Frontier Space - formation of INformation through search instead of REsearch

The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, or Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori as it was originally known in Italian, is a series of artist biographies written by 16th century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari, which is considered “perhaps the most famous, and even today the most- read work of the older literature of art”, “some of the Italian Renaissance’s most influential writing on art”, and “one of the founding texts in art history”. The title is often abridged to the Vite or the Lives.

Background
As the first Italian art historian, Vasari initiated the genre of an encyclopedia of artistic biographies that continues today. He coined the term “Renaissance” (rinascita) in print, though an awareness of the ongoing “rebirth” in the arts had been in the air from the time of Alberti. Vasari’s work was first published in 1550 by Lorenzo Torrentino in Florence, and dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. It included a valuable treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. It was partly rewritten and enlarged in 1568 and provided with woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural).

The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines and tends to attribute to them all the new developments in Renaissance art—for example, the invention of engraving. Venetian art in particular, let alone other parts of Europe, is systematically ignored. Between his first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and the second edition gave more attention to Venetian art (finally including Titian) without achieving a neutral point of view. John Symonds claimed in 1899 that “It is clear that Vasari often wrote with carelessness, confusing dates and places, and taking no pains to verify the truth of his assertions.”, while acknowledging that despite these shortcomings, it is one of the basic sources for info on the Renaissance in Italy.

Vasari’s biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip. Many of his anecdotes have the ring of truth, although likely inventions. Others are generic fictions, such as the tale of young Giotto painting a fly on the surface of a painting by Cimabue that the older master repeatedly tried to brush away, a genre tale that echoes anecdotes told of the Greek painter Apelles. He did not research archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation and the immediately preceding one. Modern criticism—with all the new materials opened up by research—has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. The work is widely considered a classic even today, though it is widely agreed that it must be supplemented by modern critical research.

Vasari includes a 42 page sketch of his own biography at the end of his Vite, and adds further details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Vasari and Francesco Salviati.

Influence
Vasari’s Vite has been described as “by far the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art” and “the most important work of Renaissance biography of artists”. Its influence is situated mainly in three domains: as an example for contemporary and later biographers and art historians, as a defining factor in the view on the Renaissance and the role of Florence and Rome in it, and as a major source of information on the lives and works of early Italian artists.

The Vite have been translated wholly or partially into many languages, including English, Dutch, German and French.

Flood of artist biographies
The Vite started a wave of artist biographies. Other, mainly 17th century biographers often were called the Vasari of their country. Karel Van Mander in The Netherlands was probably the first Vasarian author with his Het Schilderboeck (The Painters’ Book) from 1604, the first comprehensive list of biographies of painters from the Low Countries.Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688), author of Deutsche Akademie, was known as the “German Vasari”. In England, Aglionby’s Painting Illustrated from 1685 was largely based on Vasari as well.

View of the Renaissance
The Vite is also important as the basis for discussions on the development of style, It influenced the view art historians had of the Early Renaissance for a long time, placing too much emphasis on the achievements of Florentian and Roman artists while ignoring those of the rest of Italy and certainly the artists from the rest of Europe.

Source of information
Finally, it has also been for centuries the most important source for info on Early Renaissance Italian (and especially Tuscan) painters and the attribution of their paintings. In 1899, an author like John Addington Symonds used the Vite as one of his basic sources for the description of artists in his 7 books on Renaissance in Italy., and nowadays it is still, despite its obvious biases and shortcomings, the basis for the biography of many artists like Leonardo da Vinci.

Contents
The Vite contains the biographies of many important Italian artists, and is also adopted as a sort of classical reference guide for their names, which are sometimes used in different ways. The following list respects the order of the book, as divided into its three parts. The book starts with a dedication to Cosimo de’ Medici and a preface, and then starts with technical and background texts about architecture, sculpture, and painting. A second preface follows, introducing the actual “Vite” in parts 2 to 5. What follows is the complete list from the second (1568) edition. In a few cases, different very short biographies were given in one section.

