Olstein, Lisa 1972-

views updated

Olstein, Lisa 1972-

PERSONAL:

Born 1972.

ADDRESSES:

Home—MA. Office—Department of English, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 170 Bartlett Hall, Amherst, MA 01003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Massachusetts at Amherst, associate director of M.F.A. program; cofounder, Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pushcart Prize; Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship; Hayden Carruth Award, Copper Canyon Press, 2005, for Radio Crackling, Radio Gone.

WRITINGS:

Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (poems), Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2006.

Contributor of poetry to periodicals, including the Iowa Review, American Letters & Commentary, and the Denver Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lisa Olstein is a poet and educator. Her first volume of poetry, Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, won the 2005 Hayden Carruth Award from Copper Canyon Press. The poems here combine both modern and postmodern techniques. Library Journal critic Susan Rich commented: "This poet brings a sparkling consciousness to the page and an exciting new voice to American poetry." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly observed a certain fuzziness in subject, but noted that the strict physical structure of each poem keeps that tendency in check. The reviewer concluded that Olstein "is at her best—and certainly most distinctive—punctuating the book's cultivated vagueness with a blast of vivid, arresting detail." Cate Marvin, writing in Ploughshares, noted the vast contrasts between peaceful imagery and that which screams, as well as a certain dichotomy in the descriptive phrases. Marvin reported that the volume "weaves its reader into a sensual and fibrous dreamscape."