Susan Wheeler (born July 16, 1955) is an educator and award-winning

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 (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

whose poems have frequently appeared in anthologies. She is currently Professor Emerita at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. She has also taught at

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a non-denominational all-male institutio ...

Rutgers Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College and was aff ...

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

and

The New School The New School is a Private university, private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for p ...

. Wheeler was born in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

and grew up in

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

and throughout

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

. She received a BA from

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont, United States. Founded as a women’s college in 1932,

in 1977 and pursued graduate studies in art history at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

between 1979 and 1981. Wheeler was the first example of an Elliptical Poet described by

Stephanie Burt Stephanie Burt (formerly published as Stephen Burt) is a literary critic and poet who is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. ''The New York Times'' has called her "one of the most influential poetry cr ...

in her creation of the term in 1998. and expanded upon in an eponymous essay in American Letters & Commentary. Her work is also referred to in Jed Rasula's ''Syncopations: The Stress of Innovation in Contemporary American Poetry''.

Awards and honors

*1978-79 Vermont Councill of the Arts grantee *1987 Grolier award for poetry *1988 Prize for Poetry, Roberts Foundation *1990 Fund for Poetry grantee *1993 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow (1993–95, 1997–99) *1994

Norma Farber First Book Award The Norma Farber First Book Award is given by the Poetry Society of America "for a first book of original poetry written by an American and published in either a hard or soft cover in a standard edition during the calendar year". Poetry Society of ...

, ''Bag o' Diamonds'' *1994

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...

, ''Bag o' Diamonds'' *1999 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow *2000

, ''Bag o' Diamonds'' *2012

National Book Award The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...

(Poetry), finalist, ''Meme'' Her poems have appeared in

The Best American Poetry series ''The Best American Poetry'' series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems. Background The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, still the genera ...

in these editions:

1988 1988 was a crucial year in the early history of the Internet—it was the year of the first well-known computer virus, the Morris worm, 1988 Internet worm. The first permanent intercontinental Internet link was made between the United State ...

1991 It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. During the year, the Soviet Union Dissolution of the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving Post-soviet states, fifteen sovereign republics and the Commonwealth of Independent State ...

1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...

1996 1996 was designated as: * International Year for the Eradication of Poverty Events January * January 8 – A Zairean cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the center of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997,

2003 2003 was designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Fresh water, Freshwater. In 2003, a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition 2003 invasion of Iraq, invaded Iraq, starting the Iraq War. Demographic ...

2005 2005 was designated as the International Year for Sport and Physical Education and the International Year of Microcredit. The beginning of 2005 also marked the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Internationa ...

Works

*''Bag 'o' Diamonds'' (poetry), University of Georgia Press, 1993 *''Smokes'' (poetry), Four Way Books, 1998 *''Source Codes'' (poetry), Salt, 2001 *''Ledger'' (poetry), Iowa, 2005 *''Record Palace'' (novel), Graywolf, 2005 *''Assorted Poems'' (poetry),

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer P ...

, 2010 *''Meme'' (poetry), Iowa, 2012

References

1955 births Living people 21st-century American women American women academics American women poets Bennington College alumni Formalist poets The New Yorker people Princeton University faculty University of Chicago alumni Writers from Pittsburgh 20th-century American poets {{US-poet-1950s-stub