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Born: 6/2/1953
Lee Upton was born in St. John's, Michigan, on June 2, 1953. She relocated to Pennsylvania in 1987 to teach in the English Department at Lafayette College, where she also served as Writer-in-Residence. Her works have been featured in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and other esteemed publications. In 2005, she earned the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award and its Emily Dickinson Award. In 2009, she was featured in the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project. She retired in 2020 to write full-time and continues to live and write in Easton.
Lee Upton was born on June 2, 1953, in St. John's, Michigan, to Rose (Mindwell Thompson) and Charles William Upton. Along with her older siblings Joseph, Alice, and Lana, she grew up on Plank Hill Farm near Maple Rapids, Michigan. When asked what "non-writing-related aspect" of her life was most influential, Upton recalled "[a]n embodied sense of the natural world is very much a part of my writing—including sense impressions of the fields and meadows where I wandered as a child" ("Lee Upton." Kenyon Review Conversations). She was an avid reader and noted that Emily Dickinson’s "I’m nobody! Who are you?" was the first poem she ever loved, due to its genius in working with "bitter ironies" and "the desire to break free of ascribed identities" (Gatza and Phillips 329). Dickinson ultimately became a significant muse in Upton’s poetry and scholarship.
As an undergraduate at Michigan State University, Upton majored in journalism but wrote creatively as well. In fact, her first poems were published in the May 1976 issue of The Red Cedar Review, Michigan State’s student-run literary magazine. After graduating in 1978, Upton earned an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1982). Then, at the State University of New York at Binghamton, she centered her doctoral studies on Jean Garrigue, a mid-20th century American poet. Upton defended her dissertation, graduated with a PhD in English in 1986, and later published her dissertation as a book, Jean Garrigue: A Poetics of Plentitude (1991).
Shortly after earning her undergraduate degree, Upton published two chapbooks, or short collections of poems: Beer Garden (1978) and Small Locks (1979). Her first book-length collection of poetry, The Invention of Kindness, was published in 1984 as part of the University of Alabama’s Poetry Series. According to Upton, these early poems dealt "with trying to find the language for the world I grew up with and learning a way to honor that world" (Shugars 57). Sudden Distances, another chapbook, appeared in 1987. In 1989, her second book-length collection, No Mercy, was selected for publication in the National Poetry Series. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted Upton’s "soft-toned but exacting sensibility" and described her as an "explorer of minutiae" who offered "unforgettable, precisely-rendered microcosms" (55). Upton’s third collection, Approximate Darling (1996), won the Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series Award—a national competition—and was published by the University of Georgia Press. Don Hymans, writing for Boston Review, praised Upton "among those poets most capable of ensuring the safe passage of American poetry into the next millennium" (48).
Upton’s next book of poetry, Civilian Histories, was selected for publication by the same press in 2000. Inspired by the lives of Cassandra, Desdemona, Mary Rowlandson, and other mythological, fictive, and real persons, it was described as "a moving exploration that forces readers to realize how many censoring forces compel them into various captivities of history" (Marshall 49). Other poetry collections followed, including Undid in the Land of Undone (2007), which was a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award in the poetry category, and included "Clairvoyance," which was included in the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project poster program in 2009. Later came Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles (2015) and The Day Every Day Is, which won a national competition and was subsequently published by Saturnalia Books (2023). In these latter works, at least one reviewer reprised Upton’s ability to consider "mundane scenes" and use "apt language and imagery to communicate complex questions" (Wortman 192, writing of Bottle).
In addition to these collections, Upton contributed many poems to journals. She received early and repeated recognition for her work, starting with "The Imagination of Flowers," which was first published in Field and was included in The Pushcart Prize XII (1987/1988), a compilation of the best poetry, short fiction, and essays published by small presses. In 2005, the Poetry Society of America honored "And though she be but little, she is fierce," a poem inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the society’s Lyric Poetry Award. The same year, Upton's "Dickinson’s Day Lillies" won PSA’s Emily Dickinson Award. Upton’s poems have been featured several times in Best American Poetry, another prestigious annual anthology: "Thomas Hardy" (2008), "Drunk at a Party" (2011), and "The Apology" (2016).
