Denise Duhamel
Associate Prof.
Phone: 919-4812 Office: AC-I 358 E-mail: Sedna61@aol.com
CV 
Syllabi
Denise Duhamel's most recent poetry titles are
Two and Two (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005),
Mille et un sentiments (Firewheel Editions, 2005) and Queen
for a Day: Selected and New Poems
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). Her other titles include The
Star-Spangled Banner
(winner of Crab Orchard Award in Poetry, Southern Illinois University
Press, 1999) and
Kinky (a book of poems devoted to Barbie dolls, Orchises Press,
1997).
Duhamel has read her work on NPR and, in the fall of
1999, was a featured
poet on the PBS special
Bill Moyers "Fooling with Words"
[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords/main_duhamel.html]
She is part of
the Academy of American Poets "Exhibit of Poets"
[http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=34]
and the subject of The First
Unofficial Denise Duhamel Website
[http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/3911/].
An interview with her also
appears on the Better Words website.
[http://www.4betteror4words.com/duhamel.htm]
Duhamel has also collaborated extensively with the poet
Maureen
Seaton--in Oyl (a collaborative
chapbook about Popeye's main squeeze,
Pearl
Editions, 2000) and
Exquisite Politics (Tia Chucha Press, 1997).
You can
read about this duo's undertakings in
Painted Bride Quarterly
[http://www.webdelsol.com/pbq/issues/63/mcdonald.html]
Duhamel's poems pirouette on a tightrope above the personal
and the
political, the spoken word
and the page, the irreverent and the sacred.
Her
poetry is at home in such diverse anthologies as
The Unbearables;
Aloud:Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café; and The Best American
Poetry. (She
has been included in four issues of the latter--1993, 1994, 1998, and 2000).
Booklist said of Duhamel's poems in The Star-Spangled Banner:
"So
overwhelming is her relish
for life that embarrassment, or titillation when
the subject is sexual, just doesn't stand a chance.
Life-affirming without
being treacly, Duhamel is a character who assures us the world is full of
character."-
Elsewhere, Duhamel has been cited as "politically
upfront...with a sense
of constant, incipient irony"
(American Book Review),
"wonderfully
unpredictable" (Indiana Review), "preserving chaos from
the
chaos of memory"
(Chelsea), and "establishing the ordinary home as the site of myth."
(American
Letters and Commentary). William D. Waltz, in Rain Taxi, writes "As
I read her work...I feel like I'm
taking a sneak peek at the future: Duhamel
hints at a poetry that transcends irony and alienation. There's plenty of
both here, but she's busy working them over...pushing so hard that the next
step may be beyond what is known."
Teaching
Denise Duhamel teaches CRW 2001 (Introduction
to Creative Writing), CRW 3310 (Poetic Techniques),
CRW 4310 (Poetry
Workshop), CRW 5310 (Graduate Poetry Workshop) and upper division
literature courses
LIT 4930 and LIT 5934 (with topics such
as the New York School of Poetry and Collaboration and Collage).
Duhamel writes, "I began to write books when I
was about eight years old. I clearly remember taping them together and
writing '59 cents' in a circle in the upper right hand corner of the
cover. (I designed my picture books and novels to look like Golden Books.)
I'd take my one-of-a-kind creations to Big Joe's supermarket and, when my
mother wasn't looking, carefully place them in the magazine racks near McCall's
or Women's Day. When we returned the next week to shop, my
books were always gone, which gave me a false sense of security, which
actually lulled me into believing I was being read....I started out
writing fiction, since what I read as a child was mostly fiction. I began
to read poetry in high school, but I assumed all poets were dead because
we only read poets. I assumed that no one wrote poetry anymore. It wasn't
until college that I began to read contemporary poetry, and it was at that
time I switched from writing primarily fiction to writing primarily
poetry.
"My teaching philosophy is this--in order to
write contemporary poetry and fiction, you must read contemporary poetry
and fiction. Budding filmmakers and visual artists are usually quick to
name their influences, and I believe writers should be able to do the
same. I also stress that my classes take advantage of the Writers on
the Bay, the reading series here at FIU."