Christianne Balk

Christianne Balk (born 1953) is an American poet.

Life

Balk graduated with honors in biology from Grinnell College and taught at the University of British Columbia. Her work has appeared in Pequod,^[1] Crazy Horse,^[2] Sulfur,^[3] The Centennial review^[4] The Missouri Review,^[5] Sonora Review,^[6] Prairie Schooner^[7] Harper's,^[8] and The New Yorker.^[9] She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and daughter.^[10]

Awards

• 1985 Walt Whitman Award
• 1994 Verna Emory Award^[11]
• Alaska Council on the Arts travel grant

Works

Poetry

• Linda Svendsen, ed. (1990). "Elegy; How Stories Get Started". Words we call home. University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 978-0-7748-0367-0.
• "Lauds for St. Germaine Cousin". The Atlantic Monthly. September 2002.
• Bindweed. Collier Books. 1986. ISBN 978-0-02-627660-3.
• Desiring Flight. Purdue University Press. 1995. ISBN 978-1-55753-062-2.

Anthologies

• William J. Walsh, Jack (INT) Myers, ed. (2006). "Lauds for St. Germaine cousin; Dusk Choir; Dear Hippopotamus". Under the rock umbrella. Mercer University Press. ISBN 978-0-88146-047-6.

Reviews

Bindweed...shows some of the awkwardness and tentativeness characteristic of younger poets, but it also introduces an artist resonant with talent. Ms. Balk writes poems that stay close to nature, tapping the rhythms of the changing seasons for metaphors of the human life cycle and rounding out nature's powerful processes with the human qualities of joy, loss and grief.^[12]

Among the many pleasures of Christianne Balk’s Desiring Flight, two stand out. First, Balk has – as she showed in her Walt Whitman Award–winning Bindweed – a biologist’s precise knowledge of the natural world, and consequently her poems convey, at times, the comforting authority of a field guide. But there is much more than that: It is as if Balk has held all the objects of her world, turned them over, and spoken their names until they have transcended the scientific into the poetic.^[13]

See also

• American poetry

References

1. Pequod – Google Books. Google Books. May 16, 2007. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
2. Crazy horse – Southwest Minnesota State College. American Language Skills Program – Google Books. Google Books. May 28, 2008. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
3. Sulfur – California Institute of Technology – Google Books. Google Books. February 28, 2008. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
4. CR. The Centennial review – Michigan State University. College of Arts and Letters – Google Books. Google Books. June 29, 2007. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
5. The Missouri review – University of Missouri-Columbia. Dept. of English – Google Books. Google Books. June 12, 2008. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
6. Sonora review – Google Books. Google Books. June 7, 2008. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
7. "Project MUSE – Prairie Schooner – Bathsheba, and: St. Germaine Considers the Gift of Hunger, and: Mother, Daughter". Muse.jhu.edu. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
8. "Balk, Christianne (Harper's Magazine)". Harpers.org. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
9. Balk, Christianne (August 1, 2011). "Poetry: John Muir Remembers Eliza Hendricks". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
10. "Christianne Balk | Directory of Writers | Poets & Writers". Pw.org. June 9, 2008. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
11. Indianapolis Monthly – Google Books. Google Books. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
12. ANDY BRUMER (July 6, 1986). "RURAL, SUBURBAN AND KINKY". The New York Times.
13. David Daniel (Fall 1995). "Book Review, DESIRING FLIGHT". Ploughshares. Archived from the original on October 28, 2007.

External links