Part 2
* Cimabue
* Arnolfo di Lapo, with Bonnano
* Nicola Pisano
* Giovanni Pisano
* Andrea Tafi
* Gaddo Gaddi
* Margaritone
* Giotto, with Puccio Capanna
* Agostino and Agnolo
* Stefano and Ugolino
* Pietro Lorenzetti (Pietro Laurati)
* Andrea Pisano
* Buonamico Buffalmacco
* Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Ambruogio Laurati)
* Pietro Cavallini
* Simone Martini with Lippo Memmi
* Taddeo Gaddi
* Andrea Orcagna (Andrea di Cione)
* Tomasso Fiorentino
* Giovanni da Ponte
* Agnolo Gaddi
* Berna Sanese (Barna da Siena)
* Duccio
* Antonio Viniziano (Antonio Veneziano)
* Jacopo di Casentino
* Spinello Aretino
* Gherardo Starnina
* Lippo
* Lorenzo Monaco
* Taddeo Bartoli
* Lorenzo di Bicci

Part 3
* Jacopo della Quercia
* Niccolo Aretino (Niccolò di Piero Lamberti)
* Dello (Dello di Niccolò Delli)
* Nanni di Banco
* Luca della Robbia
* Paolo Uccello
* Lorenzo Ghiberti
* Masolino da Panicale
* Parri Spinelli
* Masaccio
* Filippo Brunelleschi
* Donatello
* Michelozzo Michelozzi
* Antonio Filarete and Simone (Simone Ghini)
* Giuliano da Maiano
* Piero della Francesca
* Fra Angelico
* Leon Battista Alberti
* Lazaro Vasari
* Antonello da Messina
* Alessio Baldovinetti
* Vellano da Padova (Bartolomeo Bellano)
* Fra Filippo Lippi
* Paolo Romano, Mino del Reame, Chimenti Camicia, and Baccio Pontelli
* Andrea del Castagno
* Domenico Veneziano
* Gentile da Fabriano
* Vittore Pisanello
* Pesello and Francesco Pesellino
* Benozzo Gozzoli
* Francesco di Giorgio and Vecchietta (Lorenzo di Pietro)
* Galasso Ferrarese
* Antonio Rossellino
* Bernardo Rossellino
* Desiderio da Settignano
* Mino da Fiesole
* Lorenzo Costa
* Ercole Ferrarese
* Jacopo Bellini
* Giovanni Bellini
* Gentile Bellini
* Cosimo Rosselli
* Il Cecca (Francesco d’Angelo)
* Don Bartolomeo Abbate di S. Clemente (Bartolomeo della Gatta)
* Gherardo Silvani
* Domenico Ghirlandaio
* Antonio Pollaiuolo
* Piero Pollaiuolo
* Sandro Botticelli
* Benedetto da Maiano
* Andrea del Verrocchio
* Andrea Mantegna
* Filippino Lippi
* Bernardino Pinturicchio
* Francesco Francia
* Pietro Perugino
* Vittore Scarpaccia
* Iacopo detto l’Indaco (Jacopo Torni)
* Luca Signorelli

Part 4
* Leonardo da Vinci
* Giorgione da Castelfranco
* Antonio da Correggio
* Piero di Cosimo
* Donato Bramante (Bramante da Urbino)
* Fra Bartolomeo Di San Marco
* Mariotto Albertinelli
* Raffaellino del Garbo
* Pietro Torrigiano (Torrigiano)
* Giuliano da Sangallo
* Antonio da Sangallo
* Raphael
* Guillaume de Marcillat
* Simone del Pollaiolo (il Cronaca)
* Davide Ghirlandaio and Benedetto Ghirlandaio
* Domenico Puligo
* Andrea da Fiesole
* Vincenzo da San Gimignano and Timoteo da Urbino
* Andrea Sansovino (Andrea dal Monte Sansovino)
* Benedetto da Rovezzano
* Baccio da Montelupo and Raffaello da Montelupo (father and son)
* Lorenzo di Credi
* Boccaccio Boccaccino (Boccaccino Cremonese)
* Lorenzetto
* Baldassare Peruzzi
* Pellegrino da Modena (Pellegrino Aretusi)
* Giovan Francesco, also known as il Fattore
* Andrea del Sarto
* Francesco Granacci
* Baccio D’Agnolo
* Properzia de’ Rossi
* Alfonso Lombardi
* Michele Agnolo (Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli)
* Girolamo Santacroce
* Dosso Dossi and Battista Dossi (Dossi brothers)
* Giovanni Antonio Licino
* Rosso Fiorentino
* Giovanni Antonio Sogliani
* Girolamo da Treviso (Girolamo Da Trevigi)
* Polidoro da Caravaggio and Maturino da Firenze(Maturino Fiorentino)
* Bartolommeo Ramenghi (Bartolomeo Da Bagnacavallo)
* Marco Calabrese
* Morto Da Feltro
* Franciabigio
* Francesco Mazzola
* Jacopo Palma (Il Palma)
* Lorenzo Lotto
* Fra Gocondo
* Francesco Granacci
* Baccio d’Agnolo
* Valerio Vicentino (Valerio Belli), Giovanni da Castel Bolognese (Giovanni Bernardi) and Matteo dal Nasaro Veronese

