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CURRENT PROJECTS

  • Roadside Attractions (poetry collection one-third completed)
  • The Splintered Mirror: Ritual, Narrative, and Modernity in the Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (critical study, two chapters completed).
  • Speaking the Page: The Dialectic of Aural and Visual Textualities in Modern American Poetry (critical study, two chapters completed).
  • Is It Real or Memorex: Toward a Rhetoric of Textual Media (critical study, one chapter completed).

PUBLICATIONS

Books:

  • Western Where. (poetry collection, forthcoming Broadstone Books, March 2024)
  • Voice to Voice in the Dark.  Broadstone Books, 2022.  (poetry collection)
  • The Point Alma Venus Manuscripts: Preliminary Versions of  Robinson Jeffers’ The Women at Point Sur. Co-edited with Rob Kafka. Stanford University Press, 2022.
  • Ticket Stubs & Liner Notes. Main Street Rag Publishing, 2018. (poetry collection: winner of the 2018 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award)
  • Poem’s Poems & Other Poems. CW Books, 2016. (poetry collection)
  • The Textuality of “Soulwork”: Jack Kerouac’s Search for Spontaneous Prose. University of Michigan Press, 2014.
  • The Tao of Twang. CW Books. (poetry collection)
  • Thirteen Ways of Talking to a Blackbird. Finishing Line Press. (poetry chapbook)
  • White Levis. Pudding House Press, 2010. (poetry chapbook)
  • Redneck Yoga. Finishing Line Press, 2010. (poetry chapbook)
  • Kerouac’s Crooked Road: The Development of a Fiction.  Southern Illinois University Press, 2010 (originally published by Archon Books, 1981; previously reissued by University of California Press, 1996).
  • Fault Lines.  The Backwaters Press, 2009. (poetry collection)
  • The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.  Stanford University Press, 2001.
  • The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers:  Volume Five: Commentary and Critical Apparatus.  Stanford University Press, 2001.
  • The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers:  Volume Four:  Poetry 1903-1920, Prose, and Unpublished Writings.  Stanford University Press, 2000.
  • The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: Volume Three, 1938-62.  Stanford University Press, 1991.
  • The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: Volume Two, 1928-38.  Stanford University  Press, 1989.
  • The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: Volume One, 1920-28.  Stanford University Press, 1988.
  • Lake County Diamond.  Intertext Books, 1986. (poetry chapbook)

Poems:

One hundred ninety poems published in journals and anthologies, including CutBank, Epoch, Free Lunch, Ironwood, ISLE, Natural Bridge, Quarterly West, Rhino, Sequestrum, Spillway, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Tar River Poetry.

Articles and Essays (selected):