As her career unfolded, Upton became increasingly active in publishing short fiction. Starting with contributions to Antioch Review, Northwest Review, Rio Grande Review, and Shenandoah, she went on to write a novella, The Guide to Flying Island (2009), and two book-length story collections: The Tao of Humiliation (2014) and Visitations (2017). In 2024, she published her first novel, Tabitha, Get Up. Of The Tao, a New York Times reviewer found Upton’s sentences to be "genuine shelters: long, erudite, warmhearted and capable, brimming with scholarship and knowledge" (Lee BR30). Both The Tao and Visitations were lauded with starred reviews in Kirkus, a magazine for the bookselling trade, and Visitations received an additional starred review from Library Journal. Two of Upton’s shorter works have also been listed as "Distinguished" within Best American Short Stories: "Portrait of the Artist’s Son" (2018) and "A Girl from Urbino" (2020).
Upton’s involvement with analyzing and promoting the work of other authors was important. She extended her compassion as a fellow writer by deliberately exploring ignored and misread authors. In addition to her doctoral work on Jean Garrigue, Upton produced Obsession and Release: Rereading the Poetry of Louise Bogan (1996); The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets (1998)—a work that explores the poetry of Charles Wright, Russell Edson, Jean Valentine, James Tate, and Louise Glück—and Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Glück, and Carson (2005). Swallowing the Sea: On Writing & Ambition, Boredom, Purity & Secrecy (2012), which conveys her own experiences and advice about being an author, was the winner of ForeWord Reviews’ Book of the Year Award in the "Writing" category. She also served as a longtime contributing editor of The Pushcart Prizes; as a member of the Board of Directors of Verse Press (2000-2005), and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts’ poetry awards (2008).
The ecology and landscapes of both Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the experiences Upton had in both places, informed her writings. The references are not usually explicit, however, and her work often "cross-inflected" locations. She explained, "I’m inspired by conversations I overhear locally and by local disputes I read about, but often this material is transformed in the process of writing" (Upton, personal interview). This said, "The Naming of Bars," included in a 2017 anthology called Of Burgers & Barrooms, mentions Drinky’s, a watering hole in Easton which is now closed. Upton’s admiration for contemporary poets, particularly Patience Agbabi, Wisława Szymborska, and Tomas Tranströmer, has also influenced her work. Though it is challenging to summarize commonalities and evolutions across her prolific body of writings, one may notice that she has often used metaphor and extended metaphor in tandem with layered reflections, mini-narratives, or discourses about the self, about people, or about issues in the speaker's life. This blend of techniques seems to enable her poems to shift tone rapidly and move between deadly serious subject matter and thoughts of a more quotidian nature. Upton’s technique creates dramatic tension and fosters a sense of surprise around every corner.
Although Upton is known primarily as an author, she left important marks in Pennsylvania’s educational and literary communities. As a newly-minted PhD in the 1980s, one of the short-term positions Upton took was as a visiting assistant professor at Lafayette College. She recalled feeling "lucky and excited ... to be teaching on such a beautiful campus with such spirited colleagues." Further, "the students tended to be eager to learn and uncommonly polite" (Wilson). Thus, when a permanent position opened the following year, Upton chose to return to Lafayette. At the time, the college offered only one creative writing course, but by the time she retired there were introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses in various genres. As she prepared to step away from the classroom, she reflected: "One of the joys of teaching in the sequence is seeing some of the same students return and further extend their imaginative reach and develop an enhanced capacity to experiment. The students become more discerning, empathetic, generous, and sensitive readers" (Wilson “A Writer’s Goodbye”).