Part 5
* Marcantonio Bolognese
* Antonio da Sangallo
* Giulio Romano
* Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Viniziano)
* Perino Del Vaga
* Giovann’Antonio Lappoli
* Niccolò Soggi
* Niccolò detto il Tribolo
* Pierino da Vinci
* Domenico Beccafumi
* Baccio Bandinelli
* Giuliano Bugiardini
* Cristofano Gherardi
* Jacopo da Pontormo
* Simone Mosca
* Girolamo Genga, Bartolommeo Genga and Giovanbatista San Marino (Giovanni Battista Belluzzi)
* Michele Sanmicheli
* Giovannantonio detto il Soddoma da Verzelli
* Bastiano detto Aristotile da San Gallo
* Benedetto Garofalo and Girolamo da Carpi
* Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Davide Ghirlandaio and Benedetto Ghirlandaio
* Giovanni da Udine
* Battista Franco
* Francesco Rustichi
* Fra’ Giovann’Agnolo Montorsoli
* Francesco detto de’ Salviati
* Daniello Ricciarelli da Volterra
* Taddeo Zucchero

Part 6
* Michelangelo Buonarroti (Michelangelo)
* Francesco Primaticcio
* Tiziano da Cadore (Titian)
* Jacopo Sansovino
* Lione Aretino (Leone Leoni)
* Giulio Clovio, manuscript illuminator
* Bronzino
* Giorgio Vasari

Robert L. Hass (b. March 1, 1941) is a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for “Time and Materials.”
Life
Born in San Francisco, Hass is a California poet whose works are well-known for their West Coast subject and attitude. He grew up with an alcoholic mother and it was his older brother who encouraged him to dedicate himself to his writing. (His mother’s alcoholism was a major topic in the 1996 poem collection, Sun Under Wood). Awe-struck by Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, among others in the 1950s Bay Area poetry scene, Hass entertained the idea of becoming a beatnik. Hass graduated from Marin Catholic High School in 1958. Hass was interested when the area became influenced by East Asian literary techniques, such as haiku.

Hass is currently married to the poet and antiwar activist Brenda Hillman, who teaches at St. Mary’s College.

Career
Hass graduated from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California in 1963, and received his MA and Ph.D. in English from Stanford University in 1965 and 1971 respectively. At Stanford he studied with the poet and critic Yvor Winters, whose ideas influenced his later writing and thinking. His Stanford classmates included the poets Robert Pinsky, John Matthias, and James McMichael. Hass taught literature and writing at the University at Buffalo in 1967. From 1971 to 1989, he taught at his alma mater St. Mary’s, at which time he transferred to the faculty of University of California, Berkeley. He as been a visiting faculty member in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop on several occasions.

From 1995-1997, during Hass’s two terms as the US Poet Laureate (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress), he became a well-known champion of literacy, poetry, and ecological awareness. He criss-crossed the country lecturing in places as diverse as corporate boardrooms and for civic groups, or as he has said, “places where poets don’t go.” Since his self-described “act of citizenship,” he has written a weekly column on poetry in the Washington Post. He serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, is a trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize, and works actively for literacy and the environment.

Hass says that he admires beat poet Lew Welch’s short poem “Raid Kills Bugs Dead”. He commented in an archived online chat that “It’s to the point.” In Hass’ opinion, the five most important poets of the last 50 years were Chilean Pablo Neruda, Peruvian Cesar Vallejo, and Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert, Nobel-winner Wislawa Szymborska, and Nobel-winner Czesław Miłosz.

While at Berkeley, Hass has translated the poetry of his fellow Berkeley professor and neighbor Czesław Miłosz as part of a team with Robert Pinsky and Miłosz.

In 1999, Hass appeared in Wildflowers, the debut film by director Melissa Painter. In the film, Hass plays The Poet, a writer who is dying of an unnamed chronic illness. Excerpts from his poetry are included in the script, primarily read by Hass and by actress Darryl Hannah.

