James Vincent Tate (December 8, 1943 – July 8, 2015) was an American poet. His work earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was a professor of English at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
[James Tate elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters](_blank)
, a April 29, 2004 article from University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
and a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
.
Biography
Tate was born in
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...
, where he lived with his mother and his grandparents in his grandparents' house. His father, a pilot in World War II, had died in combat on April 11, 1944, before Tate was a year old. Tate and his mother moved out after seven years when she remarried. The eventual poet said he belonged to a gang in high school and had little interest in literature. He planned on being a gas station attendant as his uncle had been, but finding that his friends to his surprise were going to college, he applied to Kansas State College of Pittsburg (now
Pittsburg State University
Pittsburg State University (Pitt State or PSU) is a public university in Pittsburg, Kansas. It enrolls approximately 7,400 students (6,000 undergraduates and 1,400 graduate students) and is a member of the Kansas Board of Regents.
History
P ...
) in 1961. Tate wrote his first poem a few months into college with no external motivation; he observed that poetry "became a private place that I was hugely drawn to, where I could let my daydreams—and my pain—come in completely disguised. I knew from the moment I started writing that I never wanted to be writing about my life." In college he read
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
and
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
and was "in heaven". He received his B.A. in 1965, going on to earn his M.F.A. from the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...
's famed
Writer's Workshop. During this period he was finally exposed to fellow poets and he became interested in surrealism, reading
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic ca ...
,
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos (; 4 July 1900 – 8 June 1945) was a French poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.
Biography
Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900, the son of a licensed dealer in game and poultry at the '' H ...
, and
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
; for
Benjamin Péret
Benjamin Péret (4 July 1899 – 18 September 1959) was a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement with his avid use of Surrealist automatism.
Biography
Benjamin Péret was born in Rezé, ...
he expressed particular affection. Of poets writing in Spanish,
César Vallejo
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza (March 16, 1892 – April 15, 1938) was a Peruvian poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Although he published only two books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators ...
"destroyed" him but he was not so taken by the lyricism or romanticism of
Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
or
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...
.
He was married to
Dara Wier
Dara Barrois/Dixon (née Dara Wier) (born 1949) is an American poet and the author of ''Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina'' (Wave Books, 2022). Other titles include ''In the Still of the Night'' (Wave Books, 2017), ''You Good Thing'' (Wave Books, 2014) ...
. Tate died on July 8, 2015 at the age of 71.
Career
Tate taught
creative writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...
at 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 ...
,
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
,
and at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
, where he worked from 1971 until his death in 2015.
He was a member of the poetry faculty at the
MFA Program for Poets & Writers
MFA may refer to:
Organizations
* Marine and Fisheries Agency, a former UK government executive agency
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs (including a list of ministries with the name)
* Movement of the Forces of the Future (french: Mouvement des Forc ...
, along with
Dara Wier
Dara Barrois/Dixon (née Dara Wier) (born 1949) is an American poet and the author of ''Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina'' (Wave Books, 2022). Other titles include ''In the Still of the Night'' (Wave Books, 2017), ''You Good Thing'' (Wave Books, 2014) ...
and
Peter Gizzi
Peter Gizzi (born 1959 in Alma, Michigan) is an American poet, essayist, editor and teacher. He attended New York University, Brown University and the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Life
Gizzi was born in Alma, Michigan to an Italia ...
.
Dudley Fitts
Dudley Fitts (April 28, 1903 – July 10, 1968) was an American teacher, critic, poet, and
translator. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Harvard University, where he edited the ''Harvard Advocate''. He taught at The Choate S ...
selected Tate's first book of poems, ''The Lost Pilot'' (1967), for the
Yale Series of Younger Poets
The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the Uni ...
while Tate was still a student at the Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Tate's first volume of poetry, ''Cages'', was published by Shepherd's Press, Iowa City, 1966.
Tate won the 1992
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 ...
[ and the Poetry Society of America's ]William Carlos Williams Award
The William Carlos Williams Award is given out by the Poetry Society of America for a poetry book published by a small press, non-profit, or university press.
