Vijay Seshadri (born 13 February 1954) is an American,

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

–based

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 w ...

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

and

literary critic Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. ...

. Vijay won the 2014

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 ...

, for ''3 Sections''.

Early life

Vijay's parents immigrated to the United States from Bangalore, India when he was five. He grew up in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, an ...

, where his father taught chemistry at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

Writing career

Seshadri has been an editor at ''The New Yorker'', as well as an essayist and book reviewer in ''The New Yorker'', ''The New York Times Book Review'', ''The Threepenny Review'', ''The American Scholar'', and various literary quarterlies. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; and area studies fellowships from

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 ...

. As a professor and chair in the undergraduate writing and MFA program at

Sarah Lawrence College Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. The college models its approach to education after the Oxford/Cambridge system of one-on-one student-faculty tutorials. Sarah Lawrence scholarship, particularly ...

, he has taught courses on 'Non-Fiction Writing', 'Form and Feeling in Nonfiction Prose', 'Rational and Irrational Narrative', and 'Narrative Persuasion'. In a 2004 interview, Seshadri discusses the creative process and his influences, in particular

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Awar ...

, and

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of t ...

. He also reflects on his cultural influences including the experience of "strangeness" coming of age in Columbus, Ohio during the 1960s. Several of Seshadri's poems have been published by the New Yorker, including: "Rereading" (2012), "Visiting Paris" (2010), and "Thought Problem" (2009). His poems, essays, and reviews have also appeared in ''A Public Space'', ''AGNI'', ''The American Scholar'', ''Antaeus'', ''Bomb'', ''Boulevard'', ''Epiphany'', ''Fence'', ''Field'', ''Lumina'', ''The Nation'', ''The Paris Review'', ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', ''Ploughshares'', ''Poetry'', ''The San Diego Reader'', ''Shenandoah'', ''The Southwest Review'', ''The Threepenny Review'', ''the Times Book Review'', ''TriQuarterly'', ''Verse'', ''Western Humanities Review'', ''The Yale Review''. Anthologies which have included his work include ''Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets'', ''Under the Rock Umbrella,'' ''Contours of the Heart'', ''Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times'' and ''The Best American Poetry'' 1997, 2003, 2006, and 2013.

''The Disappearances''

Seshadri's poem "The Disappearances" deals with a "cataclysm" in "American history" and the baffling nature of loss. The poem was written in response to Seshdari's memories of John F. Kennedy's assassination, but not published until ''

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 ...

'' magazine printed it on its back page following the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

. The ''New Yorkers poetry editor, Alice Quinn, said that the poem "...summoned up, with acute poignance, a typical American household and scene...The combination of epic sweep (including the quoted allusion to one of Emily Dickinson's Civil War masterpieces, from 1862) and piercing, evocative detail is characteristic of the contribution Seshadri has made to the American canon."

Awards

* 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry * The James Laughlin Prize of the Academy of American Poets (for "The Long Meadow") * The Paris Review's Bernard F. Conners Long Poem Prize * 2004 Guggenheim Fellow

Bibliography

Poetry

;Collections * ''Wild Kingdom'' Graywolf Press: Minnesota, 1996, * ''The Long Meadow'' Graywolf Press: Minnesota, 2004, . His second book. Six of these poems were also published in the New Yorker including "The Disappearances," "North of Manhattan," and "The Long Meadow". * ''New and Selected Poems'' by Harper Collins India. Includes 'Wild Kingdom', 'The Long Meadow', 'The Disappearances'. * * ;List of poems

References

External links

Poets.org webpage on Seshadri

Poetry International Web page on Seshadri

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seshadri, Vijay 1954 births Living people 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American poets 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American poets American male writers of Indian descent Columbia University alumni Indian emigrants to the United States The New Yorker people Oberlin College alumni Poets from Ohio Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners Sarah Lawrence College faculty Writers from Bangalore Writers from Columbus, Ohio