Poet and critic James Longenbach, the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester, has been named the recipient of the Lillian Fairchild Award.
The annual award, which is administered by the Department of English at the University of Rochester, is presented to a Rochester area resident who has produced the best visual, literary, or musical work of art in the previous year. Longenbach was honored for his most recent volume of poems, Fleet River (2003).
Fleet River describes the journey, both physical and emotional, of two travelers discovering the wonder of the world and, at the same time, love’s possibilities.
Longenbach has taught at the University of Rochester since 1985. His poems have appeared in many magazines and journals, including The New Republic, The Nation, The Yale Review, and The Best American Poetry.
Longenbach is the author of several distinguished scholarly books on Modernist poets and poetry, including Modernist Poetics of History, Stone Cottage: Pounds, Yeats and Modernism, Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things, and Modern Poetry After Modernism. His articles and reviews have appeared in Southwest Review, New York Times Book Review, The Nation, and The Yale Review. Longenbach has read and lectured at many colleges and universities, including Oxford University, Skidmore College, University of Connecticut, and the University of Washington.
The Fairchild Award was established by Herman L. Fairchild of the University’s Department of Geology in memory of his daughter, an accomplished designer who died of tuberculosis at age 32. The first award was given in 1924. Previous winners have included Garth Fagan, director of Garth Fagan Dance, architect Frank S. Grosso, and novelist Andrea Barrett.