and comic," Ingebretsen said. "Many of her narrative scenes are Swiftian indignities observed with compassion." Miller Williams, writing in African American Review, called Nelson's voice "quietly lyrical" and her poems ones "of simple wisdom and straightforward, indelible stories."

In 2001, Nelson saw Carver: A Life in Poems published to critical acclaim, receiving notable nominations and awards. Nelson provides a lyrical rendering through forty-four poems of the life of George Washington Carver, a renowned and revered African-American botanist and inventor widely respected for his scholarly mind, hard work, and humility. As head of the agricultural department at the Tuskegee Institute, Carver specialized in crop research and was especially noted for his work with peanuts, including developing peanut butter. Nelson's poems tell Carver's story within the political and cultural milieu of his time, and the book includes prose summaries of the events in Carver's life and numerous photographs.

Ray Olson, writing a review of Carver in Booklist, noted that "Nelson beautifully and movingly revives his reputation." Cathryn M. Mercier commented in Horn Book, "As individual works, each poem stands as a finely wrought whole of such high caliber that one can hardly name a favorite, never mind the best." In the School Library Journal, Herman Sutter wrote, "The poems are simple, sincere, and sometimes so beautiful that they seem not works of artifice, but honest statements of pure, natural truths."

CAREER

National Lutheran Campus Ministry, lay associate, 1969-70; Lane Community College, Eugene, OR, assistant professor of English, 1970-72; Norre Nissum Seminariam, Norre Nissum, Denmark, teacher of English, 1972-73; Saint Olaf College, Northfield, MN, instructor in English, 1973-78; University of Connecticut, Storrs, assistant professor, 1978-82, associate professor, 1982-88, professor of English, 1988-2002; University of Delaware, Newark, DE, professor of English, 2002. Visiting assistant professor, Reed College, 1971-72, and Trinity College, 1982-83; visiting professor, Universitat Hamburg, Germany, spring, 1977, New York University, spring, 1988, spring, 1994, and VT College, spring, 1991; Elliston Professor, University of Cincinnati, spring, 1994; U.S. Military Academy, Spring, 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Translator) Pil Dahlerup, Literary Sex Roles, Minnesota Women in Higher Education (Minneapolis, MN), 1975.
(As Marilyn Nelson Waniek) For the Body (poems), Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1978.
(Translator, with Pamela Espeland) Halfdan Rasmussen, Hundreds of Hens and Other Poems for Children, Black Willow Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1982.
(As Marilyn Waniek, with Pamela Espeland) The Cat Walked through the Casserole and Other Poems for Children, Carolrhoda (Minneapolis, MN), 1984.
(As Marilyn Nelson Waniek) Mama's Promises (poems), Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1985.
(As Marilyn Nelson Waniek) The Homeplace (poems), Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1990.
(As Marilyn Nelson Waniek) Magnificat (poems), Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1994.
The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1997.
Carver: A Life in Poems, Front Street (Asheville, NC), 2001.
Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem, Front Street (Asheville, NC), 2004.
The Cachoeira Tales, and Other Poems, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 2005.
A Wreath for Emmett Till, illustrated by Philippe Lardy, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2005.
(Translator) Halfdan Rasmussen, Ladder, illustrated by Pierre Pratt, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA),2005.

Contributor of poetry to numerous anthologies, including A Formal Feeling Comes: Contemporary Women Formalist Poets, 1993, and The New Breadloaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, 1999. Contributor to literary journals and periodicals, including the Gettysburg Review, Obsidian II, Southern Review, MELUS, Minority Voices, Field, and Studies in Black Literature. Manuscripts by Nelson and other archives relevant to her writing are held in the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota and in the archives of the University of Connecticut.