Robert McDowell

<body link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080"> <font size="5"><p>Poet of the Month: Robert McDowell</p> </font><p>Your browser does not support the frame format of this site. To view the site in a more conventional format, click <a href="contents.html">HERE</a>.</p> <p><br> Robert McDowell, born in California in 1953, is the author of two collections of poetry, <i>Quiet Money</i> (Henry Holt, 1987), and <i>The Diviners</i>, a book-length poem with an introduction by Dana Gioia (Peterloo Poets, England, 1995), and three limited editions: <i>The Pact</i> (Aralia Press, 1996), <i>History, Hardware, & Romance</i> (Indiana State University and New Harmony Art Gallery, 1984), and <i>At the House of the Tin Man</i> (Chowder Press, 1983)</p> <p>While attending the University of California at Santa Cruz (1971-1974), McDowell studied with the poet, playwright, actor and editor of Kayak Press, George Hitchcock. After taking his M.F.A. at Columbia University (1976), McDowell returned to the West where he lived for a year in the Mojave Desert outside Palmdale, California. It was there that McDowell's poems made significant breakthroughs in subject matter and style.</p> <p>For half a dozen years McDowell taught at Indiana State University Evansville, and in 1980 launched <i>The Reaper</i> magazine. This polemical magazine was a leader in a movement to restore storytelling, narrative techniques, and form to American poetry.</p> <p>McDowell left teaching in 1984 and with his wife, the artist Lysa McDowell, founded Story Line Press in 1985. McDowell's poetry, criticism, and fiction have been published widely here and abroad in magazines such as <i>The Hudson Review</i>, <i>Poetry</i>, <i>The New Criterion</i>, <i>The Kenyon Review</i>, <i>London Magazine</i>, and <i>Zzyzyva</i>, among others. His poetry is discussed in Ian Hamilton's <i>Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry</i> and appears in <i>Best American Poetry</i>, <i>For a Living: the Poetry of Work</i>, <i>Conversant Essays</i>, and <i>Under 35: the New Generation of American Poets</i>. His other published books include <i>How I Came to Know Fish</i> by Ota Pavel, stories translated from the Czech with Jindriska Badal (Story Line Press, 1989, New Directions, 1990); the revised <i>Sound and Form in Modern Poetry</i> with Harvey Gross (University of Michigan Press, 1996); and<i> The Reaper Essays</i> (Story Line Press, 1995). He is also the editor of the anthology of essays, <i>Poetry After Modernism</i> (Story Line Press, 1988; 2nd revised edition, 1998).</p> <p>McDowell now lives with his family on a small farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where he is executive director of Story Line Press, raises horses, and co-manages and plays (lifetime batting average: .321) for the champion Brownsville Brooklyn Dodgers in the Eugene Senior Men's Baseball League.</p> </body>