User:Paul Hoover

• Paul Hoover, 2008
  Paul Hoover, 2008

Paul Hoover is an American poet born in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1946. After many years as Poet in Residence at Columbia College Chicago, he accepted the position of Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University in 2003. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

Hoover has published eleven poetry collections, a book of literary essays, and a novel. He has also co-translated four volumes of poetry. Beginning with the most recent, his publications are:

"Desolation: Souvenir" (poetry). Richmond, CA: Omnidawn Publishing, 2012; "Sonnet 56" (poetry). Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2009; 'Edge and Fold (poetry). Berkeley: Apogee Press, 2006; Poems in Spanish (poetry). Richmond, CA: Omnidawn Publishing, 2005, nominated for the Bay Area Book Award; Fables of Representation (essays). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004; Winter (Mirror) (poetry); Chicago: Flood Editions, 2002; Rehearsal in Black (poetry). Cambridge, England: Salt Publications, 2001; Totem and Shadow: New & Selected Poems. Jersey City: Talisman House, 1999; Viridian (poetry). Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1997, winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series competition; Postmodern American Poetry (anthology). New York: W. W. Norton, 1994; The Novel: A Poem. New York: New Directions, 1991; Saigon, Illinois (novel). New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1988, a chapter of which appeared in The New Yorker; Idea (poetry). Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 1987; Nervous Songs (poetry). Seattle: L'Epervier Press, 1986; Somebody Talks a Lot (poetry). Chicago: The Yellow Press, 1983; and Letter to Einstein Beginning Dear Albert (poetry). Chicago: The Yellow Press, 1979.

In 2012, two of his poetry books were published in Latin America: "En el idioma y en la tierra" (Mexico City: Conaculta, 2012) and "La intención y su materia" (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 2012). He has also published the chapbook "Corazón" (Puebla de Los Angeles, Mexico: LunArena Press, 2009). All three volumes were translated by the Mexican poet Maria Baranda.

In 2010, he was given the Frederick Bock Award for the best poems to appear in Poetry. With Maxine Chernoff, he won the 2009 PEN-USA Translation Award for "Selected Poems of Friedrich Holderlin". In 2002, he won the Jerome J. Shestack Award for the best poems to appear in American Poetry Review that year. He won the Carl Sandburg Award, Chicago's leading literary prize, for his 1987 collection, Idea and the l984 General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers for poems later included in Nervous Songs. In 1980, he was awarded an NEA Fellowship in poetry.

His poetry has appeared in the literary magazinesAmerican Poetry Review, Triquarterly, Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, Sulfur, The New Republic, Hambone, and The Iowa Review, among others. It has also appeared in numerous anthologies including five volumes of the annual anthology The Best American Poetry (Scribners).

His books of translation include:

Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (anthology), edited and translated with Nguyen Do (St. Paul, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2008); 12 + 3: Fifteen Poems of Thanh Thao, translated with Nguyen Do (Hanoi: Writers Association Press, 2008); Selected Poems of Friedrich Holderlin, edited and translated with Maxine Chernoff (Richmond, CA: Omnidawn Publishing, Fall 2008); Thirty-Three Poems of Nguyen Trai, edited by Nguyen Duy, translated by Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover, bilingual "poetry calendar," with photographs by Nguyen Duy (Saigon: Saigon Cultural Publisher, Fall 2008).

He is editor, with Maxine Chernoff, of the literary magazine New American Writing, published once a year in association with the College of Humanities, San Francisco State University. The magazine's website is www.newamericanwriting.com.

He wrote the script for the 1994 independent film Viridian, directed by Joseph Ramirez and screened at The Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He was a founder, former president, and long-time board member of the Midwest’s leading independent poetry reading series, The Poetry Center at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2004.