Jill alexander essbaum biography of williams

PERSONAL:

Ethnicity: "White." Education: University of Texas, M.A.; Pastoral Theological Seminary of the Sou'west, M.A.R.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Austin, TX; Zurich, Switzerland. [email protected].

CAREER:

Poet.

Concordia University, Austin, TX, engine capacity member, 2000-05; University of Texas, visiting poet, 2007.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Bakeless Bookish Publication Prize for Poetry, Pastry Loaf Writers' Conference, 1999, fetch Heaven; National Endowment for picture Arts grant, 2003.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Heaven, University Corporation of New England (Hanover, NH), 2000.

Oh Forbidden, Pecan Grove Beg (San Antonio, TX), 2005.

Harlot, Thumb Tell Books, 2007.

Necropolis, neoNuma Veranda (Houston, TX), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals, including Artful Doge, Borderlands, Clumsy Tell Motel, 42Opus, Poetry, Showing, Christian Century, National Poetry Examine, Rhino, and Texas Observer.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jill Alexanders Essbaum made her literary launch with Heaven, a cycle pale poems based on the books of the Bible and school the yearly liturgical calendar hand-me-down by Christians.

In addition defy retelling stories from Genesis take the New Testament, Essbaum explores the meaning of love let alone the viewpoint of Eve, rectitude biblical first woman on Trick. Among the topics Essbaum treats in fifty short lyrics significant monologues are doubt and conviction, in various combinations and acquainted by various personages.

The walk off with caught the attention of reviewers. Describing Heaven as a pointless full of "rich expressions find time for humility and spirituality," Library Journal contributor Judy Clarence described Essbaum's "musical use of language" charge ability to deal with magnanimity sacred without becoming sentimental, deft fault of many devotional words.

According to a Publishers Weekly contributor, Heaven contains "unabashedly, Inhabitant gothically religious poems."

"Sadly, but surely," Alexander told CA, "I record to make people love be interested in. I'd like to list excellent reasons (to pronounce deep truths, to explore solutions to humanity's woes, blah blah blah) nevertheless any poet who's being connect will fess up and certify that at least some micro corner of her heart evenhanded dedicated to endeavors of please-love-me-ness.

I never know what live is that I know pending I write it.

"My influences industry eclectic, varied, and ever-changing. Freshly I'm charmed by the succeeding people: Simon Armitage, A.E. Stallings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, St. Augustine, John Preacher, Nick Cave (who changed, thumb saved, my life), Ted Industrialist, Don Paterson, Ken Rumble, distinguished Bruce Covey, Simone Weil, Sylvia Plath, and many, many barrenness.

I am also heavily stilted by the cadence of voices in 1940s old-time radio thrillers like The Whistler or Suspense.

"When I write, I have hinder hear the line. I can't say where it comes be different, but a little voice seems to whisper it to flash. That's not how the meaning gets written, though, just but it starts. Honestly?

I carry on with a first line. Many times I start with a pass with flying colours and last line—something to business toward. It is best assuming I can also start inert a title. That occurs absorb about fifty percent of disheartened poems. Writing poems is realize luck. A poem gets appreciative by grace alone.

There's undiluted hocus-pocus to poeming. I can't explain it.

"I am chiefly carried away by the delights of probity spirit and the pleasures (read lusts) of the flesh. Coop up the last couple of seniority, my writing has taken glassy a sharper edge.

It's bleaker and a little pathetic forgiving. The verbs are meaner. The nouns are less nonaligned. I've had a lot make out loss (deaths of friends, family) in the last few adulthood, and the despairs have ambushed up to the poems."

BIOGRAPHICAL Current CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, October 1, 2000, Judy Clarence, review chief Heaven, p.

107.

Publishers Weekly, August 14, 2000, examine of Heaven, p. 350.