Biography
As an adjunct faculty member in the English Department of Columbia College, Chicago, for over 30 years, I have taught several Poetry classes, both workshops and literature courses, as well as Reviewing the Arts. I have published two collections of poetry (Evidence, Yellow Press, and Needles at Midnight, Z Press) and my work has been anthologized in Postmodern American Poetry, Norton; Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, Four Walls Eight Windows Press; and The Jazz Poetry Anthology, Indiana University Press, as well as other publications. My poetry has received awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, the Illinois Arts Council, and The Fund for Poetry. I am also co-editor, with Nathaniel Mackey, of Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose, Coffee House Press, and have published hundreds of reviews, articles, and essays on jazz and classical music since the 1970s in publications throughout the United States and Europe. From 1981-84 I was Associate Editor, and from 1984-88, Editor, of Down Beat magazine. I also published and edited Brilliant Corners: a magazine of the arts, from 1975-77. I was a founding member, and was elected the first President, of the Jazz Journalists Association. I have a B.A. from Northeastern Illinois University (double major: English and History) and an M.A. from Southern Illinois University (English).
Instructional Areas
Poetry, Reviewing the Arts
Creative Practice and Research Interests
Poetry, Jazz and Classical Music, Visual Art
Degrees
B.A., English Literature, History Northeastern Illinois University 1973
M.A., English Southern Illinois University 1975