Altadena poet Linda Dove has won the 2009 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize from Bear Star Press. The prize, awarded annually for the best unpublished manuscript of poems by a writer west of the central time zone, includes a cash award and publication. In Defense of Objects is Dove’s first full-length collection, and several of its poems have won previous awards, such as the 2005 Stephen Dunn Award and the 2001 Alice Longan Award for a collection inspired by the American Southwest. “Eye, Appaloosa” has been nominated by Bear Star’s editor for a Pushcart Prize.
Linda Dove was born in Berkeley but grew up in Columbia, Maryland. She attended Mt. Holyoke College, where she studied with Joseph Brodsky and was awarded Highest Honors in English. She received MA and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland. After a short stint teaching in western Michigan, Dove moved to the southwest for eight years. There, she taught literature and creative writing at Prescott College and Yavapai College while ranching in Skull Valley, Arizona, with her husband.
They now live in Altadena with their daughter. Dove is president of the Rocky Mountain Division of the American Society for Aesthetics.
In Defense of Objects impressed the contest judges with its carefully nuanced observations of the concrete world in which we live: “You sit dumb on the shelf. Maybe you are an urn, a jewel box, a shell. An artist’s / scrawl.” But Dove’s project is a two-way interrogation. She “calls out” the objects and is attentive to the questions they seem to ask in return. This is a joyful book, and a debut collection that reads like the work of a mature artist.
“The meditative, quiet beauty of Linda Dove’s In Defense of Objects helps defend the reader against all sorts of daily blindnesses. Not least of theobjects worth defending, this poet shows, are words themselves, which she employs with subtlety, wit, and depth of feeling."
~ Mary Jo Salter, author of A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems
Linda Dove was born in Berkeley but grew up in Columbia, Maryland. She attended Mt. Holyoke College, where she studied with Joseph Brodsky and was awarded Highest Honors in English. She received MA and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland. After a short stint teaching in western Michigan, Dove moved to the southwest for eight years. There, she taught literature and creative writing at Prescott College and Yavapai College while ranching in Skull Valley, Arizona, with her husband.
They now live in Altadena with their daughter. Dove is president of the Rocky Mountain Division of the American Society for Aesthetics.
In Defense of Objects impressed the contest judges with its carefully nuanced observations of the concrete world in which we live: “You sit dumb on the shelf. Maybe you are an urn, a jewel box, a shell. An artist’s / scrawl.” But Dove’s project is a two-way interrogation. She “calls out” the objects and is attentive to the questions they seem to ask in return. This is a joyful book, and a debut collection that reads like the work of a mature artist.
“The meditative, quiet beauty of Linda Dove’s In Defense of Objects helps defend the reader against all sorts of daily blindnesses. Not least of theobjects worth defending, this poet shows, are words themselves, which she employs with subtlety, wit, and depth of feeling."
~ Mary Jo Salter, author of A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems
