A. E. Stallings

A. E. Stallings
Born 1968 (age 46–47)
Decatur, Georgia[1]
Occupation Poet
Nationality American
Literary movement New Formalism

Alicia Elsbeth Stallings (born July 2, 1968) is an American poet and translator. She was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.[2]

Background

Stallings was born and raised in Decatur, Georgia [1] and studied classics at the University of Georgia (A.B., 1990) and University of Oxford. She is an editor with the Atlanta Review. In 1999, Stallings moved to Athens, Greece and has lived there ever since.[1] She is the Poetry Program Director of the Athens Centre.[3] She is married to John Psaropoulos, who is the editor of the Athens News.

Stallings' poetry uses traditional forms, and she has been associated with the New Formalism.[4]

She is a frequent contributor of poems and essays to Poetry magazine.[5] She has published three books of original verse, Archaic Smile (1999), Hapax (2006), and Olives (2012). In 2007 she published a verse translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things).

Critical Response

In a review for her book Archaic Smile, Able Muse, a formalist online poetry journal, noted that, "For all of Stallings’ formal virtuosity, few of her poems are strictly metrically regular. Indeed, one of the pleasant surprises of Archaic Smile is the number of superb poems in the gray zone between free and blank verse."[6] Her work has been favorably compared to the poetry of Richard Wilbur and Edna St. Vincent Millay.[7] In a review of her second book, Hapax, Peter Campion critically wrote that, "The meter and rhyme unfold elegantly, but at the expense of idiom," a criticism that is commonly aimed at the Formalist poets. On a positive note, Campion also states that, "[her best poems in the collection] match prosodic talent with intensely rendered feelings." [7] In a review for her collection Olives, Publishers Weekly stated that they were most impressed with those poems that were not responses to ancient mythology, noting, "When she unleashes her technical gifts upon poems in which she builds a new narrative instead of building upon an old one, Stallings achieves a restrained, stark poise that is threatening even by New Formalism standards." [8]

Awards

Her debut poetry collection, Archaic Smile, received the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award and was a finalist for both the Yale Younger Poets Series and the Walt Whitman Award. Her second collection, Hapax (2006), was awarded the 2008 Poets' Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994 and 2000. She has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, the 2004 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the James Dickey Prize. In 2010, she was awarded the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. In 2011, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship,[9] received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship[10] and was named a Fellow of United States Artists.[11] In 2012, the book Olives was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.[12]

Books

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Hapax: Poems (2006) A.E. Stallings, Northwestern University Press, Introduction from the author ISBN 9780810151710
  2. ↑ "MacArthur Fellows Program: Meet the 2011 Fellows". September 20, 2011. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved 20 September 2011.
  3. ↑ "Alicia E. Stallings, Director of the Athens Centre poetry program, wins the «genius grant»!". Athens Centre. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
  4. ↑ ""Interview with A. E. Stallings" by Ginger Murchison". Cortland Review (19). February 2002. Archived from the original on 17 May 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
  5. ↑ Poetry magazine entry on A.E. Stallings
  6. ↑ http://www.ablemuse.com/v3/amjuster-stallings.htm
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/178921
  8. ↑ Publishers Weekly review of Olives
  9. ↑ http://www.gf.org/fellows/17036-alicia-elsbeth-ae-stallings
  10. ↑ Lee, Felicia R. (20 September 2011). "MacArthur Foundation Announces Winners of ‘Genius' Awards". The New York Times.
  11. ↑ United States Artists Official Website
  12. ↑ John Williams (January 14, 2012). "National Book Critics Circle Names 2012 Award Finalists". New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2013.

External links

External audio
Conversation: A.E. Stallings, Poet and Translator Inspired by the Classics, PBS Newshour, Jeffrey Brown, September 30, 2011
In Greece, Getting By On The Brink Of A Financial Meltdown, For the Record, Rachel Martin, April 5, 2015