PAPE, Greg(ory Laurence)

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Nationality: American. Born: Eureka, California, 17 January 1947. Education: Fresno State College, B.A. in English 1970; California State University, Fresno, M.A. in English 1972; University of Arizona, M.F.A. in creative writing 1974. Family: Married Marnie Prange in 1988; two sons. Career: Instructor, California State University, Fresno, 1970–72; teaching assistant, 1972–73, instructor, New Start program for minority students, 1973, and teaching associate, 1973–74, University of Arizona; instructor, Pima Community College, Tucson, Arizona, fall 1976; worked in Writers-in-Residence and Writers-in-Schools programs, Arizona Commission on the Arts and Humanities, 1977–79; assistant professor, Hollins College, Virginia, 1979–80; visiting assistant professor, University of Missouri, Columbia, fall 1980, 1981–82; visiting writer, spring 1981, and writer-in-residence, spring 1983, University of Alabama; Bingham Poet-in-Residence, University of Louisville, 1983–84; visiting assistant professor, Northern Arizona University, 1984–85; associate professor, Florida International University, 1985–87. Associate professor, 1987–93, and since 1994 professor, University of Montana, Missoula. Coal Royalty Endowed Chair in Creative Writing, University of Alabama, fall 1993. Awards: Discovery award for poetry, 1973; writing fellowship, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1974–76; Charles Philbrick fellowship in writing, 1976; Robert Frost fellowship in poetry, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, 1978; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1978, 1984; Pushcart prize, 1988–89; Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry award, Cutbank, 1990–91; Edwin Ford Piper Poetry award, University of Iowa Press, 1991. Address: English Department, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Little America. Tucson, Arizona, The Maguey Press, 1976.

Border Crossings. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978.

Black Branches. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984.

The Morning Horse. Lewiston, Idaho, Confluence Press, 1991.

Storm Pattern. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.

Sunflower Facing the Sun. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 1992.

Small Pleasures. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Lagniappe Press, 1994.

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Critical Study: "Easy Listening" by Henry Taylor, in Poetry, CLXII(1), April 1993.

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Greg Pape's early collections Border Crossings (1978) and Black Branches (1984) introduced an honest, unpretentious poet with a deep affinity for wide-open spaces. His landscapes are the dry, ancient towns of the American Southwest and the long roads between them. With extraordinary sensitivity to physical details and sensations and to the sounds of Hispanic place-names, he makes the ordinary seem moving and strange, the simple observation seem heavy with import. In his later work he has developed a delicate sensitivity to the brief but intense moments of connection that occur between people, whether they are lovers, close friends, or strangers and wherever their encounters take place, from the desert to the supermarket. He appeared at first to be working with a somewhat limited array of technical resources, producing primarily a free verse whose lines tended to break where a natural pause would occur. Although this is an honorable and widely used free verse technique, many poets who use it find out only by experience that it is as easy to develop predictable rhythms in free verse as it is in meter.

Subsequent books such as Storm Pattern and Sunflower Facing the Sun are excellent collections in which any apprehensions about Pape's ability to grow into a deeper command of technique are quite firmly put to rest. He remains loyal to free verse, but his range of effects is much wider than in his earlier books. Objects, people, and episodes repay his close attention and help the poems toward tighter connections or clearer visions of particular ideas. The poems often move in ways that are at first surprising and then deeply satisfying.

"In Line at the Supermarket," for example, draws us into its situation by way of our reactions to certain stereotypes. The couple in front of the speaker at the checkout have spiked hair and threatening tattoos, but their conversation is as ordinary as anyone's:

"We don't need a ham this big," he says,
as he holds it under her nose.
"Yes we do" and she places her fingertips
on the ham and pushes it back down,
lightly, to the stalled conveyor.

"In Line at the Supermarket" is a strong reminder that we are all in this together, that the human enterprise is at the same time strong and fragile.

"Blessing at the Citadel," a superb poem at the end of Sunflower Facing the Sun, is set in the remote ancient home of the Hopi. Three human silhouettes loom on a rock, as if they might be gods, but one approaches the speaker and blesses him:

Go pray, he said. What for? I asked.
Pray for now, this place, all your relations.
Pray for the hostages.
Then he walked off down the trail
to join the others, not gods
but poor, living men from Moenkopi
here at the home of their ancestors
to pray for the world and bless a stranger.

Looking at lines like these, it is almost impossible to know how rarely such simple yet momentous effects are achieved. Pape's maturing craftsmanship and his deepening humanity have led him to poems of engaging wisdom, strength, and timelessness.

—Henry Taylor