Paul Guest (born in Chattanooga,

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

) is an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

and

memoirist A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiog ...

Biography

When he was twelve, Guest broke the third and fourth

vertebrae The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristi ...

in his neck in a bicycle accident, bruising his

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the sp ...

and paralyzing him from the neck down. He is a

quadriplegic Tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, is defined as the dysfunction or loss of motor and/or sensory function in the cervical area of the spinal cord. A loss of motor function can present as either weakness or paralysis leading to partial or ...

. He graduated from

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UT-Chattanooga, UTC, or Chattanooga) is a public university in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. It was founded in 1886 and is one of four universities and two other affiliated institutions in the ...

and from

Southern Illinois University Southern Illinois University is a system of public universities in the southern region of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its headquarters is in Carbondale, Illinois. Board of trustees The university is governed by the nine member SIU Board of Tr ...

with an M.F.A. in 1999. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. His poems appear in '' Harper's'', ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phil ...

'', ''

Tin House ''Tin House'' is an American book publisher based in Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Portland publisher Win McCormack originally conceived the idea for a literary magazine called ''Tin House'' in the summer of 1998. He enlisted Holly MacArt ...

'', ''

The Kenyon Review ''The Kenyon Review'' is a literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, US, home of Kenyon College. ''The Review'' was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959. ' ...

'', ''

The Missouri Review ''The Missouri Review'' is a literary magazine founded in 1978 by the University of Missouri. It publishes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction quarterly. With its open submission policy, ''The Missouri Review'' receives 12,000 manuscripts ...

'', '' Slate'' and elsewhere.

Honors and awards

* 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry * 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers series * 2007 Whiting Award * 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry * 2002 New Issues Press Poetry Prize

Published works

Full-Length Poetry Collections * * * * * a Memoir *

References

External links

"Author's blog"

"Author's Twitter feed"

"Character and Voice: Picks for National Poetry Month"

"Paul Guest", ''Fishouse''

* ttp://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/paul-guest#/ Profile at The Whiting Foundation
''One More Theory About Happiness'' review, ''Creative Loafing Atlanta''
Online Poems *

* ttp://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue07/html/poets/paul_guest.htm#A "Apologia", ''Octopus'', Issue 7* ttp://www.diodepoetry.com/v1n2/content/guest_p.html "At Night, In November, Trying Not To Think Of Asphodel," "Austria," Bordering On The Tragic," "Oblivion: Letter Home, "Oblivion: Letter Home"
"DONALD DUCK'S LAMENT", ''Diagram 3.5''

"Landscape With Décolletage", ''Slate'', May 7, 2002

"Plenitude", ''Crazyhorse'', Number 67

"On the Persistence of the Letter as a Form"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guest, Paul Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American male poets University of Tennessee at Chattanooga alumni Southern Illinois University alumni University of West Georgia faculty American memoirists American male non-fiction writers