Published works
Poetry

* Field Guide, Robert Hass, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973, ISBN 0-300-01650-6
* Praise, Robert Hass, New York: Ecco Press, 1979, ISBN 0-912946-61-X
* Human Wishes, Robert Hass, New York: Ecco Press, 1989, ISBN 0-88001-211-0
* Sun Under Wood: new poems, Robert Hass, Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1996, ISBN 0-88001-468-7
* Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005, Robert Hass, Ecco Press, 2007, ISBN 0-06134-960-7
* Now and Then: The Poet’s Choice Columns, 1997-2000, Robert Hass, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007, ISBN 1593761465

Critical works
* “James Wright”, Robert Hass, in The Pure Clear Word: Essays on the poetry of James Wright, Dave Smith (editor), Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982, ISBN 0-252-00876-6
* Twentieth Century Pleasures: prose on poetry, Robert Hass, New York: Ecco Press, 1984, ISBN 0-88001-045-2
* “Edward Taylor: What was he up to?”, Robert Hass, in Green Thoughts, Green Shades: Essays by contemporary poets on the early modern lyric, Jonathan F. S. Post (editor), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0-520-21455-2

Translations
* The Separate Notebooks, Czesław Miłosz (translated by Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky with the author and Renata Gorczynski), New York: Ecco Press, 1984, ISBN 0-88001-031-2
* Unattainable Earth, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Ecco Press, 1986, ISBN 0-88001-098-3
* Provinces, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1991, ISBN 0-88001-321-4
* The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa, Bashō Matsuo, Buson Yosano, Issa Kobayashi (edited with verse translation by Robert Hass), Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1994, ISBN 0-88001-372-9
* Facing the River: new poems, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995, ISBN 0-88001-404-0
* Road-Side Dog, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998, ISBN 0-374-25129-0
* Treatise on Poetry, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Ecco Press, 2001, ISBN 0-06-018524-4
* Second Space: new poems, Czesław Miłosz (translated by author and Robert Hass), New York: Ecco Press, 2004, ISBN 0-06-074566-5

Awards
* Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, 1972, for Field Guide
* William Carlos Williams Award, 1979, for Praise
* National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, 1984, for Twentieth Century Pleasures
* MacArthur Fellowship , 1984
* National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, 1996, for Sun Under Wood
* National Book Award Winner, Poetry, 2007
* Pulitzer Prize co-winner, Poetry, 2008 for Time and Materials

Ted Kooser is one of Nebraska’s most highly regarded poets and served as the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 - 2006. A professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he is the author of eleven full-length collections of poetry, including Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004) and Weather Central (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). Over the years his works have appeared in many periodicals including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and Antioch Review. Koosers’ poems are included in textbooks and anthologies used in both secondary schools and college classrooms across the country. He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, the Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, The James Boatwright Prize, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.

Kooser has read his poetry for The Academy of American Poets in New York City as well as for many university audiences including those of the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell at Ithaca, Case Western Reserve at Cleveland, The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He has conducted writing workshops in connection with many of these readings.

In addition to poetry, Kooser has written in a variety of forms including plays, fiction, personal essays, and literary criticism. His first book of prose, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (University of Nebraska Press, 2002), won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003 and Third Place in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award in Nonfiction for 2002. The book was chosen as the Best Book Written by a Midwestern Writer for 2002 by Friends of American Writers. It also won the Gold Award for Autobiography in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. The University of Nebraska Press will publish his newest book The Poetry Home Repair Manual in January 2005. The book will give beginning poets tips for their writing.

Currently he is editor and publisher of Windflower Press which specializes in the publication of contemporary poetry. Though mostly inactive now, Windflower published a number of books as well as two literary magazines, The Salt Creek Reader (1967-1975) and The Blue Hotel (1980-1981). The Salt Creek Reader was awarded several grants of support from the National Endowment of the Arts through The Coordination Council of Literary Magazines. Kooser published several anthologies through Windflower Press. One of these, The Windflower Home Almanac of Poetry, was listed by Library Journal as one of the best books from small presses for 1980. Seventeen Danish Poets in Translation received international notice, and As Far As I Can See; Contemporary Writing of the Middle Plains is in use as a text in secondary schools and colleges across the plains region. In 1999, Kooser published Roy Scheele’s Keeping the Horses as a fundraising project for the Nebraska Literary Heritage Association.

Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, Kooser earned a BS at Iowa State University in 1962 and an MA at the University of Nebraska in 1968. He is a former vice-president of the Lincoln Benefit Life, where he worked as an insurance representative for many years. He lives on an acreage near the town of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, and dogs, Alice and Howard. He also has a son, Jeff, and a granddaughter, Margaret.

