Fern Hollow

Richard Blevins

 

ISBN 978-1-959556-21-3            106 pages             $16.00

 

OLIVIER MESSIAN

 

 

 

 

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

 

 

 

 

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

 

 

 

 

HUEY LONG

 

 

 

 

LORINE NIEDECKER

 

           Poetry didn’t die

 

                    It woke up during surgery

 

To the lights the pain the doctors talking

 

      And remembers

 

                      Everything

Richard Lowell Blevins is a poet writing in the tradition of Ezra Pound, H.D., and Robert Duncan, an editor of the Charles Olson-Robert Creeley correspondence, and an award-winning teacher. He was born in Wadsworth, Ohio, in 1950. His undergraduate career was halved by the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings. He was declared a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. At Kent State, he studied poetry and the imagination with Duncan and literature of the American West with Edward Dorn. But he has often said that Cleveland book dealer James Lowell was his most formative early influence. He holds degrees from Kent State University (General Studies, 1973), the University of Oregon (MA, English literature, 1976), and the University of Pittsburgh (Ph.D., English literature, 1985; dissertation on the western novels of Will Henry. He has taught literature and poetry writing at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg since 1978, also serving as Humanities Chair for nine years. He is a winner of a Chancellor’s Award, in 1999, the university’s highest recognition for teaching. He previously taught at the University of Akron and Kent State.