Professor
English
My area of specialization is American poetry: reading it, interpreting it, and writing it. I am especially interested in how poetry engages with readers beyond the academy. Current projects include “Chapter and Verse,” for the Cambridge History of Children’s Literature; a study of Viking artifacts in nineteenth-century poetry for a volume titled From Iceland to the Americas; and a new edited collection (with Sandra Lee Kleppe) on poetry and sustainability in higher education.
Past books include Distance Learning (New Issues/Western Michigan UP, 1998); Schoolroom Poets: Poetry, Pedagogy, and Daily Life in America (UPNE 2005, a Children’s Literature Association Honor Book); Over the River and Through the Wood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Poetry, co-edited with Karen Kilcup (Johns Hopkins UP 2013, a Choice Outstanding Academic Book); Bird Skin Coat: Poems (U of Wisconsin P 2009, winner of the Brittingham Prize and the Midwest Book Award), The Sleeve Waves: Poems (U of Wisconsin P 2014, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize); and a collection co-edited with Sandra Kleppe, Poetry and Pedagogy Across the Lifespan (Palgrave 2018).
Courses Taught
- American Literature
- Creative Writing (Poetry)
Research Interests
- American Poetry
- Children's Literature
- Creative Writing Pedagogy
Publications
Books, Editions, Collections
- 2023 Poetry and the Global Climate Crisis: Creative Educational Approaches to Complex Challenges, co-edited with Amatoritsero Ede and Sandra Lee Kleppe.
- 2018 Poetry and Pedagogy Across the Lifespan, co-edited with Sandra Lee Kleppe. Palgrave UK.
- 2014 The Sleeve Waves (poems). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
- 2013 Over the River and Through the Wood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Poetry, co-edited with Karen Kilcup. Johns Hopkins University Press.
- 2009 Bird Skin Coat (poems). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
- 2005 Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865-1917. Becoming Modern series. Hanover, NH: University of New Hampshire/University Press of New England.
- 1998 Distance Learning (poems). Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Press/Western Michigan University.
Scholarly articles and book chapters (selected):
- 2018 “Baby to Baby: Lydia Sigourney and the Origins of Cuteness,” in Elizabeth Petrino and Mary Louise Kete, eds. Lydia Sigourney: Critical Essays and Cultural Views. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
- 2018 “The Chemistry of Poetry: Transfer Across Disciplines,” with Tracy Thompson, Sandra Kleppe and Angela Sorby, eds., Poetry and Pedagogy Across the Lifespan (London: Palgrave UK, 2018) 19-36.
- 2017 "’A Dimple in the Tomb": Cuteness in Emily Dickinson.’" ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 63: 2 (2017) 297-328.
- 2017 “Conjuring Readers: Antebellum African-American Children’s Poetry,” a chapter in Anna Mae Duane and Kate Capshaw Smith, eds., Who Writes for Black Children? African-American Children’s Literature Before 1900. University of Minnesota Press.
- 2016 “Women Poets, Child Readers,” in Jennifer Putzi and Alexandra Socarides, eds., A History of American Women’s Poetry. Cambridge University Press.
- 2016 “Children’s Culture,” in Gary Burns, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Popular Culture. New York: Blackwell.
- 2015 “At Home in the Stranger’s House: Poetic Revision and Spiritual Practice,” in Anne M. Pasero and John Pustejovsky, “And have you changed your life?” The Challenge of Listening to the Spiritual in Contemporary Poetry. Press.
- 2014 “Disciplined Play: Children’s Poetry to 1920,” a chapter in Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt, eds., The Cambridge History of American Poetry. Cambridge University Press.
- 2013 “Education,” in Eliza Richards, ed., Emily Dickinson In Context. Cambridge University Press, 36-45.
- 2013 “Pretty New Moons: Contact Zones in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Poetry,” with Karen Kilcup. Introduction to Over the River and Through the Wood. Johns Hopkins UP.
- 2012 “Recitation” and “Fireside Poets,” entries in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton UP, 2012.
- 2011 “Who Wrote “Rock Me to Sleep?: Elizabeth Akers Allen and the Profession of Poetry’” in MLQ: A Journal of Literary History.
- 2011 “The Poetics of Bird-Defense, 1860-1918” in Mike Chasar and Heidi Bean, eds., Poetry After Cultural Studies. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
- 2011 “The Golden Age,” in Philip Nel and Lissa Paul, eds., Keywords for Children’s Literature, NY: New York University Press, 96-99.
- 2010 “Animal Poems and Children's Rights in America, 1820-1890,” in Morag Styles, et. al., eds., Poetry and Childhood. Stoke-on-Kent, UK: Trentham Books.
