Carl Dennis (born September 17, 1939) is an

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q *George Quasha (born 1942 in poetry, 1942) R ...

and educator. His book ''Practical Gods'' won the 2002

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

for poetry.

Life and work

Born in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

, on September 17, 1939, Dennis attended

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

before receiving his bachelor's degree from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

in 1961. In 1966, Dennis received his Ph.D. in English literature from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. That same year he became an assistant professor of English at

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

, where he has spent most of his career; in 2002, he became an artist-in-residence there. Dennis has also served on the faculty of the graduate program at

Warren Wilson College Warren Wilson College (WWC) is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is known for its curriculum that combines academics, work, and service as every student must complete a requisite course of study, work an on-campus ...

. Article and Interview in ''UB Today'', University at Buffalo's online alumni magazine. Dennis has received several prizes for his poetry in addition to the

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published ...

, including a Fellowship at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

(1984), a

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

Fellowship in Poetry (1988), and the

Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is awarded annually by The Poetry Foundation, which also publishes Poetry (magazine), ''Poetry'' magazine. The prize was established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly. It honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments war ...

(2000). Dennis is the brother of American composer Robert Dennis.

Dennis's poetry

Dennis writes often of quotidian, middle-class life, but beneath the modest, reasonably lighted surfaces of the poems lie unexpected possibilities that create contrast and vibrancy. An example from his 1984 collection ''The Near World'' is "The Man on My Porch Makes Me an Offer," which begins: :"Above all houses in our town :I've always loved this blue one you own :With its round turret and big bay window. :Do you dream about it the way I do? :Wouldn't you be just as happy :On a street with more trees :In a larger house, whose columned porch :Impresses every passer-by? :Does it seem fair that you've won the right :To gaze from these windows your whole life :Merely because you saw them first, :And consign me to a life of envy?" William Slaughter has given a close reading of this poem in an essay comparing poems by William Stafford, Dennis, and

Louis Simpson Louis Aston Marantz Simpson (March 27, 1923 – September 14, 2012) was an American poet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work ''At the End of the Open Road''. Life and career Simpson was born in Jamaica ...

. The form of Dennis's poem - a plainspoken, dramatic monologue - is fairly characteristic of his poetry. In the poem "Progressive Health" (from ''Practical Gods'') Dennis uses a similar approach for a proposition that is a bioethicist's nightmare. In some of his more recent poems, Dennis invokes guardian angels and other domestic deities to animate his poetry. In his 2004 review,

David Orr David Duvall Orr (born October 4, 1944) is an American Democratic politician who served as the Cook County Clerk from 1990 to 2018. Orr previously served as alderman for the 49th ward in Chicago City Council from 1979 to 1990. He briefly served ...

wrote: In his 1984 review,

Tom Sleigh Tom Sleigh () is an American poet, dramatist, essayist and academic, who lives in New York City. He has published nine books of original poetry, one full-length translation of Euripides' ''Herakles'' and two books of essays. His most recent books ...

addressed the originality of Dennis's art: Review of Carl Dennis's ''The Near World''.

Bibliography

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Life and work

Dennis's poetry

Bibliography

References

Further reading