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Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Suskin Ostriker (born November 11, 1937[1]) is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.[2][3] She was called "America's most fiercely honest poet" by Progressive.[1] Additionally, she was one of the first women poets in America to write and publish poems discussing the topic of motherhood.[4] In 2015, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.[5] In 2018, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate.[6]

Alicia Suskin Ostriker

(1937-11-11) November 11, 1937
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

Poet

Brandeis University, B.A. (1959); University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A. (1961), Ph.D.(1964)

(m. 1959)

Rebecca Ostriker
Eve Ostriker
Gabriel Ostriker

Personal life and education[edit]

Ostriker was born in Brooklyn, New York, to David Suskin and Beatrice Linnick Suskin.[1] She grew up in the Manhattan housing projects during the Great Depression.[7] Her father worked for New York City Parks Department. Her mother read her William Shakespeare and Robert Browning, and Alicia began writing poems, as well as drawing, from an early age. Initially, she had hoped to be an artist and studied art as a teenager. Her books, Songs (1969) and A Dream of Springtime (1979), spotlight her own illustrations.[8] Ostriker went to high school at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in 1955.


She holds a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University (1959), and an M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[1] In Ostriker's first year of graduate school, she attended a conference where a visiting professor commented on her poetry by saying, "'You women poets are very graphic, aren't you?'" This comment caused her to reflect on the meaning of being a woman poet. She had never thought of that term before and she realized that men were uncomfortable when women wrote about their own bodies. This encounter became a defining moment in her life and from that moment on, she wrote poems discussing the various facets of a woman: sexuality, motherhood, pregnancy, and mortality.[2] On the other hand, her doctoral dissertation, on the work of William Blake, became her first book, Vision and Verse in William Blake (1965). Later, she edited and annotated Blake's complete poems for Penguin Press.[1][8]


She is married to astronomer Jeremiah P. Ostriker, who taught at Princeton University (1971–2001). They have three children: Rebecca (1963), Eve (1965), and Gabriel (1970).[7] She has been a resident of Princeton, New Jersey.[9]

1964-1965

American Association of University Women Fellowship

1966 Rutgers University Research Council summer scholar grant

1967 American Foundation for the Advancement of Humanities Younger Scholar Grant

1974, 1976, 1985, 1997, 2000 Fellow

MacDowell Colony

1976-1977 Fellowship in Poetry

National Foundation for the Arts

1977 Fellowship

Breadloaf Writers' Conference

1977 New Jersey Arts Council Award in Poetry

1979 A Dream of Springtime selected as one of the best small press titles

1982 Fellowship for Research in the Humanities

Rockefeller Foundation

1984-1985 for Poetry

Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship

1986 Strousse Poetry Prize, Prairie Schooner

1986 William Carlos Williams Prize for The Imaginary Lover

Poetry Society of America

1987 Trustees Award for Excellence in Research

Rutgers University

Summer 1987 Djerassi Foundation Resident

1992 New Jersey Arts Council Award in Poetry

1994 Edward Stanley Award, for poems published in Prairie Schooner

1994 Judah Magnes Jewish Museum, Berkeley, Anna David Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience. First Prize for "The Eighth and Thirteenth."

1995 Rutgers University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Award for Distinguished Contributors to Undergraduate Education

1995-6 Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis

1996-7 Associate Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis

1996 Poem in

The Best American Poetry

1996 Poem in Yearbook of American Poetry

1997 Paterson Poetry Prize for The Crack in Everything

1998 San Francisco State Poetry Center Award for The Crack in Everything

1998 Readers’ Choice Award for poems published in Prairie Schooner

February 1999 Residency at the , Bellagio Study and Conference Center, Italy

Villa Serbelloni

1999 Poem in Pushcart Prize Anthology

2000 San Diego Women's Institute for Continuing Jewish Education: Endowment Award

Fall 2001 Visiting Fellowship,

Clare Hall, Cambridge

2002 Larry Levis Prize for poems published in Prairie Schooner

2003 Best American Essays Notable Essay for “Milk.”

2003 Fellow

Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

2007 Anderbo Poetry Prize distinguished poem

2008 , Choice June 2008, for For the Love of God.

Outstanding Academic Title

2009 in Poetry for The Book of Seventy[15]

National Jewish Book Award

2010 Prairie Schooner Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing, for poems published in the summer 2009 issue.

2010 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement for The Book of Seventy

2011 Named in the list of “10 Great Jewish Poets” in Moment

2017 National Jewish Book Award in the Poetry category for Waiting for the Light

[15]

2018 Named 11th New York State Poet

[6]

Ostriker, Alicia (1969). . New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 9780030810190.

Songs : a book of poems

Once More Out of Darkness and Other Poems. Berkeley: Berkeley Poets' Press, 1974.  9780917658006

ISBN

A Dream of Springtime: Poems 1970–1978. New York: Smith/Horizon Press, 1979.  9780912292533

ISBN

. Los Angeles: Momentum Press, 1980. Rpt. Beacon Press, 1986, Pittsburgh, 2008. ISBN 9780822960331

The Mother/Child Papers

. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1982. ISBN 9780691013909. Alicia Ostriker.

A Woman Under the Surface

The Imaginary Lover. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986.  9780822935438

ISBN

Green Age. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989.  9780822936244

ISBN

The Crack in Everything. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.  9780822939368

ISBN

The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968–1998. 1998, University of Pittsburgh.  9780822956808

ISBN

The Volcano Sequence. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002.  9780822957843

ISBN

No Heaven. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.  9780822958758

ISBN

The Book of Seventy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009,  9780822960515

ISBN

At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems, Marick Press, 2010,  9781934851067

ISBN

Alicia Ostriker's poem “A Young Woman, a Tree” appears in 's posthumously published Journals.[17]

Kurt Cobain

in 's Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), poets and philosophers discuss the state of American poetry and mention Stealing the Language.[18]

Giannina Braschi

Poets on the Psalms featuring Alicia Ostriker. Edited by Lynn Domina (, 2008).

Trinity University Press

Sin:Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad.  978-1-55728-948-3

ISBN

No Heaven (Pitt Poetry Series)  0-8229-5875-9

ISBN

The Crack In Everything (Pitt Poetry Series)  0-8229-5593-8

ISBN

The Mother/Child Papers. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.  978-0-8229-6033-1

ISBN

Poetry Foundation page

poets.org page

Jewish Women's Archive page