Linda Gregg

Linda Gregg. Courtesy Graywolf Press.

Linda Alouise Gregg (born September 9, 1942) is an American poet.

Life

Born in Suffern, New York (just miles northwest of New York City), Gregg grew up on the other side of the country, in Marin County, California. She earned both a Bachelor of Arts, in 1967, and a Master of Arts, in 1972, from San Francisco State College.

She was in a long relationship to poet Jack Gilbert, and later married writer, political activist, and philosophy professor John Brentlinger. The couple divorced in 1990.

Her 1st book of poems, Too Bright to See, was published in 1981. Her published books include Things and Flesh, Chosen By The Lion, The Sacraments of Desire, Alma, In the Middle Distance, and All of it Singing. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Ploughshares, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Kenyon Review, and the Atlantic Monthly.

She began teaching poetry at schools like Indian Valley College, University of Tucson, Napa State, and Louisiana State University. She has since taught at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Houston, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has been living in New York City since 2006, and until 2008 taught as a Lecturer in the Creative Writing Program in the University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University.

Writing

"Linda Gregg brings us back to poetry. . . . She is original and mysterious, one of the best poets in America", says Gerald Stern.

Much of Gregg's poetry is inspired by her extensive travels. Her work has received enormous critical praise for its soaring lyrical depictions of grief and loss, and the strange strengths and beauty she mines from them. Joseph Brodsky once stated that "[t]he blinding intensity of Ms. Gregg's lines stains the reader's psyche the way lightning or heartbreak do."

The poet Czesław Miłosz has said, "I consider Linda Gregg to be one of the best American poets, and I value the neatness of design in her poems, as well as the energy of each line."

W.S. Merwin confessed: "I have loved Linda Gregg's poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They are inseparable from the surprising, unrolling, eventful, pure current of their language, and they convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance."

Recognition

• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Lannan Literary Foundation Fellowship
• National Endowment for the Arts grant
• Whiting Writer's Award
• multiple Pushcart Prizes
• 2003 winner of the Sara Teasdale Award
• 2006 PEN/Voelcker Award winner for Poetry.

Publications

Poetry

• Too Bright to See. Port Townsend, WA: Graywolf Press, 1981.
• Eight Poems. Port Townsend, WA: Graywolf Press, 1982.
• Alma. New York: Random House, 1985.
• The Sacraments of Desire. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1991.
• Chosen by the Lion. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1994.
• Things and Flesh. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1999.
• Too Bright to See & Alma. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2002.
• In the Middle Distance. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2006.
• All of It Singing: New and selected poems. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2008.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

Jackson Poetry Prize Winner Linda Gregg Reads Work

• Linda Gregg (CD). New York: Academy of American Poets, 1991.
• Song of the Open Road (CD). New York: Academy of American Poets, 2010.

Except where noted, discographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "Summer in a Small Town" at Poetry 180
• Linda Gregg b. 1942 at the Poetry Foundation
• Linda Gregg profile & 9 poems at the Academy of American Poets

Audio / video

• Linda Gregg at The Poetry Archive
• Linda Gregg at YouTube

Books

• Linda Gregg at Amazon.com

About

• Linda Gregg at Graywolf Press
• Linda Gregg at Ploughshares
• Linda Gregg at the Leadership and Learning Center