Christina Pugh has published five books of poems including Stardust Media (2020), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Press. She has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the Illinois Arts Council. A recent Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, she is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

• Introduction 2005-2010: This Work Which is Not OneNo Experience Necessary Instinctual Ballast: Imitation and Creative Writing On Sonnet Thought Humor Anxiety Allusion and Context in Contemporary American Poetry Ed Roberson’s Inward Lyricism Light in Nagasaki: Catherine McCarthy’s “We Walk On Jewels”“Some Chant I’m Working At” An Elegy for Dancing 2011-2015: Gravity, Images, and the HandOn Nonconformists and Strange Gravity The Emily Dickinsons “A Lovely Finish I Have Seen”: Voice and Variorum in Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box“Arranging, Deepening, Enchanting” : Catherine McCarthy’s Flower ArrangingA Farm, Two Spiders, and A Book of Luminous Things: Czeslaw Milosz’s Affinity for the Image Turning, Troping, Wresting: Michael Ryan’s “My Dream byHenry James” “Found Breath”: The Contemporary “Mainstream” Lyric 2015-2021: Voicing the OverplusProsopopoeia: The Throwing of a Voice “Velvety Velour” and Other Sonnet Textures in Gwendolyn Brooks’s “the children of the poor” “Cinnamon. Eyeshadow. Dove”: Considering Jean Valentine (1934-2020) On Ghosts and the Overplus

“Elegance, restraint, conviction, and a quiet authority have always been the hallmarks of Christina Pugh’s remarkable prose; she brings a delicate intellectual acuity to her essays which is made capacious by her compassionate wisdom. Reading Christina Pugh’s essays I’m always astonished by the subtle yet deeply profound intimacy in her writing. With this collection, Christina Pugh has joined poets David Baker, Robert Hass, and Rosanna Warren as one of the most compelling essayists we have in American poetry. I treasure this book.”