Seth Abramson

Seth Abramson (born October 31, 1976, Concord, Massachusetts) is an American poet, editor, literary critic, and freelance journalist.^[1][2]

Life

Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is currently a doctoral student in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[3]

Publishers Weekly notes that Abramson has "picked up a very large following as a blogger and commentator, covering poetry, politics, and higher education, and generating a controversial, U.S. News-style ranking of graduate programs in writing."^[4] In recommending Northerners, the poet's second collection of poetry, the magazine called Abramson "serious and ambitious...uncommonly interested in general statements, in hard questions, and harder answers, about how to live." Colorado Review called the collection "alternately expansive and deeply personal...of crystalline beauty and complexity," terming Abramson "a major American voice."^[5] Notre Dame Review echoed the sentiment, calling Abramson "a powerful voice."^[6] Don Share, Senior Editor for Poetry, has said of Abramson's "What I Have," awarded the 2008 J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize by Poetry, "the poem absorbs certain details but doesn't fasten upon them the way poets are tempted to do; it's not adjectival, it's not descriptive, it's not painting a kind of canvas with scenery on it, and yet those details are really fascinating."^[7]

A former public defender, poetry editor, and commentator for Air America Radio, Abramson is presently the chief contemporary poetry reviewer for The Huffington Post.^[8][9][10]

The Best American Experimental Writing Series

In October of 2012, Omnidawn announced that it would begin publishing, in 2014, an annual anthology of innovative verse entitled Best American Experimental Writing. Abramson and the poet Jesse Damiani were named Series Co-Editors.^[11][12] Shortly thereafter, Cole Swensen was named the first Guest Editor for the series.

The MFA Research Project

Abramson authors The MFA Research Project (MRP), a website that publishes indexes of creative writing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs based on surveys and hard-data research.^[13] Indexes appearing on the MRP (which is made public, and available to MFA applicants, from November 15th through August 15th of each year) include ordered listings of program popularity, funding, selectivity, fellowship placement, job placement, student-faculty ratio, application cost, application response times, application and curriculum requirements, and foundation dates. The MRP also publishes surveys of current MFA applicants regarding demographic and application-practice issues such as applicant age, applicants' application strategies, and applicants' genre affiliations. Similar surveys and research are also published with respect to creative writing doctoral programs, low-residency creative writing MFA programs, non-terminal creative writing M.A. programs, playwriting/dramaturgy MFA programs, and scriptwriting/screenwriting MFA programs.

In 2009, data compiled by the MRP regarding full-residency creative writing MFA programs were adopted by Poets & Writers for its annual MFA issue.^[14][15] Poets & Writers now publishes data from the MRP annually, having expanded its annual MFA data chart to include (beginning in 2010) a comprehensive assessment of low-residency MFA programs, and (beginning in 2011) a comprehensive assessment of creative writing doctoral programs.^[16][17] The methodology for these rankings was first published by Poets & Writers in 2010; the methodology was most recently updated and republished in 2012.^[18][19]

Beginning in August of 2012, Poets & Writers has published MRP data in the form of an alphabetized "MFA Index"; previously, the magazine's annual data chart was referred to as "rankings." In 2011, The Chronicle of Higher Education termed the Poets & Writers national assessment methodology "the only MFA ranking regime." ^[20] Writing in 2010 for Boulevard and The Huffington Post, novelist and poet Anis Shivani noted the "great brouhaha" caused by "a journeyman's attempt to rank MFA programs...according to input from potential apprentices as opposed to evaluations by journeymen and masters themselves."^[21][22] In 2009, noted poet and literary critic Ron Silliman claimed Abramson's research and writing on MFA programs was part of a larger sea change in American poetics; according to Silliman, "Abramson's take [on poetry in American life] is new and different. And important....[he believes] we are moving away from poetry as a literature--let alone as a canon--toward poetry as a practice..." ^[23]

In September 2011, an open letter signed by nearly two hundred professors from undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs was published, calling the then-rankings "specious" and terming their then-methodology "unethical" and "quite misleading."^[24] A week later, Poets & Writers responded to the open letter, asserting that it had "adhere[d] to the highest journalistic standards...Our ethical obligation is to be transparent to our readers about the source of the rankings and how they were derived, which we have done consistently and without reservation."^[25] Of Abramson, the rankings' primary researcher, the magazine's Editorial Director Mary Gannon said, "[he] has been collecting data about applicants' preferences and about MFA programs for five years, and we stand behind his integrity."^[26]

Awards

• 2012, Akron Poetry Prize^[27]
• 2010, Green Rose Prize^[28]
• 2008, J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize^[29]
• 2008, Best New Poets selection (ed. Mark Strand)^[30]

Works

Books

• Best American Experimental Writing [Series Co-Editor] (Omnidawn, 2014)
• Thievery (University of Akron Press, 2013)
• Northerners (New Issues/Western Michigan University Press, 2011)
• The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, 2009)
• The Creative Writing MFA Handbook [Contributing Author] (Continuum Publishing, 2008)^[31]

Anthologies

• The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013)^[32]
• Two Weeks: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (Linebreak, 2010)^[33]
• Poetry of the Law (University of Iowa Press, 2010)
• Best New Poets 2008 (University of Virginia Press, 2008)
• Digerati (Three Candles Press, 2006)^[34]
• Lawyers and Poetry (West Virginia University Press, 2001)^[35]
• XConnect (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)

Interviews

• Full Stop (November 8, 2012)
• LitBridge (September 14, 2012)
• Poetry Society of America (March 12, 2010)
• Sycamore Review (September 30, 2009)

Selected Poems

• "Some Were on Fire" and "Right Bank" in The Good Men Project (November 7, 2012)
• "The Marchers" and four others in Propeller (Winter 2012)
• "Ruin" at The Academy of American Poets (Spring 2011)
• "A Man and Boy or Two Boys or a Horseman" in Georgetown Review (Spring 2010)
• "Bronx Flyweight in Drag" and four others in Notre Dame Review (Fall 2008)
• "Provincetown Fourth," "What I Have," "Nebraska," and two others in Poetry (Spring 2008)

References