Lisa Russ Spaar

Lisa Russ Spaar is a contemporary American poet, professor, and essayist. She is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia and the director of the Area Program in Poetry Writing.^[1] She is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Vanitas, Rough: Poems and Satin Cash: Poems. Her latest collection, Orexia, was published by Persea Books in 2017. Her poem, Temple Gaudete, published in IMAGE Journal, won a 2016 Pushcart Prize.

Spaar has also edited several anthologies, including All That Mighty Heart: London Poems, which Billy Collins says "gathers [a] mighty swirl of poetry into a gorgeous volume whose variety and heft rival the city itself— its smoke, roar, and flow."^[2]

Education[]

Spaar graduated summa cum laude from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in 1978. Two years later, in 1980, she returned to the University of Virginia to complete her education with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry).

Poetry[]

Spaar's books of poetry include Orexia (2017),^[3] Vanitas, Rough (2012), Satin Cash: Poems 2008, Blue Venus (2004), and [https://www.amazon.com/GLASS-TOWN-LISA-SPAAR/dp/1888996188 Glass Town (1999), for which she won the Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers in 2000.

Spaar's poems have been widely published in many places, including Boston Review,^[4] Poetry,^[5] Ploughshares,^[6] The Paris Review,^[7] SLATE,^[8] The Virginia Quarterly Review,^[9] IMAGE Journal,^[10] Plume,^[11] The Alabama Literary Review,^[12] Blackbird,^[13] Spirituality & Health, Cerise Press,^[14] Connotations Press,^[15] Waxwing,^[16] TUBA, 32 Poems,^[17] Shenandoah,^[18] TriQuarterly,^[19] The Kenyon Review,^[20] The Yale Review,^[21] Denver Quarterly, Quarterly West,^[22] Verse, Poetry East, Drunken Boat,^[23] The Hollins Critic, The Southwest Review, Crazyhorse, The Laurel Review, Bellingham Review,^[24] College English,^[25] Meridian,^[26] Brilliant Corners,^[27] The Atlanta Review, The Southern Poetry Review,^[28] Poet Lore, Free Verse,^[29] Carolina Quarterly, American Literary Review, 64, Indiana Review,^[30] Smartish Pace,^[31] & elsewhere.

Prose[]

Currently, Spaar writes a series of articles entitled "Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry," published through the Los Angeles Review of Books.^[32]

Spaar has contributed more than 70 articles to the Chronicle of Higher Education, including the Monday's Poem series^[33] and the Spaar on Poetry series.^[34]

Teaching[]

Spaar has received numerous teaching honors and awards.

Awards[]

• 2011 ^[35]
• 2009/2010 Guggenheim Fellowship^[36]
• 2001 Emily Clark Balch Award of the Virginia Quarterly Review
• 2000 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award^[37]
• 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

Bibliography[]

This list is incomplete; you can help by . (April 2016)

• Past grief. University of Virginia. 1982.
• Cellar. Alderman Press. 1983.
• Blind Boy on Skates, Trilobite Chapbooks of the University of Northern Texas Press, 1987.
• Glass Town, poems. Red Hen Press. 1999. ISBN 978-1-888996-18-0.
• Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems. Columbia University Press. Fall 1999. ISBN 978-0-231-11544-5.
• Blue Venus: Poems, Persea Books, 2004.
• All That Mighty Heart: London Poems (ed.). University of Virginia Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-8139-2717-6.
• Satin Cash: Poems. Persea Books. 2008. ISBN 978-0-89255-343-3.
• Vanitas, rough : poems. New York: Persea Books. 2012.
• Orexia: Poems. Persea Books. 2017.

Anthologies[]

• Charles Wright; David Lehman, eds. (2008). Best American Poetry, 2008. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-9975-6.

Criticism[]

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

List of poems[]

References[]

External links[]