Poem: Mrs. Autumn and Her Two Daughters
Mary Jo Bang was born in Waynesville, Missouri and grew up in St. Louis. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in sociology from Northwestern University; a B.A. in photography from Westminster University (London), and an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. She has published three books of poems. Apology for Want, (University Press of New England, 1997) was awarded the Bakeless Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award; Louise in Love (Grove, 2001) received an Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America; The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans (University of GA Press, 2001) won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series Competition. Individual poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Paris Review, Fence, Volt, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Best American Poetry 2001, and elsewhere. She has been a poetry editor at Boston Review since 1995. In 1999 - 2000, she was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. She currently teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
Poem: The Unquiet Eye
Paul Hoover is author of eight poetry collections including Rehearsal in Black (Salt Publications, 2001); Totem and Shadow: New & Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1999); Viridian (The University of Georgia Press, 1997), winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series competition; and The Novel: A Poem (New Directions, 1990), a book-length poem. His ninth poetry collection, Winter (Mirror), will be published by Flood Editions in the spring of 2002. He won the Carl Sandburg Award, Chicago's leading literary prize, for his collection, Idea (The Figures, 1987) and the 1984 General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers for poems later included in Nervous Songs (L' Epervier Press, 1986). His other poetry books include Somebody Talks a Lot (The Yellow Press, 1983) and Letter to Einstein Beginning Dear Albert (The Yellow Press, 1979). His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, Sulfur, The New Republic, Hambone, and The Iowa Review, among others. It has also appeared in numerous anthologies including five volumes of the annual anthology The Best American Poetry (Scribners). He is editor of the poetry anthology, Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994) and, with Maxine Chernoff, the literary magazine New American Writing. Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College Chicago and founder of The Poetry Center of Chicago, he divides his time between Chicago and San Francisco.
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