Upton and her colleagues also arranged for more than eighty prominent writers to visit campus and expose students to different voices and craft strategies. She also served as a long-term advisor to the college’s Marquis magazine; was the organizer of the annual Jean Corrie and MacKnight Black poetry competitions (1989-2020); organized local celebrations of National Poetry Month (1995-2016); and was the originator of an annual campus "Write-a-Thon" (2011-2019). Her devotion to students and her scholarly accomplishments were recognized through Lafayette College’s Mary Louise Van Artsdalen Prize for Scholarship (1993), the Marquis Teaching Award (2003), and the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award for Superior Teaching and Scholarship (2013). In 2015, she was honored with a distinguished chair by being named the Francis A. March Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence. Although Upton left Lafayette in 2020, she continued to engage with colleagues and projects in the area.
One of Upton’s personal traits was her ability to transform criticism of her work into further motivation to write. For example, as an undergraduate, she shared some of her poems with a speaker at a festival, and his response was that her work "could be so much worse." This turned out to be "all the encouragement [she] needed," for she was "in love with possibility" (Abrams "My First Time"). Within a mass of writings and interviews available through Lafayette College’s archives, Upton repeatedly said that she felt "wildly and wickedly lucky" to be an author. In an essay titled "Thanks to Poetry," published in the Allentown Morning Call in 2000, she listed all the ways poetry had been meaningful to her. A few lines from the beginning convey her gracious attitude and help to sum up her work:
"I want to acknowledge poetry: Because poetry can create experiences of provocation and repose. When it comforts, it comforts because it confronts. Because poetry allows us to know our language in a sensory way, as rhythms, as shapes, as hues, as textures. It shows us the various weights of words. Because while poetry honors the senses, it also allows us to intuit something beyond our senses, something out of our normal range of experience, peripheral to peripheral vision ..." (Upton "Thanks to Poetry").
Lee Upton was married in 1989 to Eric Ziolkowski, a professor of religious studies. They have two daughters, Theodora and Cecilia.
Poetry:
- Beer Garden. Okemos, MI: Stone Press, 1978.
- Small Locks: Poems. Highland Park, MI: Fallen Angel Press, 1979.
- The Invention of Kindness. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984.
- Sudden Distances. East Lansing, MI: Years Press, 1988.
- No Mercy. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press: 1989.
- Approximate Darling: Poems. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.
- Civilian Histories: Poems. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
- Undid in the Land of Undone. Kalamazoo: New Issues/Western Michigan University, 2007.
- Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015.
- The Day Every Day Is. Ardmore, PA: Saturnalia Books, 2023.
Criticism:
- Jean Garrigue: A Poetics of Plenitude. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991.
- Obsession and Release: Rereading the Poetry of Louise Bogan. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1996.
- The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery, in Five American Poets. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1998.
- Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Glück, And Carson. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2005.
Children's Book:
- On Stage Tonight [co-authored with Ray Harris]. Mahwah, NJ: Watermill, 1983.
Fiction:
- The Guide to the Flying Island. Oxford, OH: Miami University Press, 2009.
- The Tao of Humiliation: Short Stories. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2014.
- Visitations: Stories. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017.
- Tabitha, Get Up. Montclair, NJ: Sagging Meniscus Press, 2024.
Essays:
- Swallowing the Sea: On Writing & Ambition, Boredom, Purity & Secrecy. North Adams, MA: Tupelo, 2012.
- Alvarez, John. "Lee Upton." Literary and Cultural Heritage Maps of Pennsylvania. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, Spring 2009. Superseded Spring 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20240223200644/https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Upton__Lee. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
- Abrams, David. "My First Time: Lee Upton." The Quivering Pen, 17 Nov. 2014. http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-first-time-lee-upton.html. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024.
- Bazin, Victoria. Review of The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets, by Lee Upton. Journal of American Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2002, pp. 188-189. CambridgeCore, https://www.cambridge.org/core. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
- Cuda, A. J. Review of Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Glück, and Carson, by Lee Upton. Choice, vol. 43, no. 3, 2005, p. 488. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/defensive-measures-poetry-niedecker-bishop-glück/docview/225789545/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Easton Book Festival. "Lee Upton and Lynne Hinnefeld in Conversation." YouTube, uploaded by @eastonbookfestival4827, 15 Nov. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzlQJq7_2qs. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
- Gatza, Geoffrey, and Lance Phillips. "Lee Upton." Here Comes Everybody: An Anthology of Writers on Writing. Buffalo, NY: Blaze Vox Press, 2007.
