James Longenbach

The English professor and acclaimed poet devoted his life’s work to studying, teaching, and writing poetry.

Here are a few things to know about the literary masterpiece that has exhilarated and confounded its readers for 100 years.

Written in the aftermath of a cancer diagnosis, Forever is the University of Rochester English professor’s sixth book of poetry.

Writers and musicians from Marianne Moore to Patti Smith are the subject of Longenbach’s new book The Lyric Now.

Speakers of a language rely on its words to carry out even the most mundane acts of communication. But the same words are poets’ medium of creation. In his newest book, How Poems Get Made, James Longenbach asks how poets turn bare utterance into art.

This fifth collection of poetry from the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English had its roots in a poem he wrote called “Pastoral,” which would set the collection's tone of “feeling or spiritual development.”

John Ashbery was memorialized as one of America's premiere poets upon his passing earlier this month. English professor James Longenbach reflects on a long friendship with Ashbery and his impact on poetry and literature.

Professor James Longenbach's next books—Earthling  and Lyric Knowledge—will soon be released. This National Poetry Month, Longenbach reminds us, “the best poems ever written constitute our future.”

Can poetry thrive in an age of instant communication? As April's National Poetry Month begins, University's poetry faculty and students have found that the answer is an emphatic "yes." The pace of digital life has only quickened over the last ten years since Twitter was founded, but the slower process of reading and crafting poetry continues, robustly, at Rochester.

Poet James Longenbach and novelist Joanna Scott, both members of the English department, have received fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation this spring, for notable achievement in the arts and humanities.