Lisa Russ Spaar

Lisa Russ Spaar is a contemporary American poet, professor, and essayist. She is currently a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Virginia and the director of the Area Program in Poetry Writing. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Vanitas, Rough: Poems, and Satin Cash: Poems. Her most recent book is Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems (Persea, 2021), and her debut novel, Paradise Close, was published by Persea in May 2022. Her poem “Temple Gaudete,” published in IMAGE Journal, won a 2016 Pushcart Prize.

Articles

Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Susan Stewart and Jennifer Chang
Lisa Russ Spaar appreciates the lyric intelligence of Susan Stewart’s and Jennifer Chang’s second collections.
Lisa Russ SpaarDec 16, 2017
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Amy Clampitt and Richard Deming
Lisa Russ Spaar appreciates the second books of Amy Clampitt and Richard Deming.
Lisa Russ SpaarSep 8, 2017
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Olga Broumas and Emilia Phillips
Lisa Russ Spaar is moved by of Olga Broumas’s and Emilia Phillips’s second collections.
Lisa Russ SpaarJun 30, 2017
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Rosanna Warren and Melissa Range
Lisa Russ Spaar takes a second look at second books by poets Rosanna Warren and Melissa Range.
Lisa Russ SpaarMar 28, 2017
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Robert Pinsky and Tess Taylor
Lisa Russ Spaar appreciates the excellence of Robert Pinsky’s and Tess Taylor’s second collections.
Lisa Russ SpaarJan 17, 2017
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: R. T. Smith and Mark Wagenaar
Lisa Russ Spaar appreciates the excellence of R. T. Smith’s and Mark Wagenaar’s second collections.
Lisa Russ SpaarOct 28, 2016
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Linda Gregerson and Rachel Richardson
Lisa Russ Spaar on "The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep" and "Hundred-Year Wave".
Lisa Russ SpaarAug 27, 2016
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Forrest Gander and Richard Siken
Lisa Russ Spaar juxtaposes the erotic poetry collections of Forrest Gander and Richard Siken in her “Second Acts” series.
Lisa Russ SpaarJul 8, 2016
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by James Tate and Sam Taylor
Lisa Russ Spaar looks to poets Sam Taylor and James Tate to explay why the two fundamental modes of lyric poetry are crying and laughing.
Lisa Russ SpaarMay 20, 2016
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Carl Phillips
How Carl Phillips became one of America's most eminent writers.
Lisa Russ SpaarDec 19, 2015
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Eleanor Stanford and Arthur Sze
Stanford and Sze are "acutely attuned to the physical world, manifested through science, nature, culture, and the sensuous realms of food, drink, and love."
Lisa Russ SpaarSep 3, 2015
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry
Traversing the tense, torqued territory between orient and occident, indigenous and empirical, history and amnesia...language makes and unmakes.
Lisa Russ SpaarJun 10, 2015
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Rae Armantrout and Ye Chun
Rae Armantrout and Ye Chun are poets who go in “quest of” without, to paraphrase Keats, an irritable reaching after any one answer.
Lisa Russ SpaarMay 9, 2015
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Fulton and Bachmann
Lisa Russ Spaar looks at second books of poetry by Beth Bachmann and Alice Fulton.
Lisa Russ SpaarMar 11, 2015
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Galway Kinnell and David Roderick
On Galway Kinnell's "Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock" and David Roderick's "The Americans"
Lisa Russ SpaarJan 28, 2015
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Peter Streckfus and Jean Valentine
Everybody talks about first books. Second books are more interesting.
Lisa Russ SpaarNov 22, 2014
- Poetry