Jerry McGuire

BIOGRAPHY

Jerry McGuire was born in Stuyvesant Falls, New York in 1947. After a tour of duty in the Air Force and working in factories for several years, he received a B.A. in English and Linguistics from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in literature from SUNY at Buffalo. He has taught in a number of universities, including, as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature and Poetics, Alexandru Ion Cuza University in Iasi, Romania and served as Director of the Creative Writing Concentration at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette from 1997 to 2006. He has won literary prizes and awards from journals such as The Nebraska Review and Louisiana Literature and in contests such as the Primavera Competition, The Allen Ginsberg Competition, The Sow’s Ear Review Poetry Contest, and the Publishing Online Contest. Much of his work is poetry and experimental fiction done in collaboration with musicians, dancers, and visual artists and designed for specific performance environments. His scholarly work includes publications on Shakespeare, poetry and poetics, pedagogy, literary theory, postcolonial studies, and film theory, and he is Advisory Editor of College Literature, Contributing Editor for Emergency Press, and General Editor for Turducken Press.

BRIEF CURRICULUM VITAE

Courses Taught
Freshman Honors, Introduction to Creative Writing; Advanced Creative Writing-Fiction; Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry; Modern British and American Poetry, Modern Fiction; Postmodern Poetics; Film, Myth, and Gender; American Film Genres; Film and Dream; Psychoanalysis, Literature, and Film; Postmodern Localities, Rhetoric of Film, Graduate Creative Writing Seminar-Poetry; Creative Writing Pedagogy.

Select Publications

Books: The Flagpole Dance, (Lynx House), Vulgar Exhibitions (Eastern Washington University).

Recent Journal and Anthology Publications: Another South, Arkansas Review Connecticut Review, Denver Quarterly, Emergency Almanac, Fulcrum, Horse Less Review, Jacket, Knock, Louisiana Literature, Louisiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly Anthology, Paterson Review, Philadelphia Poets Anthology, Poet Lore, Poethia, Sad Little Breathings, Sentence, Sin Fronteras, Tierra Cruzada/Crossed Land, Turnrow, Verse 1995-2004: The Second Decade, Willow Springs, Xavier Review.

Special Performances
”Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel,” collaboration with musicians Chantel Langlinais and Rebbecca Brown and film-maker Allison Bohl. "Forking Tongues," mural-poem in "The Self Portrayed," exhibition at Artists Alliance, Lafayette LA."The Cages," in Tierra Cruzada/Crossed Land, photo-poetry exhibition designed by Paige DeShong, Las Cruces NM. "Three Trios," performance of poems with musical trio, Artists’ Alliance, Lafayette LA. "Painted Words," performance of poems with action painter Kathy Owens, Artists’ Alliance, Lafayette LA. "Duets for the Summer Solstice," performance of poems with musician Danny Whelchel, Artists’ Alliance, Lafayette. "Edge of the Battle," poem with musical composition and arrangement by Robert Previte, Deep South Writers Conference, Lafayette LA.

Scholarly Publications
Guest Editor of College Literature 24.3, Special issue on Diversity and American Poetries, with introduction, "Diversity, Factionalism, Audience." Order and Partialities: Theory, Pedagogy, and the "Postcolonial," ed. with Kostas Myrsiades, SUNY Press. "Entitlement and Empowerment: Claims on Canonicity in American Poetry," in Margins in the Classroom: Teaching Literature, ed. Kostas Myrsiades, University Press of Minnesota. "Wagging the Dog." Introduction to College Literature 21.3, special issue on The Politics of Teaching Literature. "The Door to Oz: Psychoanalysis, Myth, and History," in Studies in Psychoanalytic Theory. "Circles of Light and the Complexities of Darkness," in Yearbook of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts.

ON TEACHING AND/OR WRITING

On Creative Writing and Creative Thinking

My scholarly writing takes a broadly interdisciplinary cultural-studies approach to critical questions pertinent to literature and the history of ideas, paying special attention to relations between psychological perspectives and socio-cultural ones. My poetry (and drama and fiction, which I write less often) treat many of the same kinds of questions, framing them according to as wide a range of styles, tones, and colors as I can gain access to, and as I find useful to the imaginative extension of those questions. Creative thought isn’t infinite, I think, but it is wide enough that none of us can ever reach its boundaries. In my work as teacher (as in my own writing) I press for a generous and enthusiastic engagement with the process of opening new possibilities in and through the creative process, which includes "creative writing," to be sure, but also the other arts, literary history and theory. That is, I would want what I do that is characterized as “creative” to connect ultimately with the broadest applications of my and my students’ human aspiration. To emphasize the "creative," it seems to me, is to embrace the responsibility for opening oneself to the new—whether this emerges in individual psyches or in social and cultural process.

Read a Sample of Jerry McGuire’s Poetry

Go to UL-Lafayette Creative Writing Anthology

Creative Writing home Page

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© 2001, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
This site designed and maintained by The Creative Writing Concentration of the English Department of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
To contact us by mail: Director of Creative Writing, English Department, Box 44691, UL-Lafayette, Lafayette LA 70504-4691; by telephone, 337-482-5478;
by email, jlm8047@louisiana.edu.
Last updated: March 6, 2006.