Carolyn Kizer

Carolyn Kizer. Courtesy NNDB.

Carolyn Ashley Kizer (born December 10, 1925) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet of the Pacific Northwest, whose works reflect her feminism.

Life

Kizer was born in Spokane, Washington, the daughter of a socially prominent Spokane couple, Her father, Benjamin Hamilton Kizer, was 45 when she was born. Her mother, Mabel Ashley Kizer, was a professor of biology who had received her doctorate from Stanford University.

Kizer was once asked if she agreed with a description of her father as someone who "came across as supremely structured, intelligent, polite but always somewhat remote". Her reply: "Add 'authoritarian and severe', and you get a pretty good approximation of how he appeared to that stranger, his child". At times, she related, her father gave her the same "viscera-shriveling" voice she heard him use later on "members of the House Un-American Activities Committee and other villains of the 50’s, to even more devastating effect", and, she added, "I almost forgave him."

After graduating from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, she went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College (where she studied comparative mythologies with Joseph Campbell) in 1945 and study as a graduate at both Columbia University (1945-1946) and the University of Washington (1946-1947).

She then moved back to Washington state, married Stimson Bullitt, from a wealthy and influential Seattle family, had 3 children and divorced. In 1954 she enrolled in a creative writing workshop run by poet Theodore Roethke. "Kizer had three small kids, a big house on North Capitol Hill, enough money to get by and more than enough talent and determination. And although one of her poems had been published in The New Yorker when she was 17, she remembers that she needed a nudge from Roethke to get serious."

In 1959, she helped found Poetry Northwest and served as its editor until 1965.

She then became a "Specialist in Literature" for the U.S. State Department in Pakistan from 1965–1966, during which time she taught for several months in that country. In 1966 she became the first director of Literary Programs for the newly created National Endowment for the Arts. She resigned that post in 1970, when the NEA chairman, Roger L. Stevens, was fired by President Richard Nixon. She was a consultant to the NEA for the following year.

In the 1970s and 1980s, she held appointments as poet-in-residence or lecturer at universities across the country, including Columbia, Stanford, Princeton, San Jose State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been a visiting writer at literary conferences and events across the country, as well as in Dublin, Ireland, and Paris. Kizer was also a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

She was appointed a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1995, but resigned 3 years later to protest the absence of women and minorities on the governing board.(Citation needed)

Kizer is married to architect-historian John Marshall Woodbridge. When not teaching and lecturing, she divides her time between their home in Sonoma, California and their apartment in Paris.

Writing

"Kizer reaches into mythology in poems like “Semele Recycled”; into politics, into feminism, especially in her series of poems called “Pro Femina”; into science, the natural world, music, and translations and commentaries on Japanese and Chinese literatures," according to an article on Kizer at the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest Web site.

Recognition

Awards

• Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1985)
• Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize (1988)
• American Academy of Arts and Letters award
• Award of Honor of the San Francisco Arts Commission
• Borestone Award (six times)
• Pushcart Prize (three times)
• Frost Medal
• John Masefield Memorial Award
• Governor's Award for the best book of the year, State of Washington (1965, 1985)

Publications

Poetry

• Poems,. Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum, 1959.
• The Ungrateful Garden. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1961.
• Knock upon Silence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.
• Midnight Was My Cry: New and selected poems. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.
• Mermaids in the Basement: Poems for women. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1984.
• Yin: New poems (contains selections from Mermaids in the Basement). Brockport, NY: BOA Editions, 1984.
• The Nearness of You: Poems for men. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1986.
• Harping On: Poems, 1985-1995. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1996.
• Cool, Calm, & Collected: Poems, 1960-2000. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2000.
• Pro Femina: A poem. Kansas City, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000.

Non-fiction

• Proses: Essays on poems & poets. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1993.
• Picking and Choosing: Essays on prose. Cheney, WA: Eastern Washington University Press, 1995.

Translated

• Carrying Over: Poems from the Chinese, Urdu, Macedonian, Yiddish and French African. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1988.

Edited

• Woman Poet: The west (edited with Elaine Dallman & Barbara Gelpi). Reno, NV: Women-in-Literature, 1980.
• Robertson Peterson, Leaving Taos. New York,NY: Harper, 1981.
• Muriel Weston, Primitive Places. Seattle, WA: Owl Creek Press, 1987.
• The Essential John Clare. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1992.
• One Hundred Great Poems by Women. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995.
• American Poetry: The twentieth century (edited by Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, & Marjorie Perloff). (2 volumes), New York: Library of America, 2000.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

5 Poems by Carolyn Kizer-0

• List of U.S. poets

References

• An Answering Music: On the poetry of Carolyn Kizer" (edited by David Rigsbee). Ford-Brown, 1990.
• Carolyn Kizer, Perspectives on her life and work. CavanKerry Press, 2001.

External links

Poems

• Carolyn Kizer profile & 2 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Carolyn Kizer b. 1925 at the Poetry Foundation
• Carolyn Kizer at PoemHunter (11 poems)

Audio / video

• Carolyn Kizer at YouTube

Books

• Carolyn Kizer at Amazon.com

About

• "Carolyn Kizer, Pulitzer-Winning Poet, Dies at 89" obituary in the New York Times
• Carolyn Kizer at NNDB
• Biographical article on Kizer at "Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest" Web site
• Barbara Thompson Davis (Spring 2000). "Carolyn Kizer, The Art of Poetry No. 81". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/731/the-art-of-poetry-no-81-carolyn-kizer. 
• New York Times review of ' 'The Nearness of You' ' (March 22, 1987)
• [Cool, Calm, and Collected: Poems, 1960-2000] reviewed at The Brooklyn Rail