San Diego, California
Born 1947, Vallejo, California
Poet, Teacher
My poetry raises questions such as, "Who speaks in us or through us?" "Whose are the voices in our heads?" "What is the self and what is another?" "What is the border between public language and individual fate?" I am interested in juxtaposing language and imagery from the realms of science, myth, dream, and popular culture to create both a crossroads and a contested space. How do we understand what we are being told? My poems investigate the uneasy relations among words, the dissonance and the resonance. I hope readers will do a double-take or experience what Charles Bernstein has called "turbulent thought."
1975 M.A., San Francisco State College
1970 B.A., University of California, Berkeley
2004- Professor of Writing: Poetry and Poetics, University of California, San Diego
2007 Next Life. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press Collected Prose. San Diego, CA: Singing Horse Press
2004 Up to Speed. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press
2001 Veil: New and Selected Poems. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press
2001 The Pretext. Los Angeles, CA: Green Integer Press
1998 True. Berkeley, CA: Atelos Press
2007 "Scumble" The Best American Poetry
2005 Up to Speed, Publishers Weekly Book of the Year Award in Poetry
2005 Up to Speed, finalist, Pen USA Poetry Award
2004 "Almost" The Best American Poetry
2002 Veil: New and Selected Poems, finalist, Pen USA Poetry Award
2002 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry
1999 Fund for Poetry Award
