Diane Seuss (born 1956) is an American poet and educator.
[ Her book '' frank: sonnets'' won the ]Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award came five years after the first Pulitzers were awarded in other categories; Joseph Pulitzer's will had not ment ...
and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
The National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, established in 1975, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". Awards are presented ...
in 2022.
Early life, family and education
Diane Seuss was born in Michigan City, Indiana
Michigan City is a city in LaPorte County, Indiana, United States. It had a population of 32,075 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located along Lake Michigan in the Michiana region, the city is about east of Chicago and is west o ...
and raised in Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
in Edwardsburg and Niles.
Seuss received a BA from Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo College is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Founded in 1833 by American Baptist Churches USA, Baptist ministers as the Michigan and Huron Institute, K ...
and an Master's of Social Work from Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University (Western Michigan, Western or WMU) is a Public university, public research university in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. It was initially established as Western State Normal School in 1903 by Governor Aaron T. B ...
.[
]
Career
Seuss taught at Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo College is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Founded in 1833 by American Baptist Churches USA, Baptist ministers as the Michigan and Huron Institute, K ...
from 1988 until 2016. In 2012, she was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College
Colorado College is a private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell in his daughter's memory, the college offers over 40 majors a ...
. She has been a visiting professor at University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
and Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...
.
Seuss is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. In 2021 she received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
.
Her poetry has appeared in ''Gulf Coast
The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Tex ...
'', The ''Missouri Review'', ''Poetry
Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...
'', and ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', among others. Her book ''Four-Legged Girl'' was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
. ''Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl'' was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".[Women's Review of Books
Wellesley College is a private historically women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the Seven Sisters Colleges, an unoffici ...]
'', Laurie Stone notes "More than anything, it strikes me, she loves the individual sentence and line." ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' reviewer Victoria Chang
Victoria Chang is an American poet, writer, editor, and critic. She has experimented with different styles of writing, including writing poems shaped in obituaries, for parts of her life, including her parents and herself, in ''OBIT'', letters in ...
says that Seuss is "writing some of the most animated and complex poetry today," and goes on to writeIn an age where poetry can so easily be simplified into small one-dimensional sound bites to share on Instagram or Twitter, Seuss's poems aspire to complicate, drawing connections between seemingly unrelated things, flowing in and out and back and away from their initial triggers.
''Publishers Weekly'' called Seuss's writing "endlessly inventive with her language and feats of imagination."
''Four-Legged Girl''
Seuss's third collection, ''Four Legged Girl'', is "concerned with loss," including the deaths of her father and of a former lover, but also addresses "importance of living in the present," writes Marybeth Rua-Larsen. She goes on "In ''Four-Legged Girl'', Seuss not only turns the common associations of flowers as gentle and delicate things easily damaged into symbols of strength and aggression but does so with energy, inventiveness, and a wildness that is incapable of being tamed."
In the ''American Poetry Review
''The American Poetry Review'' (''APR'') is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint. It was founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The magazine's editor is Elizab ...
'', Margaree Little addresses the collection's title, which refers to Myrtle Corbin, a Victorian-era woman born with four legs and who appears on the cover of the book. Seuss begins and ends the book with works taking inspiration from Corbin. Little writes that Seuss's poems are "borne of traumas" and sees Corbin as a mirror of Seuss's self-identification "as a spectacle, an exhibit, a performance."
Writing for ''The Rumpus
''The Rumpus'' is an online literary magazine founded by Stephen Elliott (author), Stephen Elliott, and launched on January 20, 2009. The site features interviews, book reviews, essays, comics, and critiques of creative culture as well as origi ...
'', Ellen Mack-Miller notes a sense of animism
Animism (from meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in ...
in ''Four-Legged Girl'', writing "Seuss animates. Objects come alive, like toys springing from a chest when darkness comes." ''Four Legged Girl'' was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize; the nomination called the collection "a gallery of incisive and beguiling portraits and landscapes."
''Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl''
Seuss's collection ''Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks'' takes its title from the Rembrandt painting of the same name, and each section of the collection begins with an image derived from the painting. Other poems references paintings Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...