Books Published:

Poetry:

Official Entry Blank, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1969
A Local Habitation & A Name, Solo Press, San Luis Obispo, 1974
Not Coming to be Barked At, Pentagram Press, Milwaukee, 1976
Sure Signs, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980
One World at a Time, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
The Blizzard Voices, Bieler Press, St. Paul, 1986
Weather Central, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994
Winter Morning Walks; 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000.
Braided Creek, with Jim Harrison. Copper Canyon Press, 2003.
Delights and Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, 2004.
Flying at Night, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

Nonfiction:

Local Wonders; Seasons in the Bohemian Alps. University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
The Poetry Home Repair Manual. University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Chapbooks and Special Editions:

Grass County, privately printed, 1971
Twenty Poems, Best Cellar Press, Crete, NE, 1973
Shooting a Farmhouse/So This is Nebraska, Ally Press, St. Paul, 1975
Voyages to the Inland Sea, with Harley Elliott, Center for Contemporary
Poetry, LaCrosse, WI, 1976
Old Marriage and New, Cold Mountain Press, Austin, TX, 1978
Cottonwood County, with William Kloefkorn, Windflower Press, 1979
Etudes, Bits Press, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 1992
A Book of Things, Lyra Press, Lincoln, 1995.
A Decade of Ted Kooser Valentines, Penumbra Press, Omaha, 1996
Lights on a Ground of Darkness, University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Awards:

Prairie Schooner Prize in Poetry, 1976 and 1978
Writing Fellowships, National Endowment for the Arts, 1976 and 1984
Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, 1980
Stanley Kunitz Poetry Prize, Columbia Magazine, 1984
Pushcart Prize, 1984
Governor’s Art Award, 1988
Mayor’s Art Award, 1989
Richard Hugo Prize, Poetry Northwest, 1994.
James Boatwright Award, Shenandoah, 2000
Nebraska Arts Council Merit Award in Poetry, 2000
Mari Sandoz Award, Nebraska Library Association, 2000
Nebraska Book Award for poetry, 2001
Barnes & Noble Discover Nonfiction Prize, third place, 2003
Friends of American Writers Prize, 2003
Honorable Mention, Society of Midland Authors nonfiction prize, 2003
First place, ForeWord Magazine autobiographical writing competition, 2003
The Best American Poetry, 2003
Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction, 2003
Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize (with Jim Harrison), 2004
United States Poet Laureate/Consultant in Poetry, 2004
Pulitzer Prize for poetry (Delights and Shadows), 2005 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry, 2005
Best American Essays, 2005
Pushcart Prize, 2005

Joshua Clover (b. 1962, Berkeley, California) is a California-based poet, critic, journalist and author. He has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry, is a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and recipient of an individual grant from the NEA; his first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. John Ashbery wrote of Madonna anno domini, “Private passions charged with awareness of the upheavals and conflagrations of our time find utterance in Joshua Clover’s brilliant first collection of poems. His voice is truthful, tender, caustic, and elegiac all at once; the results are breathtaking.” Judith Butler called his second book of poems, The Totality for Kids, a “stunning collection” in which “the fragmented world of a late and lost modernity has its own moving and lucid affect, its forms of aliveness. We encounter here an enormous clarity of language in the service of a poetics that brilliantly queries our historical moment in and as form.”

A graduate of Boston University and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Clover is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis, and was the distinguished Holloway poet-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999-2000. He is a frequent contributor to the Village Voice, writes for The New York Times, and is a former senior writer for Spin. His film criticism includes a book on The Matrix for the British Film Institute, and the Criterion Collection essays for Band of Outsiders and Straw Dogs. His birth name was Joshua Miller Kaplan; via legal change, he took his mother’s maiden name His mother, Carol J. Clover, Ph.D., is the originator of the final girl theory and a professor emerita at the University of California at Berkeley.

Under the pseudonym “Jane Dark”, Clover has written a number of film and music reviews for The Village Voice [1], and maintains a blog entitled “jane dark’s sugarhigh!”

Works

* Madonna anno domini (Louisiana State University Press, 1997) .
* The Matrix (British Film Institute, 2005)
* The Totality for Kids (University of California Press, 2006).

Cole Swensen received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her books include Goest (Alice James Books, 2004); Such Rich Hour (2001); Oh (2000); Try (1999), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize; Noon (1997), which won the New American Poetry Series Award; Numen (1995); Park (1991); New Math (1988), which won the National Poetry Series competition; and It’s Alive, She Says. Her translations of contemporary French poetry include Art Poetic (1999, by Olivier Cadiot), Natural Gaits (1995, by Pierre Alferi), Past Travels (1994, by Olivier Cadiot), and Interrmittances II (1994, by Jean Tortel). Her work as a poet and a translator has appeared in many journals and anthologies. She is a Contributing Editor for American Letters and Commentary and for Shiny, and is the translation editor for How2. Cole Swensen currently teaches at the University of Iowa.