The award is endowed by the family and friends of Geraldine Clinton Little, a poet and ...
in 1991 for his ''Selected Poems''. In 1994, he won the National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
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
John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic.
Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
and Dana Gioia
Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist.
Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the literary movements within American poetry known as New Formalis ...
. Regarding his own work, Tate said, "My characters usually are—or, I’d say most often, I don’t want to generalize too much—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
Anthony Dey Hoagland (November 19, 1953 – October 23, 2018) was an American poet. His poetry collection, ''What Narcissism Means to Me'' (2003), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other honors included two grant ...
'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
( , ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled ''Candide: or, All for the Best'' (1759); ''Candide: or, The ...
, trying to identify and get with the fiction of whatever world they are in."
In addition to many books of poetry, he published two books of prose, ''Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee'' (2001) and ''The Route as Briefed'' (1999).
Some of Tate's additional awards included a National Institute of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
Award, the Wallace Stevens Award
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...
, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the 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 ...
. He was also a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...
.
Published works
;Full-length poetry collections
*''The Government Lake: Last Poems'' (Ecco Press
Ecco is a New York-based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquired ...
, 2019)
*''Dome of the Hidden Pavilion'' (Ecco Press
Ecco is a New York-based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquired ...
, 2015)
* ''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) — winner of the National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
["National Book Awards – 1994"]
National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...
. Retrieved 2012-04-08. (With essay by Evie Shockley from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
* ''Selected Poems'' (Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist.
History and overview
Founded (in its present for ...
, 1991) — winner of the 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 ...
["Poetry"]
''Past winners & finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-04-08. and the William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
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
Sarabande Books is an American not-for-profit literary press founded in 1994. It is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, with an office in New York City. Sarabande publishes contemporary poetry and nonfiction. Sarabande is a literary press whos ...
, 2003)
* ''Police Story'' (Rain Taxi, 1999)
* ''Bewitched: 26 poems'' (Embers Handpress, Wales, illustration by Laurie Smith.)
* ''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)
* ''Row with your Hair'' (Kayak Press, 1969)
* ''The Torches'' (Unicorn Press, 1968)
* ''Notes of Woe'' (Stone Wall Press, 1968)
* ''Cages'' (Shepherds Press, 1966)
;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)
;In anthologies
Tate's work has been included in The Best American Poetry
''The Best American Poetry'' series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems.
Background
The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, still the general ...
series numerous times, including in
2010
File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...
,
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
,
2006
File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
,
2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...
,
2004
2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO).
Events January
* January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...
,
2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...
,
2001
The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...
,
1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...
,
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...
,
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...
,
1993
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...
,
1991
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phil ...
,
1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...
, and
1988
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...
;
his work was also in '' The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry''.
Honors and awards
In 2004, Tate was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
.
Other recognition has included:
* 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 ...
[
* ]National Institute of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
Award
* 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 ...
* 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 ...
Literature Fellowship in Poetry
* National Book Award for Poetry
The National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". [
* 1995 ]Wallace Stevens Award
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...
* Yale Series of Younger Poets
The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the Uni ...
*
The James Tate International Poetry Prize
In Tate's honour, the James Tate International Poetry Prize has been awarded by the international surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
poetry magazine SurVision
SurVision is an international English-language surrealist poetry project, comprising an online magazine and a book-publishing outlet. ''SurVision'' magazine, founded in March 2017 by poet Anatoly Kudryavitsky, is a platform for surrealist poetry ...
each year since 2018.
References
External links
James Tate
at the Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...
*
James Tate's Author Page
at Wave Books
Audio: James Tate reading at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2003
from the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
website
James Tate's page
at The University of Massachusetts' MFA Program for Poets & Writers
on PennSound
James Tate's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tate, James
American male poets
National Book Award winners
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners
Surrealist poets
Emerson College faculty
University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty
Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty
Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni
University of Iowa alumni
Pittsburg State University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Writers from Kansas City, Missouri
2015 deaths
Yale Younger Poets winners
1943 births
20th-century American poets
20th-century American male writers