- Hymans, Don. Review of Approximate Darling, by Lee Upton. Boston Review, vol. 21, no. 3, 1996, pp. 46. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/approximate-darling-lee-upton/docview/1347837263/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Lafayette College. "Writer-in-Residence Lee Upton." YouTube, uploaded by @lafayettecollege, 6 Jul. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckI3mAjgLjc6. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
- "Lafayette Professor Honored." Morning Call [Allentown, PA], 29 May 2005, p. E12. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/arts-news/docview/393207180/se-2. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024.
- Lee, Rebecca. Review of The Tao of Humiliation, by Lee Upton. New York Times Book Review, 27 Jul. 2014, p. BR30. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/tao-humiliation/docview/1548420058/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- “Lee Upton." Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2015. Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1000100845. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024.
- “Lee Upton." Kenyon Review Conversations, 21 Jan. 2015, https://kenyonreview.org/conversation/lee-upton/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.
- “Lee Upton." Poets & Writers, https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/lee_upton. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.
- Loughran, Ellen. Review of The Tao of Humiliation. Booklist, vol. 110, no. 15, 2014, p. 22. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/tao-humiliation/docview/1512413797/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Lynch, Doris. Review of No Mercy, by Lee Upton. Library Journal, 15 Sept. 1989, p. 114. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=13445835&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Marshall, Todd. Review of Civilian Histories, by Lee Upton. Boston Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 2001, pp. 49-50. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/civilian-histories-lee-upton-book-review/docview/1347839776/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Michigan Department of Community Health, Division of Vital Records and Health Statistics. Marriage license of Charles William Upton and Rose Mindwell Thompson. Michigan Marriage Records, 1867-1952 [database on-line]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
- Review of Approximate Darling, by Lee Upton. Virginia Review, vol. 73, no. 1, 1997, pg. 28. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/approximate-darling/docview/205363046/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Review of No Mercy, by Lee Upton. Publishers Weekly, 29 Sept. 1989, pp. 55-56. Publishers Weekly Digital Archive, https://digitalarchives.publishersweekly.com/. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Review of Visitations: Stories, by Lee Upton. Kirkus Reviews, vol. 85, no. 18, 2017. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/visitations/docview/1937639131/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Rotella, Mark. Review of Civilian Histories, by Lee Upton. Publishers Weekly, 27 Mar. 2000, p. 73. Publishers Weekly Digital Archive, https://digitalarchives.publishersweekly.com/. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Russell, Sue. Review of The Tao of Humiliation, by Lee Upton. Library Journal, vol. 139, no. 15, 2014, p. 73. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/fiction/docview/1558866056/se-2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
- Shugars, Murray. "'If I Owe You, I Want to Pay You': an Interview with Lee Upton." Sycamore Review, vol. 7, no. 2, 1995, pp. 54-67.
- United States Bureau of the Census. "Upton, Charles W." 1950 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
- Upton, Lee. "Curriculum Vitae." 2024. Microsoft Word file.
- Upton, Lee. "Emily Dickinson, Tippler & Neighbor." Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, vol. 19, no. 1, 2007, pp. 4-5, 15.
- Upton, Lee. Personal interview. 16 Mar. 2024.
- Upton, Lee. "Thanks to Poetry: A Poet Acknowledges the Art." Morning Call [Allentown, PA], 16 Apr. 2000, p. S02. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/thanks-poetry-poet-acknowledges-art-form/docview/392998482/se-2/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.
- Wilson, Stephen. "A Writer’s Goodbye: Lee Upton, Francis A. March Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence Reflects on Teaching and Career." Lafayette News, 17 June 2020, https://news.lafayette.edu/2020/06/17/a-writers-goodbye/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024.
- Wortman, Stefanie. "My Pal Keats: Contemporary Poets at Play in the Anthology." Missouri Review, vol. 39, no. 1, 2016, pp. 186-195. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/614612. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
Photo Credit: "Photograph of Lee Upton." Photograph. Cropped to 4x3. Source: Online Resource.