Morgan, Elizabeth Seydel 1939-

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MORGAN, Elizabeth Seydel 1939-

PERSONAL: Born 1939, in Atlanta, GA. Education: Hollis College, B.A., 1960; Virginia Commonwealth University, M.F.A., 1986.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Louisiana State University Press, P.O. Box 25053, Baton Rouge, LA 70894-5053.

CAREER: Poet and writer. Founder of creative writing program at St. Catherine's School, Richmond, VA.

AWARDS, HONORS: Virginia Film Festival's Governor's Screenwriting Competition Award winner, 1993, for Queen Esther; National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship; Emily Clark Balch Award, Virginia Quarterly Review, for fiction; Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, Hollins College.

WRITINGS:

Parties (poems), Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1988.

The Governor of Desire (poems), Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1993.

Queen Esther (screenplay), 1993.

On Long Mountain: Poems (poems), Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, LA), 1998.

Contributor of fiction to anthologies and collections, including New Stories from the South: The Year's Best 2004, edited by Shannon Ravenel, Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, NC), 2004; Downhome, edited by Susie Mee, Harcourt Brace (Orlando, FL), 1995; and New Stories from the South: 1993, edited by Shannon Ravenel, Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, NC), 1993.

Contributor of poetry to anthologies and collections, including Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins, Random House (New York, NY), 2003; Poetry Daily, edited by Diane Boller, and others, Sourcebooks (Naperville,
IL), 2003; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia, edited by R. T. Smith, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 2003; Buck and Wing: Southern Poetry at 2000, edited by R. T. Smith, Shenandoah, 2000; The Yellowshoe Poets, edited by George Garrett, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1999; and Claiming the Spirit Within, edited by Marilyn Sewell, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1996.

Also author of limited-edition poetry collection Language, illustrations by Laura Pharis; translator, with Christopher Pelling, of "Electra" in Euripides 2, edited by David R. Slavitt and Palmer Bovie, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1997. Contributor of poems to periodicals, including Southern Review, Five Points, Shenandoah, New Virginia Review, Poetry, and Cortland Review, and to Library of Congress's Poetry Web site, Poetry180.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Without a Philosophy (poems), for Louisiana State University Press.

SIDELIGHTS: Poet Elizabeth Seydel Morgan's verses are inclusive, encouraging the reader to share a moment captured on paper, yet they also illustrate how isolated people can be. Her second collection, The Governor of Desire, is titled after Shakespeare's one-hundred-thirteenth sonnet, from which two lines are used as an epigraph for the book: "And that which governs me to go about / Doth part his function and is partly blind." The volume is uneven, according to some reviewers, who also felt that some fine poems can be found here, especially those that address family and relationships. Morgan examines the commonplace, highlighting minute details to enhance her imagery. A contributor to the Virginia Quarterly Review noted that the strongest works included in the book "display an emotional honesty, an overriding sense of desire, and a playful tone that keeps one off-balance." In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer expressed disappointment that the focus of the book seems to be a weak sequence of poems, but added that "Morgan's voices explicitly evoke sound and smell. They . . . explore the ways nature resembles humanity."

With On Long Mountain Morgan demonstrates the breadth of her talent, according to several critics. David Yezzi, reviewing the book for Poetry, called the poems in this volume "modest," going on to remark that "such modesty's a virtue. With levity and formal aplomb, Morgan deftly records the reflections of, as she puts it, a 'city girl' in deep Appalachia." Poems of rural life are matched by a section reflecting Morgan's more cosmopolitan side, and then complemented by works that focus on family. Yezzi concluded that "Morgan's means are consistently up to her subjects, and her eye—always with its companionable glint—rarely misses the mark: the poems are well turned and tuneful."