Peter Gizzi (born 1959 in Alma, Michigan) is an American poet, essayist, editor and teacher. He attended New York University,

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Life

Gizzi was born in Alma, Michigan to an

Italian American Italian Americans ( it, italoamericani or ''italo-americani'', ) are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwestern metropolitan areas, ...

family. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school, the poet delayed going to college and took a job in a factory winding resin tubes and in a residential treatment center working with emotionally disturbed adolescents. Working overnight at the treatment center, Gizzi read George Oppen's ''Collected Poems'', along with

H.D. Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist who wrote under the name H.D. throughout her life. Her career began in 1911 after she moved to London and co-founded the ...

, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Federico García Lorca,

Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fro ...

, Rimbaud "and almost anything published by

Burning Deck Burning Deck was a small press specializing in the publication of experimental poetry and prose. Burning Deck was founded by the writers Keith Waldrop and Rosmarie Waldrop in 1961 and closed in 2017. Overview Although the Waldrops initially promot ...

." Living in New York City, in part to keep in touch with the punk scene, he walked by the St. Mark's book store one day and his eye was caught by a reprinted version of '' BLAST'', with its shocking pink and diagonal title. He picked up a copy and read the manifestos. "I was home in that synthesis — Punk and Poetry had merged and I knew at once I wanted to edit my own journal and so I did," he later wrote.
Gizzi, Peter, "Inside / Outside: Poets in the Academy", article in ''The Modern Review'' which identifies it as having been delivered when Gizzi was on an "AWP Panel, Chicago, March 2004", Winter 2006, "Volume II / Issue 2", accessed January 28, 2007 By the late 1980s, he was waiting tables, reading and editing '' O-blek, o•blék: a journal of language arts'', which he founded in 1987 with Connell McGrath. In 1991, he started editing the lectures of Jack Spicer for publication and went to SUNY Buffalo with support from Robert Creeley, Charles Bernstein, and Susan Howe, "and with the financial support (meager as it was) that working within an institution offered." In 1993, after eight years and 12 issues, he left '' o•blék'', which soon folded. Gizzi has taught at

and

The University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the e ...

. Since 2001, he has been a professor in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at The University of Massachusetts Amherst. For several years, he was poetry editor at '' The Nation''. He also is on the contributing editorial board to the literary journal '' Conjunctions''. He is the brother of deceased poet Michael Gizzi.

Poetry

In 1992 Peter Gizzi published his first full-length collection, "Periplum" which won praise from critics.Kaspar Bartczak, “The Artifice of Personhood and the Poetics of Plenitude in Peter Gizzi's ‘Archeophonics’”. ‘In The Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi’. This was followed by "Artificial Heart", a collection which enhanced Gizzi's reputation as a lyric poet writing as a modern troubadour in a style which is allusive and oblique. In 2003, "Some Values of Landscape and Weather" was published. The title poem of this collection is "a sustained examination of the relationship between public and private spaces, as well as a complex reflection on war". The collection "The Outernationale" (2007) investigates language, knowledge and experience but combines this with an implied political stance. "Threshold Songs" (2011) is a series of poetic elegies which also investigate the role of the lyric poet and show "the voice of the poet contemplating its relation to other voices". Gizzi's most recent collection, "Archeophonics", continues his investigation of language; the title of the book refers to the excavation of lost sounds analogous to the process of archeology.

Awards and recognition

In 1994 he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets (selected by

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 ...

). Gizzi has also held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Foundation of French Literature at Royaumont, Un Bureau Sur L’Atlantique, and the Centre International de Poesie Marseille. He has received fellowships from The Fund For Poetry,

The Rex Foundation ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in E ...

, The Howard Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (1998), and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Gizzi has twice held the position of Poet-in-Residence in the English Faculty of the University of Cambridge. In 2016 ''Archeophonics'' was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Bibliography

Books

* ''Now It's Dark''. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2020 * ''Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems''. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 2020 * ''Archeophonics''. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2016 * ''In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems 1987 –2011''. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2014 * ''Threshold Songs''. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2011 * ''The Outernationale''. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2007 * ''Periplum and other poems, 1987 – 92''. Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishers, 2004 * ''Some Values of Landscape and Weather''. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2003 * ''Artificial Heart''. Providence: Burning Deck, 1998 * ''Periplum''. Penngrove: Avec Books, 1992

Chapbooks and Limited Editions

* ''Ship of State''. Kingston: The Brother in Elysium, 2020 * ''The Afterlife of Paper''. Los Angeles: Catalpa, 2019 * ''New Poems''. Kingston: The Brother in Elysium, 2017 * ''Field Recordings''. Cambridge UK: Equipage Editions, 2016 * ''A Winding Sheet for Summer''. Amsterdam NL: Tungsten Press, 2016 * ''Marigold & Cable: A Garland for the New Year''. Cambridge UK: Materials, 2016 * ''The Winter Sun Says Fight''. Plymouth UK: Periplum Editions, 2016 * ''Vincent, Homesick for the Land of Pictures''. Rotterdam, NL: Studio 3005, 2015 * ''Marigold & Cable''. Saint-Martin, France: Shelter Press, 2014 * ''In the Air''. Los Angeles: Manor House, 2013 * ''Ode: Salute to the New York School 1950-1970''. Tucson: Letter Machine, 2012 * ''History Is Made at Night''. Cincinnati: Students of Decay, 2011 * ''Pinocchio's Gnosis''. Northampton: Song Cave, 2011 * ''In Song & Story''. Amsterdam, NL: Tungsten Press, 2010 * ''Homer's Anger''. Paris: Collectif Generation, 2009 * ''A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me''. Brooklyn, Ugly Ducking, 2006 * ''From a Cinematographer's Letter''. London: Tolling Elves. 2004 * ''Revival''. New Haven: Phylum Press, 2002 * ''Fin Amor''. Oakland: Tougher Disguises, 2002 * ''Chateâu If''. Paris: Slacik Editions, 2000 * ''Add This to the House''. Cambridge, UK: Equipage, 1999 * ''New Picnic Time''. Buffalo: Meow Editions, 1995 * ''Ledger Domain''. Providence: Timoleon, 1995 * ''Hours of the Book''. Canary Islands, Spain: Zasterle Press, 1994 * ''Music for Films''. Providence: Paradigm Press, 1992 * ''Creeley Madrigal''. Providence: The Materials Press, 1991

Editing Projects

* ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer''. Co-edited with Kevin Killian. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2008 * ''The House that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer''. Middletown: Wesleyan University, 1998 * ''Exact Change Yearbook''. Boston: Exact Change Publishers / Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1995 * ''o•blēk / a journal of language arts''. 12 issues. Co-edited with Connell McGrath. 1987 - 93

Notes

External links

Peter Gizzi author page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gizzi, Peter 1959 births 20th-century American poets 21st-century American poets Academics of the University of Cambridge American writers of Italian descent Brown University alumni Living people New York University alumni People from Alma, Michigan People from Pittsfield, Massachusetts Poets from Massachusetts University at Buffalo alumni University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty Writers from Pittsfield, Massachusetts American Book Award winners