Patrick Morrissey

Biography

I study literary modernism, especially poetry and poetics. My dissertation, "Naïve Modernism," examines the poetry of William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, and Lorine Niedecker, arguing that the wish to write with the freedom, absorption, or simplicity of a child is central to their versions of modernism. I am also the author of two collections of poetry, The Differences (Pressed Wafer, 2014) and World Music (Verge Books, forthcoming). From 2014 to 2016, I served as poetry editor of Chicago Review. I earned my AB at Harvard University in 2004 and worked as a high-school English teacher before entering graduate school.

Research Interests: 

Modernism; poetry and poetics; literature and the visual arts; aesthetics

Workshops: 

Poetry & Poetics (co-coordinator, 2013-2015)

Publications

  • “Private Avowal, Public Front: Reading Williams’s Kora in Hell,” Textual Practice (forthcoming)
  • “Strange American Heart: The Poetry of August Kleinzahler,” in Assessments: American Poetry Since 1950, eds. Robert Faggen and Robert von Hallberg (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming) 
  • Poetry collection, World Music (Verge Books, forthcoming 2017)
  • Poetry collection, The Differences (Pressed Wafer, 2014)
  • Poems in The NationNew American WritingColorado Review, and other periodicals
  • Book reviews of Michael Gizzi, Lew Welch, Karin Lessing, and others in Chicago Review

Teaching Experience

  • Introduction to Genres: Writing the Visual Arts (Summer 2016, sole instructor)
  • Introduction to Modernism (Spring 2016, sole instructor)
  • Beginning Poetry Workshop (Summer 2014 and Summer 2015, sole instructor)
  • Intermediate Poetry Workshop: Poetic Sequences (Spring 2015, sole instructor)
  • Introduction to Poetry (Spring 2014, teaching assistant)