Genre Poetry Name Vijay Seshadri | Role Poet | |
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Born February 13, 1954 (age 70) Bangalore, India ( 1954-02-13 ) Notable awards Pulitzer Prize for poetry Awards Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, James Laughlin Award, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada Books 3 Sections, The Long Meadow, Wild Kingdom: Poems |
2014 burlington book festival vijay seshadri
Vijay Seshadri (born February 13, 1954 in Bangalore, India) is a Brooklyn, New York–based poet, essayist and literary critic.
Contents
- 2014 burlington book festival vijay seshadri
- Vijay Seshadri and the power of poetry
- Early life
- Career
- The Disappearances
- Poetry
- Awards
- Collections
- Selections
- References

Vijay won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, for 3 Sections.

Vijay Seshadri and the power of poetry
Early life

Vijay moved to the United States at the age of five. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where his father taught chemistry at Ohio State University.
Career

Seshadri has been an editor at The New Yorker, as well as an essayist and book reviewer in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, and various literary quarterlies. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; and area studies fellowships from Columbia University. As a professor and chair in the undergraduate writing and MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College he has taught courses on 'Non-Fiction Writing', 'Form and Feeling in Nonfiction Prose', 'Rational and Irrational Narrative', and 'Narrative Persuasion'.
The Disappearances
Seshadri's poem The Disappearances deals with a "cataclysm" in "American history" and the baffling nature of loss. It came to prominence after the New Yorker published it on their back cover following the September 11 attacks in 2001. It was also subsequently included in The Best American Poetry 2003. Seshadri had intended for The Disappearances to personalise loss having described himself as initially too shocked to write poetry in the wake of the attacks. The New Yorker's poetry editor, Alice Quinn, said that the poem "...summoned up, with acute poignance, a typical American household and scene...The combination of epic sweep (including the quoted allusion to one of Emily Dickinson's Civil War masterpieces, from 1862) and piercing, evocative detail is characteristic of the contribution Seshadri has made to the American canon."
Poetry
In a 2004 interview, Seshadri discusses the creative process and his influences, in particular Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Blake. He also reflects on his cultural influences including the experience of "strangeness" coming of age in Columbus, Ohio during the 1960s.