James Harms
Professor of English
MFA, Indiana University
Office: Colson Hall 235
Tel: 304.293.9720
Fax: 304.293.5380
Read Jim's work.Specialization:
Poetry
Modern and Contemporary American Literature
Poetry in translation
Prosody
Courses Taught:
213: Poetry Workshop
213: Creative Writing: Poetry
313: Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
418: Creative Writing Capstone
618: Graduate Poetry Workshop
Special Topics: American Poetry, New York School of Poetry,
Formal Poetry, The Occasional Poem
Books:
Comet Scar, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012
What to Borrow, What to Steal, Marick Press, 2012
The Joy Addict, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009
as part of the Classic Contemporaries Series
After West, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2008
Freeways and Aqueducts, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2004
Quarters, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001
East of Avalon, Caddis Case Press, 2000
L.A. Afterglow, The Idaho Review, Chapbook, 1999
The Joy Addict, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1998
Modern Ocean, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1992
Reviews:
Praise for After West:
“From his first book, Modern Ocean, I have been a sucker for the poems of James Harms, with their dual, dueling religions of friendship and loneliness. His poems are new-fangled and old fashioned at once—old and young, hip yet romantic, enormously sympathetic to human nature, yet nuanced and ruthfully observant. Like the piano melodies of Eric Satie, the poems seem meandering improvisations; yet they capture deep swirls of experience with a stylish, secretly witty precision. Big, funny, sad, intensely artful,—After West is Harms’ most ambitious book yet.”—Tony Hoagland
“James Harms is one of the truly visionary and restless voices of our time. These poems move back and forth across the landscape transforming the ordinary sights—the Blue Moose Cafe, the neighbor’s cat—into darkly exalting insights. In a language both completely familiar, as if spoken across the table by a friend, and also heightened and musical enough to contain the complexity of its subjects, Harms’s poetry recovers and beautifies the past, and eerily foretells the future. These are the places you’ve been and failed to see. In this stunning new collection, James Harms takes you again—strange prophet, guide and agent of history—to the ‘flecks of time/ scattered like wreckage through the rooms…’”
—Laura Kasischke
“At the noisy fiesta of contemporary American poetry, James Harms refuses to speak in tongues, wear a goofy hat, or drink upside-down tequila shots. Elegiac and celebratory by turn, his coolly meditative poems offer up smart and lyrical commentaries upon contemporary social scenes, and manage to make large points without ever raising their voices. After West is not just another volume in an important body of work: it is his best book yet.”
—Campbell McGrath
Praise for Freeways and Aqueducts:
“Freeways and Aqueducts reveals a skillful patterning that expands and orchestrates themes of loneliness, exile, the problem of communication, belief and the erosive quality of time.”
—Peter Makuck, The Laurel Review
“Atmospheric and often lovely . . . these poems dwell unapologetically in the quotidian, attempting to transform the banal into the sublime. When this succeeds, it does so beautifully. . . . The collection is worth a good read—both for its images of quiet loveliness (‘you cupped my face like handful of water’) and for its masterfully sustained mood, the pleasant ache of chronic homesickness.”
—VersePublications:
Poetry
Ploughshares
The American Poetry Review
The Kenyon Review
The Gettysburg Review
The Antioch Review
TriQuarterly
The Missouri Review
Oxford American
Crazyhorse
among others
Awards:
Three Pushcart Prizes
Finalist (for Quarters), Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award,
Binghamton University, 2001
Awards for Teaching:
Caperton Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing, 2009
(see article)
Outstanding Researcher, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences,
West Virginia University 2004. 1999
Claude Worthington Benedum Distinguished Scholar,
West Virginia University, 2000
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching/
CASE West Virginia Professor of the Year, 1999
WVU Foundation Outstanding Teacher, West Virginia University, 1999
Outstanding Teacher, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences,
West Virgina University, 1998
Fellowships:
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
PEN/Revson Foundation Fellowship
John Ciardi Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
West Virginia Commission on the Arts Fellowship
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship
Residency Fellowship, Yaddo
Residency Fellowship, The MacDowell Colony
Links:
Interview with Jim on How a Poem Happens
Jim’s Author page on Amazon
James Harms on facebook
Charleston Gazette’s review of After West
Cerise Press’s review of After West
Jim as Featured Poet on Poetry Daily
Jim’s poems in Scythe Literary Journal
“Our Fathers” on Poetry Daily
excerpt from Jim’s essay ”’Good Time Jesus’ and Other Sort-of Prose
Poems” in West Branch
Jim’s poems in Drunken Boat
Jim Admires:
Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Tomas Transtromer, Elizabeth Bishop, Antonio Machado, W.H. Auden, John Ashbery, and others.