James Tate (born December 8, 1943) is an American poet whose work has earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Biography
James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City, Missouri, where he lived with his mother and his grandparents in his grandparents' house after his father had been killed during World War II. He did not love reading in high school, but instead planned on being a gas station attendant as his uncle had been. Tate would come to love poetry in college and received his B.A. from Kansas State College of Pittsburg (now Pittsburg State university] in 1965 and then went on to earn his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in their famed Writer's Workshop. He is married to Dara Wier.
Career
Tate has taught creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has worked since 1971. He is a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, along with Dara Wier and Peter Gizzi.
Dudley Fitts selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967), for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." James Tate's first volume of poetry, Cages, was published by Shepherd's Press. Iowa City, 1966.
Tate won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award in 1991 for his Selected Poems.
In 1994, he won the National Book Award for his poetry collection Worshipful Company of Fletchers.
Tate's writing style is often described as surrealistic, comic, and absurdist. His work has captivated other poets as diverse as John Ashbery and Dana Gioia. Regarding his own work, Tate has said, "My characters usually areâ€"or, I’d say most often, I don’t want to generalize too muchâ€"but most often they’re in trouble, and they’re trying to find some kind of life." This view is supported by the poet Tony Hoagland's observation that, "His work of late has been in prose poems, in which his picaresque speaker or characters are spinning through life, inquisitive and clueless as Candide, trying to identify and get with the fiction of whatever world they are in."
In addition to many books of poetry, he has published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999).
Some of his additional awards not already mentioned include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is also currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Published works
- Full-length poetry collections
- The Eternal Ones of the Dream: Selected Poems 1990 - 2010 (Ecco Press, 2012)
- The Ghost Soldiers (Ecco Press, 2008)
- Return to the City of White Donkeys (Ecco Press, 2004)
- Memoir of the Hawk (Ecco Press, 2002)
- Shroud of the Gnome (Ecco Press, 1997)
- Worshipful Company of Fletchers: Poems (Ecco Press, 1994) â€"winner of the National Book Award
- Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1991) â€"winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award)
- Distance from Loved Ones (Wesleyan University Press), 1990)
- Reckoner (Wesleyan University Press, 1986)
- Constant Defender (Ecco Press, 1983)
- Riven Doggeries (Ecco Press, 1979)
- Viper Jazz (Wesleyan University Press, 1976)
- Absences: New Poems (Little, Brown & Co., 1972)
- Hints to Pilgrims(Halty Ferguson, 1971)
- The Oblivion Ha-Ha (Little, Brown & Co., 1970)
- The Lost Pilot (Yale University Press, 1967)
- Chapbooks
- The Zoo Club (Rain Taxi, 2011)
- Lost River (Sarabande Books, 2003)
- Police Story (Rain Taxi, 1999)
- Just Shades (Parallel Editions, 1985, illustrated by John Alcorn)
- Land of Little Sticks (Metacom Press, 1981)
- Apology for Eating Geoffrey Movius’ Hyacinth (Unicorn Press, 1972)
- Amnesia People (Little Balkans Press, 1970)
- Wrong Songs (H. Ferguson, 1970)
- Shepherds of the Mist (Black Sparrow Press, 1969)
- The Torches (Unicorn Press, 1968)
- Prose
- Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee: 44 Stories (Verse Press, 2002)
- The Route as Briefed (University of Michigan Press, 1999)
- Hottentot Ossuary (Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974)
- Collaborations
- Lucky Darryl (Release Press, 1977, a novel co-written with Bill Knott)
- Are You Ready, Mary Baker Eddy??? (Cloud Marauder Press, 1970, poems co-written with Bill Knott)
Anthologies
Tate's work has been included in the The Best American Poetry series multiple times, including 2010, 2008, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2001, 1998, 1997, 1994, 1993, 1991, 1990, and 1988; his work was also in the The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry.
Honors and awards
Tate was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004; other recognition includes:
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- National Institute of Arts and Letters Award
- Guggenheim Fellowship
- National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry
- National Book Award for Poetry
- 1995 Wallace Stevens Award
- Yale Series of Younger Poets
References
External links
- James Tate at the Academy of American Poets
- Charles Simic (Summer 2006). "James Tate, The Art of Poetry No. 92". The Paris Review.Â
- James Tate's Author Page at Wave Books
- Audio: James Tate reading at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2003
- Interview with James Tate from the University of Pennsylvania website
- James Tate's page at The University of Massachusetts' MFA Program for Poets & Writers
- James Tate on PennSound
- Works by or about James Tate in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- James Tate at Library of Congress Authorities â€" with 40 catalog records