Linda Gregg

Linda Alouise Gregg (born September 9, 1942 in Suffern, New York) is an award-winning American poet.

About her

Although born just miles northwest of New York City, Ms. Gregg grew up on the other side of the country, in Marin County, California. She received both her Bachelor of Arts, in 1967, and her Master of Arts, in 1972, from San Francisco State College. Her first book of poems, "Too Bright to See", was published in 1981.cite web | title=Linda Gregg | work=The Academy of American Poets (1997-2007), www.poets.org | url=http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/931 | accessdate=2007-06-20]

Once married to poet Jack Gilbert, Linda Gregg has been the recipient of many awards for her work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Foundation Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Whiting Writer's Award, as well as multiple Pushcart Prizes. She was the 2003 winner of the Sara Teasdale Award and the 2006 PEN/Voelcker Award winner for Poetry.

Her published books include "Things and Flesh", "Chosen By The Lion", "The Sacraments of Desire", "Alma" and "Too Bright to See", as well as her most recent publication, "In the Middle Distance" (Graywolf Press, 2006).cite web | title=Linda Gregg | work=The Program in Creative Writing, Princeton University (2006) | url=http://www.princeton.edu/~visarts/cwr/faculty/lgregg.html | accessdate=2007-06-20] Her poems have also 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.cite web | title=Author Biography | work=A Thirst Against, Answers.com (2007) | url=http://www.answers.com/topic/a-thirst-against-poem | accessdate=2007-06-20] 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. As of 2006, she was living in New York City and teaching as a Lecturer in the Creative Writing Program in the University Center for the Creative and Performing Artsat Princeton University.

About her work

"Linda Gregg brings us back to poetry. . . . She is original and mysterious, one of the best poets in America," says Gerald Stern.cite web | title="Chosen by the Lion" (cover) |work=Poetry, Graywolf Press (1994) | url=http://www.graywolfpress.org/component/page,shop.flypage/product_id,29/category_id,0485aa93fa0558fb1f755721e776984d/option,com_phpshop/ | accessdate=2007-06-20]

Much of Linda 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."cite web | title=Linda Gregg | work=Announcement, New York State Writers Institute, State University of New York (2002) | url=http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/gregg_linda.html | accessdate=2007-06-20]

The poet Czeslaw Milosz 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."cite web | title="In the Middle Distance" (cover) | work=Poetry, Graywolf Press (2006) | url=http://www.graywolfpress.org/component/page,shop.flypage/category_id,0485aa93fa0558fb1f755721e776984d/product_id,198/option,com_phpshop/ | accessdate=2007-06-20]

References

External links

* [http://www.graywolfpress.org/index.php?option=com_phpshop&page=shop.author&product_id=119&author_id=35 Linda Gregg] at Graywolf Press
* [http://www.pshares.org/Authors/authorDetails.cfm?prmAuthorID=607 Linda Gregg] at "Ploughshares"