Maurice Manning (poet)



Maurice Manning (born 1966 in Danville, Kentucky) is an American poet.

Maurice Manning attended Earlham College and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He was formerly a professor at DePauw University, and now teaches in the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at Indiana University and is on the faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Manning began teaching in the Indiana University M.F.A. Program in Fall 2004. In January 2012 he was hired by Transylvania University, a small liberal arts college in Lexington, Kentucky, and will begin teaching full time in September.

Along with Wendell Berry, Silas House, Bobbie Ann Mason, George Ella Lyon, and Anne Shelby, Manning is among the core group of Kentucky writers who have been increasingly active in the fight against mountaintop removal mining, appearing at rallies and protests throughout the state.

His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, Washington Square, Green Mountains Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Wind, Hunger Mountains, Black Warrior Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Writing
New York Times: "Not many books of poems put you in mind of Robert Penn Warren, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the brainiac whimsy of McSweeney's quarterly at the same time. In his first book, LAWRENCE BOOTH'S BOOK OF VISIONS (Yale University, cloth, $19; paper, $12), Maurice Manning displays not just terrific cunning but terrific aim -- he nails his images the way a restless boy, up in a tree with a slingshot, nails anything sentient that wanders into view.

Publishers Weekly: "equal parts carnivorous nightmare, Freudian pastoral, and deep-fired family romance."

Cortland Review: "In his third collection, Yale Younger Poets prize–winner Manning goes for a new twist on the traditional genre of pastoral poetry: he praises nature, but also engages in a postmodern conversation with a version of a higher power, which he calls 'Boss'."

Anna Clark: "Haunting and funny, innovative and heartening, this collection of seventy untitled, unpunctuated poems features a nameless land laborer talking to his creator, whom he calls 'boss.' Not a religious book in the traditional sense, this is rather one of questions, wonder, and, at times, sadness."

Recognition
His first collection of poems, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions was awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award, chosen by W.S. Merwin.

His collection, "The Common Man," was one of the two finalists for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

He has held a fellowship to The Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown. He is a Guggenheim Fellow.

External references

 * Poems
 * Broadside, Counter Balance Arts
 * Audio / video
 * Maurice Manning, All Things Considered, NPR, April 19, 2001
 * About
 * Faculty: Maurice Manning, Indiana University
 * RADICAL PASTORAL: A CONVERSATION WITH MAURICE MANNING , Lyric Review, November 2006
 * Quantum Cowboys and Honky Tonk Heroes: A Conversation with Maurice Manning, Sycamore Review, Summer/Fall 2002 issue, 14.2, Purdue University
 * Maurice Manning’s Bedside Table: Books, Music, and Neighbors, The Southeastern Review online
 * Review of Common Man at Sycamore Review.
 * RADICAL PASTORAL: A CONVERSATION WITH MAURICE MANNING , Lyric Review, November 2006
 * Quantum Cowboys and Honky Tonk Heroes: A Conversation with Maurice Manning, Sycamore Review, Summer/Fall 2002 issue, 14.2, Purdue University
 * Maurice Manning’s Bedside Table: Books, Music, and Neighbors, The Southeastern Review online
 * Review of Common Man at Sycamore Review.