Jared Carter (born January 10, 1939) is an American poet and editor.

Life

Carter was born in a small Midwestern town that is noted for having been the birthplace of

Wendell Willkie Wendell Lewis Willkie (born Lewis Wendell Willkie; February 18, 1892 – October 8, 1944) was an American lawyer, corporate executive and the 1940 Republican nominee for President. Willkie appealed to many convention delegates as the Republican ...

, the Republican presidential candidate in 1940. Carter grew up in the shadow of this liberal Republican dark horse who lost the election to the incumbent Roosevelt, but who supported the president in calls for preparedness while storm clouds were gathering over Europe. Carter lettered in three sports in high school and still holds his school's record for the 400 meter dash. Following graduation in 1956, he attended

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

and, in later years,

Goddard College Goddard College is a progressive education private liberal arts low-residency college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle, Washington. The college offers undergraduate and gra ...

. At Yale he majored in English literature; at Goddard, American history. After military service and travel abroad in the 1960s, he made his home in

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

, where he has lived since 1969. He worked for many years as an editor and interior designer of textbooks and scholarly works, first with the

Bobbs-Merrill Company The Bobbs-Merrill Company was a book publisher located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Company history The company began in 1850 October 3 when Samuel Merrill bought an Indianapolis bookstore and entered the publishing business. After his death in 1 ...

and later in association with

Hackett Publishing Company Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on the humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett ...

. He is a fifth-generation Hoosier, descended from anti-slavery North Carolinians and Virginians who migrated to Indiana in the decades following its establishment in 1816 as the nineteenth state. Several of his poems include details taken from the letters, journals, and family stories of his predecessors. Among forebears on his mother's side was Elias Baxter Decker, of

Tipton County, Indiana Tipton County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana, located north of the state capital of Indianapolis. According to the 2010 census, it had a population of 15,936, a decrease of 3.9% from its 2000 population of 16,577. Its county seat is ...

, who fought at Tullahoma,

Chickamauga Chickamauga may refer to: Entertainment * "Chickamauga", an 1889 short story by American author Ambrose Bierce * "Chickamauga", a 1937 short story by Thomas Wolfe * "Chickamauga", a song by Uncle Tupelo from their 1993 album ''Anodyne'' * ''Chic ...

, and

Missionary Ridge Missionary Ridge is a geographic feature in Chattanooga, Tennessee, site of the Battle of Missionary Ridge, a battle in the American Civil War, fought on November 25, 1863. Union forces under Maj. Gens. Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, a ...

, and who served with the 75th Indiana Infantry Regiment in the army led by

William Tecumseh Sherman William Tecumseh Sherman ( ; February 8, 1820February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), achieving recognition for his com ...

, on its March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah and points north, in 1864-65. During the Second World War, Carter's father, Robert A. Carter, served with the

Seabees United States Naval Construction Battalions, better known as the Navy Seabees, form the U.S. Naval Construction Force (NCF). The Seabee nickname is a heterograph of the initial letters "CB" from the words "Construction Battalion". Depending upon ...

from 1943 to 1945, and took part in the construction of airstrips for B-29s on the Island of

Tinian Tinian ( or ; old Japanese name: 天仁安島, ''Tenian-shima'') is one of the three principal islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Together with uninhabited neighboring Aguiguan, it forms Tinian Municipality, one of th ...

in the

Marianas The Mariana Islands (; also the Marianas; in Chamorro: ''Manislan Mariånas'') are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, betw ...

. Carter's father-in-law, David P. Haston, was a technician with a

B-17 The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

flight wing in the Pacific during that conflict, serving from 1941 to 1945. For his participation in the

Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Adm ...

he was awarded three bronze stars. On his father's side, Carter is a grand-nephew of the American artist Glen Cooper Henshaw.

Poetry

Carter writes in

free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French ''vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Definit ...

and in traditional forms. Much of his early work is set in "Mississinewa County", an imaginary place that includes the actual

Mississinewa River The Mississinewa River is a tributary of the Wabash River in eastern Indiana and a small portion of western Ohio in the United States. It is long and is the third largest tributary behind the White and Little Wabash Rivers, only slightly larger t ...

, a tributary of the

Wabash River The Wabash River ( French: Ouabache) is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 13, 2011 river that drains most of the state of Indiana in the United States. It flows fro ...

