Mary Kinzie

Mary Kinzie was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 30, 1944. She has published seven collections of poems: California Sorrow (Knopf, 2007); Drift (Knopf, 2005); The Ghost Ship (Knopf, 1996); Autumn Eros and Other Poems (Knopf, 1991); Summers of Vietnam and Other Poems (Sheep Meadow Press, 1990); Masked Women (Sheep Meadow Press, 1990); and The Threshold of the Year (University of Missouri Press, 1981), which won the Devins Award for the best debut volume of verse.

She has published more than 150 poems in magazines and journals and has written extensively on contemporary poets in reviews and essays, some of which are collected in A Poet's Guide to Poetry (University of Chicago Press, 1999); The Judge is Fury: Dislocation and Form in Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 1995) and The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose: Moral Essays on the Poet's Calling (University of Chicago Press, 1993).

The poet Susan Stewart said Kinzie's work "finds its radiance in the exact word, the just phrase, the intimate truth. In a range of imaginative forms, and with the willed innocence of someone learning language anew, Kinzie deepens the moral project of close attention that has always characterized her art."

Her honors include awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, the President's Fund for the Humanities, and The Poetry Society of America. In 2008, she won the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize, the only major American prize to recognize a poet for teaching as well as writing. Since 1979, she has been head of the undergraduate creative writing program at Northwestern University.

Bibliography

Poetry

Drift (Knopf, 2005)
California Sorrow (Knopf, 2007)
The Ghost Ship (Knopf, 1996)
Autumn Eros and Other Poems (Knopf, 1991)
Summers of Vietnam and Other Poems (Sheep Meadow Press, 1990)
Masked Women (Sheep Meadow Press, 1990)
The Threshold of the Year (University of Missouri Press, 1981)

Prose

A Poet's Guide to Poetry (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
The Judge is Fury: Dislocation and Form in Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 1995)
The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose: Moral Essays on the Poet's Calling (University of Chicago Press, 1993)