  • “Why Did Jeffers Omit “Shine, Perishing Republic” from Tamar and Other Poems and How Might It Matter?” Jeffers Studies 22 (2022): 5-26.
  • “The Textuality of Performance: Jack Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose.” (forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac, ed. Steven Belletto)
  • “Slow Reading On the Road: Toward an Appreciation of Kerouac’s Prose Artistry.” Journal of Beat Studies 10(2022): 55-65.
  • “Why Did Jeffers Omit “Shine, Perishing Republic” from Tamar and Other Poems and How Might It Matter?” Jeffers Studies 22 (2022): 5-26.
  • “Problematic Authority: The Beginning and the End as an Edition of Jeffers’ Last Poems.” Jeffers Studies 21 (2021): 1-24.
  • “‘Tho this is my last tale’: When Did Jeffers Write the First Version of Point Alma Venus?” Jeffers Studies 20 (2020): 39-55.
  • “Turning from the High Lamps to Love the Low Hills: The Story the Story of Jeffers’ ‘Metempsychosis’ Tells.” Jeffers Studies 19 (2020): 13-36.
  • “‘It is out of fashion to say so’: The Language of Nature and the Rhetoric of Beauty in Robinson Jeffers.” Ecocritical Aesthetics: Language, Beauty, and the Environment, ed. Peter Quigley and Scott Slovic.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018.  23-39.
  • “Mediation and Immediacy: The I and You of Jack Kerouac’s Theater of Voice.” Beat Drama:Playwrights and Performances of the “Howl” Generation, Ed. Deborah Geis. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016. 13-24.
  • “Constructed Witness: The Drama of Presence in Robinson Jeffers’ Lyric Voice.” The Wild That Attracts Us: New Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers, Ed. ShaunAnne Tangney. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. 41-64.
  • “‘Blow as deep as you want to blow’: Time, Textuality, and Jack Kerouac’s Development of Spontaneous Prose, Journal of Beat Studies 1 (2012): 49-87.“Twice Upon a Road: The Scroll and Viking Versions of On the Road.” Kerouac’s Crooked Road: The Development of a Fiction.  Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,  2010.  xiii-xxxiii.
  • “A Poetics of Witness: Jeffers’ ‘Salmon Fishing’ and the Apology in ‘Apology for Bad Dreams,” Jeffers Studies 10.2-11.2 (2009): 1-17.
  • “Typetalking: Voice and Performance in On the Road.”  “What’s Your Road, Man?”: Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Ed. Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton.  Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,  2008.  169-86.
  • “Jeffers and ‘The Palace’ of Tradition,” Jeffers Studies 7.2 (2003): 15-23.
  • “The Work of the Edition: Some Possible Lessons and Directions,” Jeffers Studies 6.4 (2002): 36-45.
  • “Stones and Sand” (“Constructed Sincerity: Voice and Nuance in Jeffers’ Short Poems”), Jeffers Studies 6.1 (2002): 21-29.
  • “Many Drummers, A Single Dance?” Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation, Ed. Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy Grace.  New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.  251-60.
  • “The Muse Learns to Tape.”  Reimagining Textuality: Textual Studies in the Late Age of Print, Ed. Elizabeth Loizeaux and Neil Fraistat.  Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.  189-210.
  • “Men Talking in Bars” included in 1996 reissue of Kerouac’s Crooked Road, University of California Press.
  • “Double the Axe, Double the Fun: Is There a Final Version of Jeffers’ The Double Axe.” TEXT 7 (1995):  435-57.
  • “Jeffers’ ‘Roan Stallion’ and the Narrative of Nature.”  Robinson Jeffers: Dimensions of a Poet, Ed. Robert Brophy.  New York: Fordham University Press, 1995.  64-83.
  • “The Problematic Nature of Jeffers’ Tamar.”  Robinson Jeffers: Centennial Essays, Ed. Robert Zaller.  Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1991.  85-106 (expanded version of “A Voice in Nature:  Jeffers’ Tamar and Other Poems.”  American Literature, 61.2 (1989):  230-44.
  • “Robinson Jeffers:  The Modern Poet as Anti-Modernist.”  Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers, Ed. James Karman.  Boston:  G. K. Hall and Co., 1990.  245-52.
  • “Paul Bowles: Past and Present.”  The Review of Contemporary Fiction 2.2 (1982):  52-55.
  • “On the Road:  An Adventurous American Education.”  On the Road.  By Jack Kerouac. Ed. Scott Donaldson.  New York:  The Viking Press, 1979.  465-84.
  • “The Composition of On the Road.” On the Road.  Ed. Donaldson:  534-37.
  • “The Interactive Voice of Robinson Jeffers’ Hungerfield.”  Robinson Jeffers Newsletter 43 (1975):  12-17.  (Reprinted, Robinson Jeffers Newsletter, 1962-88.  Robert J. Brophy.  Occidental College, 1988.  47-54.)

EDUCATION

Cornell University: AB cum laude, English, 1970; MA, English, 1974; PhD, American Literature, 1975

EXPERIENCE

  • University Professor of English, Illinois State University, 2003-16.
  • Professor of English and American Studies, Washington State University, 1990-2003.
  • Academic Dean and English Professor, Deep Springs College, 1987-90.
  • Assistant/Associate Professor, English Department, Indiana-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, 1985-87.
  • Acting Instructor, English Department, University of Washington, 1984-85.
  • Director of Communications and Humanities, Nova College of Nova University, 1982-84.
  • Professor of English and Speech, Deep Springs College, 1981.
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, English Department, Colby College, 1980-81.
  • Lecturer, Freshman Honors Program, University of Delaware, 1976-80.
  • Assistant Professor, English Department, University of Utah, 1974-76.

AWARDS & HONORS

  • Pushcart Prize Nominations: 2009, 2011, 2016, & 2022
  • Lawrence Clark Powell Award for Distinguished Scholarship, Robinson Jeffers Association, 2002.
  • NEH Fellowship for College Teachers, 1992-93.
  • Outstanding Teacher, Cornell University, Merrill Presidential Scholar Program, 1991.
  • Certificate of Merit, Bookbuilder’s West Book Show, 1989 (for Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Volume One).
  • NEH Summer Stipend, 1988.
  • NEH Texts Program Research Grant ($25,000), 1987-88.
  • Tor House Foundation Fellow, 1987.
  • NEH Summer Seminar, The Modern American Long Poem, Roy Harvey Pearce, University of California, San Diego, 1983.
  • First Prize ($1,000), National Poetry Competition, the Chester H. Jones Foundation, 1983 (judges: Carolyn Forché, Dave Smith, and Diane Wakoski).

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

  • American Literature Association
  • AWP
  • Beat Studies Association (Vice President, 2008-  ; Organizing member and Executive Board, 2004-08).
  • Society for Textual Scholarship
  • Robinson Jeffers Association (President, 1993-95; Organizing member and steering committee, 1990-93; Advisory Board, 1997-99; 2019- ).