- 2010 “Longfellow’s Ghost: Writing Popular Poetry,” in Blas Falconer, ed., Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
- 2009 “The Milwaukee School of Fleshly Poetry: Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Popular Aestheticism,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.
- 2008 “Raymond Carver’s Poetry and the Temperance Tradition,” Raymond Carver Review.
- 2007 “Symmetrical Womanhood: Poetry in the Woman’s Building Library,” Libraries and Culture.
- 2007 "Approaches to Teaching the Schoolroom Poets," in Paula Bennett and Karen Kilcup, Approaches to Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. NY: Modern Language Association Press.
- 1999 “Performing Class: James Whitcomb Riley’s Poetry of Distinction,” MLQ: A Journal of Literary History.
- 1998 “St. Nicholas Magazine and the Poetics of Peer Culture, 1872-1900,” American Studies.
Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction Publications (selected)
- 2019 "Big Rig," in New Ohio Review 25. Poetry
- 2018 “Limn,” in Feminist Studies. Poetry.
- 2017 “The Boring Side of the Family,” in Tina Schumann, ed., Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents. Los Angeles: Red Hen P. Poetry.
- 2017 “Exercise,” Poetry Northwest. Poetry.
- 2017 “No One Knows Where the Ladder Goes,” The First Line. Fiction. Finalist, Best Small Fictions 2017.
- 2016 “Code Violations: Chicago Review in the 1990s,” in Chicago Review. Creative nonfiction.
- 2014 “Stranger Danger,” Journal of the West 53 (4): 56-59. Creative nonfiction.
- 2014 “Memo from the Center for Teaching and Learning,” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Creative nonfiction.
- 2013 “Paradise, Wisconsin,” Barrow Street. Poetry.
- 2013 “Sivka-Burka,” “Interstate,” “A is for Air,” “Notes from a Northern State, Prairie Schooner Poetry.
- 2013 "A Walk Across the Ice," "Golden Spike," "Ink.” Mesa, AZ: Superstition Review, 2013. Poetry.
- 2012 “Fallout,” “Wide Boulevard, Tiny Apartment,” Zone 3. Poetry.
- 2012 “Stopping At the Joyce Kilmer Rest Area On a Snowy Evening,” North American Review. Poetry.
- 2011 “Creating a Cone of Silence in China,” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Creative nonfiction.
- 2011 “Snapshots of a Semester in China,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2011. Creative nonfiction.
- 2011 “Thrifting,” Massachusetts Review. Poetry.
- 2011 “Pengyou,” read by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Weekend All Things Considered (NPR), April 2011. Fiction.
- 2010 “Spill,” Poets for Living Waters. Poetry.
- 2009 “Looking Backward: 2020,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2009. Creative nonfiction.
- 2009 “The Suburban Mysteries,” Jacket 38.
- 2009 “Letter to Hugo from the Land of the Living,” Babel Fruit. Poetry.
- 2009 “Flyover State,” Shepherd Express. Reprint.
- 2008 “Six Degrees of Separation,” Willow Springs. Poetry.
- 2008 “Nostalgia for the Present,” “Two Toyotas Crash,” and “Breathing Out Smoke,” Southern Review. Poetry.
- 2004 “Empire Builder” in John Burnside, ed. Wild Reckoning: An Anthology Provoked by Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring.’ Gulbenkian Foundation (UK), 2004. Reprint. Poetry.
- 2004 “Catch and Release,” Pinyon (2004): 18. Special issue on Norwegian poetry; in English, and translated into Norwegian (as “Slip og Fang”) by Sandra Lee Kleppe. Poetry.
- 2003 “Glossolalia” in Diane Boller, et. al., eds. Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the World’s Most Popular Website. Sourcebooks, 2003. Reprint; also appeared on the Poetry Daily website. Poetry.
- 2001 “Really Barely There,” Born: Art and Literature Collaboration (2001): n.p. Art by Karen Ingram.
- 2000 “Insomnia” and “The Attic of the Attic,” Portland Review. Poetry.
- 2000 “Land of Lincoln” and “The Man Without a Middle,” in America Poetry: The Next Generation. Jim Daniels and Gerald Constanzo, eds., Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2000. Reprint. Poetry.
- 1998 “Land of Lincoln,” “Really Barely There,” and “Kate Fox,” Third Coast. Poetry.
- 1996 “Weather at Ten,” North American Review. Poetry.
- 1995 “Museum Piece,” in Richard Howard, ed., Best American Poetry 1995, Simon & Schuster, 1995. Reprint. Poetry.
- 1994 “Museum Piece,” The Nation. Poetry.
Reviews and Review Essays:
- 2019 Review of Patricia Crane, Reading Children: LIteracy, Property, and the Dilemmas of Childhood in Nineteenth-Century America in American Literary History Review Series XX.
