Charles Fort
April 13, 2006
Charles Fort has authored numerous works of poetry and currently holds the Paul W and Clarice Kingston Reynolds Chair in Poetry at the University of Nebraska — Kearney.
His poetry has garnered many awards--including the "Open Voice Award," the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, and The Mary Corolyn Davis Memorial Award--and published numerous collections of poetry:Town Clock Burning (St Andrews P, 1985; reprinted in the Classic Contemporary Edition in the Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series, 1991) and Darvil (St Andrews P, 1993).
(To view a slideshow of Charles Fort's reading, click on the image.)
His most recent books are We Did Not Fear the Father, As the Lilac Burned the Laurel Grew, Immortelles, all Reynolds Chair Books, U of Nebraska at Kearney P, 1999.
Charles Fort ... explores the Other through the use of an elaborate persona. "Darvil," he notes, is a "composite of devil and evil," but he gives him a noble lineage: "direct descendent of Leo Africanus." ... In deconstructing the great patchwork quilt that is American culture, Fort undermines any notion of the Other while understanding all too well the reality of it. His poems are jazzy riffs through Fourth of July bombast, Native American lore, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and the detritus of a post-war materialism. And his comedy is Swiftian; he is most brutally funny when he is angriest. — Donald Soucy
This link to Nebraska Center for Writers will take you to more information about Charles Fort, including a selection of his work and information about how to purchase them. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2000, Best of Prose Poem International, The American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, The Carnegie Mellon Anthology of Poetry, and other places, including eleven anthologies.
Fort earned his MFA from Bowling Green State University, and was the founder and director of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina--Wilmington.
His newest collection is from Loganhouse Press, Frankenstein Was a Negro (2002).
For a review of "We Did Not Fear the Father, " which appeared in The Best American Poetry 2000, click on the following link: Oyster Bay Review. And this link will take you to two of Charles Fort's poems.
At the following links, you will find Charles Fort's prose poem, American Gargoyle and his poem, The Magic Man Held a Blue Crystal Ball, both published in Oyster Bay Review (13).
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