Lisa Russ Spaar

Lisa Russ Spaar. Courtesy Blackbird.

Lisa Russ Spaar (born March 17, 1956) is an American poet.

Life

Spaar graduated from University of Virginia (summa cum laude), with a B.A. in 1978 and an M.F.A. in 1982. She teaches at the University of Virginia.

Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Poetry, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Shenandoah, Indiana Review, Paris Review, Sonora Review, and Southwest Review.

Writing

Ted Burke: "Lisa Russ Spaar’s poem 'I Consider My Mother's Mind' makes me think of something that has been suddenly and violently emptied after a long time of neglect, a wallet crammed with too many business cards, gummed encrusted post-it notes, receipts, expired credit cards and coupons, small scraps of paper with phone numbers attached to first names whose faces you've forgotten."

Recognition

• 2011 - Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize
• 2009/2010 - Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2001 - Emily Clark Balch Award of the Virginia Quarterly Review
• 2000 - Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers
• 1997 - Finalist, National Poetry Series
• 1996 - Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artists Award
• 1978 - Academy of American Poets Prize - University of Virginia
• 1980 - Hoyns Fellowship in Poetry - University of Virginia

Publications

Poetry

• Cellar. Charlottesville, VA: Alderman Press, 1983.
• Blind Boy on Skates. University of Northern Texas Press (Trilobite Chapbooks), 1987.
• Glass Town: Poems. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 1999. ISBN 978-1-888996-18-0
• Blue Venus: Poems. New York: Persea Books, 2004.
• The Land of Wandering. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2005.
• Hiatus. Charlottesville, VA: Virginia Arts of the Book Center, 2007.
• Satin Cash: Poems. New York: Persea Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0-89255-343-3
• Vanitas, Rough: Poems. New York: Persea Books, 2012.

Non-fiction

• The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of contemporary poetry (with introduction by Nick Flynn). Chester, CT: Drunken Boat Media, 2013.

Edited

• Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia poems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-231-11544-5
• All That Mighty Heart: London poems. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8139-2717-6

Anthologized

• The Best American Poetry 2008 (edited by Charles Wright & David Lehman). New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7432-9975-6

Lisa Russ Spaar, Smartish Pace poetry reading

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• 'After John Donne's "To his Mistress Going to Bed"' at the Academy of American Poets
• Lisa Russ Spaar at the Poetry Foundation
• Lisa Russ Spaar at Blackbird (3 poems) "Lullabye", "New Year's Eve", "The Insomnia of Hildegarde of Bingen")
• 3 Insomnia poems at The Drunken Boat: "Virginia Woolf's Insomnia", "Mesmer's Insomnia", "Portrait of Insomnia with Giorgio de Chirico"
• "mortification (2)"; "mortification (3)"; "So"; "Fawn", Free Verse, Spring 2006
• Lisa Russ Spaar at Virginia Quarterly Review.

Prose

• "God-Hunger Redux", Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2009

Audio / video

• "The Ice House" and "Hammock", Cortland Review, November 2007
• "I Consider My Mother's Mind", Slate, July 10, 2007
• Lisa Russ Spaar at YouTube

Books

• Lisa Russ Spaar at Amazon.com

About

• Lila Russ Spaar at the University of Virginia
• Lisa Russ Spaar at Image
• Anthologizing Poetic London: An interview with Lisa Russ Spaar, London Literary Journal, 2008.