John Gery

John Gery (born John Roy Octavius, June 2, 1953) is an American poet, critic, collaborative translator, and editor. He has published seven books of poetry, a critical work on the treatment of nuclear annihilation in American poetry, two co-edited volumes of literary criticism and two co-edited anthologies of contemporary poetry, a co-authored biography, a co-authored guidebook, as well as numerous poems and critical essays in journals. In addition, he has collaborated on poetry and other translations.

Early life and education

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Gery is the son and fourth child of Malcolm R. Dougherty (1922-1960), a U.S. diplomat and businessman of Scotch-Irish and German descent, and Eugenie Gunesh Gery (maiden name, Guran, 1926- ), a homemaker and educator of Turkish and Russian descent. After his parents’ divorce and mother’s marriage to Addison H. Gery, Jr. (1923–85), a jazz musician and business executive, Gery spent his youth in the small Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch community of Lititz, Pennsylvania. At age eight, he was legally adopted by his stepfather and had his last name changed. He attended local schools through the tenth grade, demonstrating early a propensity for writing, music and acting. For two years he attended the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey where he received his high school diploma. He received a Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University with Honors in English (1975), a Master’s in English from the University of Chicago (1976), and a Master’s in Creative Writing from Stanford University (1978). At Princeton, he studied with poets as diverse as Mark Strand, John Peck, George Garrett, and Theodore Weiss, and at Chicago he studied with Robert von Hallberg and Richard Stern. But perhaps his most influential poetry teacher was Donald Davie at Stanford, where he also worked with Kenneth Fields, Albert Gelpi, N. Scott Momaday, Diane Middlebrook and others.

Academic career

Gery began his academic career lecturing at Stanford and San Jose State Universities for two years respectfully before joining the University of New Orleans (UNO) as an Instructor in 1979. In 1999, he became a Research Professor of English at UNO where he is a member of both the Creative Writing MFA and Women’s and Gender Studies faculties. At UNO he was been awarded a Seraphia D. Leyda Teaching Fellowship for 2009-2012 along with various awards from the College of Liberal Arts School and Office of Research programs. In 1990 Gery also became founding Director of the Ezra Pound Center for Literature. He has served as Secretary of the Ezra Pound International Conference since 2005 and as Series Editor of the EPCL Book Series at the UNO Press since 2008. Gery has also taught at the University of Iowa (1991, 1993) and has been a summer Poet-In-Residence at Bucknell University four times between 2001 and 2013.

In 2007, he was awarded a Fulbright Lecturer and Research Fellowship at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade in Serbia. He has also lectured at the Centro Studi Americani (Rome), Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Beijing Institute of Technology, University of Roma Tre, and University of Salamanca, as well as at colleges and universities throughout the U.S., including Franklin & Marshall College, Bucknell University, Doane College, St. Bonaventure University, and State University of New York at New Paltz.

Personal life

Gery is married to the poet Biljana Obradović (1961- ). They have a son, Petar Malcolm Obradović (2003- ). They have a son, Petar Malcolm Obradović.

In 2006, after Hurricane Katrina severely damaged his family’s New Orleans home, Gery and his wife were Visiting Research Fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota. That same year he was the 2006 Annadora Gregory Lecturer at Doane College, Nebraska.

Writing career

Poetry

Gery’s poetry is heavily influenced not only by Pound, but by the avant-garde work of John Ashbery and his predecessors Gertrude Stein and Laura Riding. He may also be the only poet with an equal interest in the crafted technique of the Expansive, or New Formalist, poetry movement, with which his work is sometimes associated, as well as, by its distinct lineage from Richard Wilbur back through Thomas Hardy to Catullus and Sappho.

He has achieved international notoriety as a poet, most famously known for his works in: Charlemagne: A Song of Gestures (1983 Plumbers Ink Poetry Award); The Enemies of Leisure (1995 “Best Book” award, Publisher’s Weekly, Critic’s Choice Award and San Francisco Review of Books); American Ghost: Selected Poems (translated in Serbian by Biljana Obradovic, 1999 European Award, Circle Franz Kafka and Prague); Davenport’s Version (2003, a narrative poem of the Civil War); A Gallery of Ghosts (2008); Lure (translated in Serbian by Svetlana Nedeljkov in 2012); and Have at You Now! (2014). His poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast Review, The Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, New South, Paris Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner and West Branch with translations in seven languages spanning the globe with poetry enthusiasts in Canada, Europe and worldwide. Reviewers of Gery’s work remain in awe of his poetic genius. In complex and wonderfully varied poems Daniel Wallace gives Gery’s Have At You Now! a rave review in his enthusiastic comment of the work “is whimsical, comic, erotic and nostalgic. In Hmayeak Shems: A Poet of Pure Spirit, Daphne Abeel says Gery portrays his journey valiantly as he continues to express his poetic voice in spite of his many hardships.” Reviewers and critics abound respectfully recognize the responsible efforts to his craft.

Critical and Edited Works

In addition to his monograph, Nuclear Annihilation and Contemporary American Poetry: Ways of Nothingness, Gery has published critical essays on contemporary poets ranging from Ashbery, Wilbur, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Merrill, and Adrienne Rich to Amiri Baraka and Marilyn Chin. Most often, he considers the poetry he explores for its articulation of ideological, ethnic, sexual, or racial identity. But although he has also written on Stein, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Davie, his most sustained criticism has been on Pound, often discussing Pound’s association with Venice in The Cantos and other poems or providing close interpretations of individual texts. In addition to two volumes of critical essays on Pound he has co-edited, he has co-authored with Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Massimo Bacigalupo, and Stefano Maria Casella, In Venice and Veneto with Ezra Pound, a biographical and literary guide, and has collaborated with Vahe Baladouni on a biography of Armenian poet Hmayeak Shems.

In one of the best readings on his work The Enemies of Leisure, Alan Goldring suggests both the scope and delicacy of John Gery’s poetry: a poetry that, in words “takes in the world, now, but lightly, /Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact.”

Collaborative Translations

Gery has collaborated on translations, including from Armenian (with Vahe Baladouni), Serbian (with Biljana D. Obradović), Chinese (with Xiaobin Yang and Guiming Wang), Italian (with Caterina Ricciardi and Massimo Bacigalupo), and French (with Ivan Zaknic).

Published Works

Awards

In 1992-93, Gery received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and traveled to South America, as well as from the Louisiana Division of Arts. He has achieved international notoriety as a poet, most famously known for his works in: Charlemagne: A Song of Gestures (1983 Plumbers Ink Poetry Award); The Enemies of Leisure (1995 “Best Book” award, Publisher’s Weekly, Critic’s Choice Award and San Francisco Review of Books); American Ghost: Selected Poems (translated in Serbian by Biljana Obradovic, 1999 European Award, Circle Franz Kafka Prague); Davenport’s Version (2003, a narrative poem of the Civil War); A Gallery of Ghosts nominated for a Pulitzer Prize (2008); Lure (translated in Serbian by Svetlana Nedeljkov in 2012); and Have at You Now! nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2014). His poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast Review, The Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, New South, Paris Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner and West Branch with translations in seven languages published in Canada, Europe and worldwide.

References

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