, Georgia O'Keefe, Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko ( ; Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz until 1940; September 25, 1903February 25, 1970) was an American abstract art, abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular reg ...
, and Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household ...
among others. Reviewer Laurie Stone writes that the poems' use of painting allows them to "freeze time" and makes them a "lab for experiments with language, rough emotions, and the indeterminacy of feeling." ''Los Angeles Times'' reviewer Victoria Chang describes the effect of Seuss's use of painting to frame her poems: "By the end of the book, we see how a painting (and the speaker's life) have become so much more because we have taken the painting (and life) apart and expanded each fragment.... art, in particular still life art, is anything but useless."
''frank: sonnets''
''frank: sonnets'' comprises 128 poems, all sonnet
A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set Rhyme scheme, rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in ...
s. Critic Laurie Stone sees Seuss's use of poetic form as a metaphor: "A sonnet is like a trapped body: all physical limits and nowhere to run but inside the lyrical imagination. Fourteen lines, again and again."
Critic Meryl Natchez writes that
:... in ''frank: sonnets'', eussprovides fresh imagery, calls out the male icons of the '70s and early '80s New York scene, and directly grapples with loneliness, addiction, abortion, and death. The language is often startling, the incidents pried open for the reader to enter and observe. The overall arc of the book is memoir: stories of grief, of questing, of trying to make sense of a complex life. These poems appear in the order written, with long sequences about Seuss's father, her lovers, her exploits and failures, and the death of a close friend.
The Pulitzer Prize committee described ''frank: sonnets'' as "a virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form to confront the messy contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt
The Rust Belt, formerly the Steel Belt or Factory Belt, is an area of the United States that underwent substantial Deindustrialization, industrial decline in the late 20th century. The region is centered in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic (Uni ...
."
''Modern Poetry''
Seuss's 2024 collection, ''Modern Poetry'', was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry
The National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". . It was also one of the ''New York Times'''s 100 Notable Books of 2024.
One poem in the collection, "Romantic Poet," was featured in an article by ''New York Times'' critic A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott (born July 10, 1966) is an American journalist and cultural critic, known for his film and literary criticism. After starting his career at ''The New York Review of Books'', '' Variety'', and ''Slate'', he began writing film ...
under the headline "Will You Fall in Love With This Poem? I Did." In it, Scott offers a close reading of Seuss's poem, which itself considers famed Romantic poet John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...
. Scott sees in the poem an "unromantic, prosaic, crude" physical description of a "stinky, runty, manifestly unlovable poet" paired with praise for his "immaculate art." He concludes "Keats himself, made real in Seuss’s poem — a living, embodied presence she cannot help loving, in spite of whatever unpleasantness her scholar friend might reveal about him. That’s true romance."
Selected works
* ''It Blows You Hollow'' ( New Issues 1998)
* ''Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open'' (University of Massachusetts Press
The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The press was founded in 1963, publishing scholarly books and non-fiction. The press imprint is overseen by an interdisciplinar ...
2010), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry in 2009
* ''Four-Legged Girl'' (Graywolf Press
Graywolf Press is an independent, non-profit publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Graywolf Press collaborates with organizations such as the College of Saint Benedict, the Mel ...
2015), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award came five years after the first Pulitzers were awarded in other categories; Joseph Pulitzer's will had not ment ...
in 2016
* ''Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl'' (Graywolf Press 2018), finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
The National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, established in 1975, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". Awards are presented ...
and Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.
* ''frank: sonnets'' (Graywolf Press 2021), winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
The National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, established in 1975, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". Awards are presented ...
, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award came five years after the first Pulitzers were awarded in other categories; Joseph Pulitzer's will had not ment ...
* ''Modern Poetry'' (Graywolf Press 2024)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seuss, Diane
1956 births
21st-century American women
American women academics
American women poets
Kalamazoo College alumni
Kalamazoo College faculty
Living people
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners
University of Michigan faculty
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
Western Michigan University alumni