- 2017 Review of Denise Duhamel, Scald, in Chicago Review 60:4 (2017), 3 pp.
- 2016 Review of Donelle Ruwe, British Children's Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 40: 1 (Winter 2016), 420-422.
- 2015 Review of Claudia Stokes, The Altar at Home: Sentimental Literature and Nineteenth-Century American Religion. Modern Philology 113, 2 (November 2015): E112-E114
- 2015 Review of Mary Robson, Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem. MLQ 76: 1 (March 2015): 212-214.
- 2014 Roundtable review (with Monika Elbert) of Anna Mae Duane, Suffering Childhood: Violence, Race, and the Making of the Child Victim. Journal of American Studies 48:1(February 2014): 1-9.
- 2010 “It's (Not) All Small Stuff: The Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children’s Poetry,” with Michael Heyman and Joseph T. Thomas, in The Lion and the Unicorn 34 (September 2010): 354-363.
- 2009 Lively Rigor: the 2009 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children’s Poetry,” with Michael Heyman and Joseph T. Thomas, in The Lion and the Unicorn 33: 3 (September 2009): 376-396.
- 2008 Review of Joseph T. Thomas, Poetry’s Playground, in Children’s Literature 36: (2008): 245-247.
- 2008 “‘from the brain all the way to the heart’: the 2008 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children’s Poetry,” with Richard Flynn and Joseph T. Thomas, in The Lion and the Unicorn 32: 3 (September 2008): 344-356.
- 2008 Featured essay review of Joan Shelley Rubin, Songs of Ourselves, American Historical Review 113 (April 2008): 449-451.
- 2007 “Message in a Bottle: the 2007 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children’s Poetry,” with Richard Flynn and Joseph T. Thomas, The Lion and the Unicorn 31 (2007): 264-281.
- 2007 Review of Christopher Irmscher, Longfellow Redux, in New England Quarterly, 80:1 (March 2007): 40-41.
- 2006 Review of Joel Scott and Matthew Pace, eds., Wordsworth in American Literary Culture, in European Romantic Review 11:4 (2006): 502-507.
- 2004 Review of James Guthrie, Above Time: Emerson’s and Thoreau’s Temporal Revolutions, in M/MLA Journal 37:1 (Spring 2004): 117-118.
- 2001 Review of J.D. McClatchy, Twenty Questions: Posed by Poems, in M/MLA Journal 34: 3 (Autumn, 2001): 89-91
- 1999 Review of Elizabeth Arnold, The Reef, in Chicago Review 49: 2 (1999): 137-139.
- 1996 Review of Lynne Crosbie, VillainElle, in Chicago Review, 42:2 (1996): 117-119.
- 1996 Review of Fatima Lim-Wilson, Crossing the Snow Bridge, in Chicago Review,42:1 (1996): 88-89.
- 1995 Review of Lawrence Graver, An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary, in Chicago Review 41:4 (1995): 142-144.
- 1995 Review of Natasha Sajé, Red Under the Skin, in Chicago Review 41:1 (1995): 97-98.
Honors and Awards
- Won Outstanding Achievement in Poetry award (for The Sleeve Waves), Wisconsin Library Association, 2015
- Won the 2013 Felix Pollak book prize for poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. Book forthcoming March 2014.
- NEH grant (in collaboration with Sarah Wadsworth) from the American Library Association for an outreach project titled Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. 2011.
- Brittingham Prize for poetry manuscript Bird Skin Coat, 2008.
- Honor Book Prize, Children’s Literature Association, 2007
- Summer Faculty Fellowship, , 2006.
- Schlesinger Library Fellowship, Harvard University, 2005.
- Vivian Pollak Scholar-in-Amherst Award, Emily Dickinson International Society, 2003
- Urban Studies Institute Course Development Grant, ,2003.
- Summer Faculty Fellowship, , 2002.
- Korzenik Fellowship, Longfellow Friends, 2002.
- PT-3 Grant, 2001.
- Linfield College Faculty Fellowship, 1998.
- Stuart Tave Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1996.
- Discovery/The Nation (writing) Prize, The Nation and the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street “Y,” 1994.
- Brauer Grant, “Educating Emily Dickinson,” University of Chicago, 1994.
- John Fiske Poetry (writing) Prize, University of Chicago, 1993.
Additional Information
Office Hours
Spring 2025
- Tues 9:30-11:00
- Wed 10:00-12:30
Teaching Schedule
Spring 2025
- 3249/101 Tues 6:00-8:30 David Strauz CN141
- 4988/101 TuTh 8:00-9:15
- Practicum in Literature and Language Arts
Dr. Angela Sorby