. In recent years, as he has published increasingly on the web, his poetry has ranged farther afield. His poems have appeared in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'', ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

,'' and other journals in the U.S. and abroad. His work has been anthologized in ''Twentieth-Century American Poetry,'' ''Contemporary American Poetry,'' ''Writing Poems,'' and ''Poetry from Paradise Valley.'' His first collection, ''Work, for the Night Is Coming'' (1981), won the

Walt Whitman 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 outreac ...

. His second, ''After the Rain'' (1993), was given the

Poets' Prize The Poets' Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year. The $3000 annual prize is donated by a committee of about 20 American poets, who each nominate two books and who ...

. He has received two literary fellowships from 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 ...

, 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 ...

, and the Indiana Governor's Arts Award.

Books

* ''The Land Itself''. Morgantown, West Virginia: Monongehela Books, 2019. * ''Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems''. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. * ''A Dance in the Street''. Nicholasville, Kentucky: Wind Publications, 2012. * ''Cross This Bridge at a Walk''. Nicholasville, Kentucky: Wind Publications, 2006. * ''Les Barricades Mystérieuses''. Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1999. * ''After the Rain''. Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1993. * ''Work, for the Night Is Coming''. New York: Macmillan, 1981.

Chapbooks

* ''Blues Project''. Indianapolis: Writers’ Center Press, 1991. * ''Situation Normal''. Indianapolis: Writers’ Center Press, 1991. * ''The Shriving''. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Duende Press, 1990. * ''Millennial Harbinger''. Philadelphia: Slash & Burn Press, 1986. * ''Pincushion's Strawberry''. Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1984. * ''Fugue State''. Daleville, Indiana: Barnwood Press, 1984. * ''Early Warning''. Daleville, Indiana: Barnwood Press, 1979.

E-books

* ''Time Capsule''. E-book no. 26. Dayton, Washington: New Formalist Press, 2007. * ''Reading the Tarot: Nine Villanelles''. E-book no. 17. Dayton, Washington: New Formalist Press, 2005.

Awards

* Best Book of Poetry, Indiana Center for the Book, 2007 * Distinguished Hoosier Award, 2005 * Rainmaker Award for Poetry, ''Zone 3'' magazine, 2002 *

, for ''After the Rain'', 1994 *

Dictionary of Literary Biography The ''Dictionary of Literary Biography'' is a specialist biographical dictionary dedicated to literature. Published by Gale, the 375-volume setRogers, 106. covers a wide variety of literary topics, periods, and genres, with a focus on American an ...

Yearbook Award, 1993 * ''New Letters'' Literary Award for Poetry, 1992 * Literature Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1981, 1991 *

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...

for Poetry, 1986 * Indiana Governor’s Arts Award, 1985 * Writer-in-Residence,

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

, 1983, 1986 *

Great Lakes Colleges Association The Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) is a consortium of 13 liberal arts colleges located in the states around the Great Lakes. The GLCA's offices are located in Ann Arbor, Michigan and its 13 schools are located in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylva ...

New Writers Award for Poetry, 1982 * Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1982 * Margaret Bridgman Fellowship,

Bread Loaf Writers' Conference The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is an author's conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1926, it has been called by ''The New Yorker'' "the oldest and most ...

, 1981 * Walt Whitman Award, for ''Work, for the Night Is Coming'', 1980 * Literature Fellowship, Indiana Arts Commission, 1979 *

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 ...

Prize, Yale University, 1961

Sources

* Deines, Timothy J."The Gleaning: Regionalism, Form, and Theme in the Poetry of Jared Carter." M.A. thesis, Cleveland State University. * "Jared Carter." ''Contemporary Authors ''. Vol. 145, pp. 75–76. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. * Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. ''The Ties of the Railroad Tracks Home: the Poetry of Jared Carter.'' Kindle edition, 2014. * Ponick, T. L., and Ponick, F. S. "Jared Carter." ''Dictionary of Literary Biography''. Vol. 282, pp. 31–40. Detroit: Gale Research, 2003. * Webb, Jeffrey B
"Watershed Redesign in the Upper Wabash River Drainage Area 1870-1970."
''Environment, Space, Place'' 6:1 (spring 2016): 80-86. Zeta Books: Bucharest.