Michael Burkard

Michael Paul Burkard is an American poet.

Life

He graduated from Hobart College in 1968 and from the Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA in 1973. He taught at Kirkland College (1975–78) and Sarah Lawrence College (1983–84, 1986–87), and has taught in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Syracuse University since 1997. He has been a visiting writer at New York University (1991) and the University of Louisville (1992, 1996), as well as a writer-in-residence at Austin Peay State University (1990).

During the 1990s he has also worked as an alcoholism counselor, particularly with children whose lives have been impacted by alcoholism.

His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, APR, Ironwood and Quarterly West.

Awards

• 2008 Guggenheim Fellow
• 1984, 1985, and 1999 Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Award, from American Poetry Review
• 1986 Denise and Mel Cohen Award, from Ploughshares
• 1988 Whiting Award
• two NEA grants
• Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America
• 1978-79 Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Fellowship
• 1982 MacDowell Colony Fellowship
• two New York Foundation for the Arts grants

Works

• "Copy Book", The Marlboro Review
• "Cherry Eye", American Poetry Review
• Envelope of night: selected and uncollected poems, 1966-1990. Nightboat Books. 2008. ISBN 978-0-9767185-6-7.
• Unsleeping. Sarabande Books. 2001. ISBN 978-1-889330-53-2. Michael Burkard.
• Pennsylvania Collection Agency. New Issues/Western Michigan University. 2001. ISBN 978-1-930974-00-5.
• Entire Dilemma. Sarabande Books. 1998. ISBN 978-1-889330-18-1. Michael Burkard.
• My Secret Boat: A Notebook of Prose and Poems. W. W. Norton & Company. 1990. ISBN 978-0-393-30748-1.
• Fictions from the Self. W. W. Norton & Company. 1989. ISBN 978-0-393-30568-5.
• Ruby for Grief. University of Pittsburgh Press. 1982. ISBN 978-0-8229-3450-9.
• The Fires They Kept. Los Angeles: Metro Book Co. 1986. ISBN 978-0-915371-03-7.
• In a white light: poems. L'Epervier Press. 1977. ISBN 0-934834-72-5.

Anthologies

• Robert Hass; David Lehman, eds. (2001). "Notes About My Face". The Best American Poetry 2001. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-0384-5.

Ploughshares

• "Pentimento". Ploughshares. Spring 1985. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007.
• "The Family". Ploughshares. Spring 1985. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007.
• "Mornings Like a Vase". Ploughshares. Spring 1985. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007.
• "Side with Stars". Ploughshares. Spring 1985. Archived from the original on 17 July 2002.
• "Star for a Glass". Ploughshares. Spring 1985.
• "The World at Dusk". Ploughshares. Winter 1986. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007.
• "Little Final Sunlight". Ploughshares. Winter 1986.
• "Too Many Drops". Ploughshares. Winter 1986. Archived from the original on December 1, 2007.
• "Moon's Rule". Ploughshares. Winter 1986. Archived from the original on October 12, 2007.
• "The Summer of the Thief". Ploughshares. Winter 1986. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007.
• "The Brothers". Ploughshares. Winter 1986. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007.

Reviews

Michael Burkard's latest book — full of revenants, revisitations, and regrets — is similarly lingering and resonant. Fifteen years passed between the writing of the poems that became Pennsylvania Collection Agency and their publication as a cohesive collection by New Issues, yet they're not dated.

External links

• Audio: Michael Burkard reads "The Eyeglasses" from My Secret Boat (1990)
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation