 | Horizon Note A son is born too early, as if coming up over the horizon before his own dawn. An elderly father lingers at life's other horizon. In language dense and clear, playful and somber, and with a formal exactitude and emotional amplitude suggestive of her own musical training, Behn traverses these horizons "extracting," like the horizon note that drones through traditional Indian music, "a red needle from the sky." Robin Behn is a graduate of Oberlin College, the University of Missouri at Columbia, and the University of Iowa. She is a noted poet, a professor of English, and the director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. Behn's poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals, and she has published two collections of her poems, Paper Bird and The Red Hour. Behn's poetry has earned her numerous awards, including the Associated Writings Program Award Series in Poetry for Paper Bird, the New England Review narrative poetry prize, and a Pushcart Prize. Her poem French Horn appears in the Pushcart Prize, XVIII Best of the Small Presses, 1993-94; Midwestern Villanelle was published in the 1992 edition of Best American Poetry. Behn has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from arts councils in Illinois and Alabama. Behn is the coeditor of The Practice of Poetry Writing: Exercises from Poets Who Teach, a book about creative writing. Aimed at both making writing enjoyable and stimulating creative, flexible thinking, the book has become a favorite resource for both teachers and students of poetry. (Bowker Author Biography) |
