T. R. Hummer


Terry Randolph Hummer is an American poet, critic, essayist, editor, and professor. His most recent books of poetry are After the Afterlife and the three linked volumes Ephemeron, Skandalon, and Eon. He has published poems in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The Literati Quarterly, Paris Review, and Georgia Review. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship inclusion in the 1995 edition of Best American Poetry, the Hanes Prize for Poetry, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and three Pushcart Prizes.

Early life

Hummer was born and raised in Mississippi, and graduated from University of Southern Mississippi with a B.A. in 1972 and M.A. in 1974. He studied with Gordon Weaver and D.C. Berry. He graduated from the University of Utah with a PhD, where he studied with Dave Smith and was editor of Quarterly West in 1979.

Career

He taught at Oklahoma State University, where he was poetry editor of The Cimarron Review. In 1984 he relocated to Kenyon College; there, after visiting positions at Middlebury College and the University of California at Irvine, he became editor of The Kenyon Review. In 1989 he returned to Middlebury as editor of New England Review. He relocated to the University of Oregon in 1993, where he directed the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In 1997, he taught at Virginia Commonwealth University. He taught at the University of Georgia, and was editor of The Georgia Review. He retired from Arizona State University.

Honors and awards

;Collections
  • Lower-Class Heresy
  • Walt Whitman in Hell: Poems
  • Eon: Poems. LSU Press Southern Messenger Poets. 2018.
;Chapbooks
  • Urn
  • Translation of Light
;Appearances in anthologies
;List of poems
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collected
Glass ceiling2015-
As for the housefly2016

Essays