A. E. Stallings | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1968-07-02)July 2, 1968 (age 56) Decatur, Georgia, U.S. |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Education | University of Georgia (AB) Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (MSt) |
| Literary movement | New Formalism |
Alicia Elsbeth Stallings (born July 2, 1968)[1] is an American poet, translator, and essayist.
Stallings has published five books of original verse:Archaic Smile (1999),Hapax (2006),Olives (2012),Like (2018), andThis Afterlife (2022). She has published verse translations ofLucretius'sDe Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) andHesiod'sWorks and Days, both withPenguin Classics, and a translation ofBatrachomyomachia (The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice).
She has been awarded theWillis Barnstone Translation Prize, aGuggenheim Fellowship,[2] aMacArthur Foundation Fellowship[3] and has been a finalist for thePulitzer Prize for Poetry[4] and theNational Book Critics Circle Award.[5] Stallings is a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences.[6] On June 16, 2023, she was named theUniversity of Oxford's 47thProfessor of Poetry.[7][8]
Stallings was born and raised inDecatur, Georgia[1] and studiedclassics at theUniversity of Georgia (A.B., 1990) andLady Margaret Hall, Oxford (MSt in Latin Literature, 1991). She is an editor with theAtlanta Review. In 1999, Stallings moved to Athens, Greece. She is the Poetry Program Director of the Athens Centre[9] and teaches regularly at theSewanee Summer Writers' Workshop and theWest Chester University Poetry Conference.[10] She is married to the journalist John Psaropoulos.
Stallings's poems have been published inThe New Yorker,The Atlantic,The New York Review of Books,The Times Literary Supplement,[11]The Sewanee Review,Beloit Poetry Journal,The Dark Horse,The New Criterion,Poetry,[12] andPoetry Review. She also contributes essays and reviews to theAmerican Scholar,The Hudson Review,[13] theLondon Review of Books,[14]Parnassus, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Review, the TLS, theWall Street Journal, and theYale Review. Stallings work is widely anthologized, and has been included in theBest American Poetry in 1994, 2000, and 2015, and in the Best of the Best American Poetry (edited byRobert Pinsky). Stallings's poetry uses traditional form and has been associated withNew Formalism.[15]
Her first book-length collection of poetry,Archaic Smile, was published in 1999 byNorthwestern University Press and in 2022 byFarrar, Straus, & Giroux; it won the 1999Richard Wilbur Award.[16] In 2006, she published her second book-length collection of poetry, Hapax, also with Northwestern; it was awarded the 2008Poets' Prize, awarded annually to the best book of verse published by an American during the preceding year, and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters' Benjamin H. Danks Award.[17] Her third book-length collection, Olives, was published in 2012 with Northwestern; it was a finalist for that year'sNational Book Critics Circle Award. She published her fourth book-length collection,Like, in 2018, with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. It was a finalist for that year'sPulitzer Prize in Poetry. In 2022, Stallings published a selection of published poems,This Afterlife, also with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in the United States andCarcanet in the United Kingdom.
Stallings is also a gifted translator, and has translated works written in Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, and Latin. In 2007, she published a translation ofLucretius'De Rerum Natura into rhymingfourteeners. The translation was introduced by distinguished classicistRichard Jenkyns and was published byPenguin; reviewing the book in the TLS, classicist and criticPeter Stothard called it "one of the most extraordinary classical translations of recent times."[18]
In 2017, Stallings published a verse translation ofHesiod'sWorks and Days, including an introductory essay and endnotes, also with Penguin. Classicist, critic, and poetPeter MacDonald characterized it as a "superb creation" and praised Stallings's "mastery of a characteristic voice" for Hesiod, while also noting the virtues of her "persuasively argued and brilliant Introduction".[19]
Stallings has also translated theBattle between the Frogs and the Mice, a parody of Homer widely regarded to be aHellenisticepyllion, into rhymingiambic pentameters; accompanied by illustrations from Grant Silverstein, it was published by Paul Dry in 2019.[20] In her review of the translation, poetAnge Mlinko wrote: "It shouldn’t be so rare for a poet to be serious and to sparkle at the same time, but Stallings is one of the few."[20]
In nominating Stallings for the position ofOxford Professor of Poetry in 2015, British literary critic and scholarSir Christopher Ricks wrote: "The poems of A. E. Stallings are never less than the true voice of feeling, and always more ... she is able to realize in her poems the myriad minds of Europe."[21] The MacArthur Fellowship committee praised her "mastery" of poetic form, declaring that: "[t]hrough her technical dexterity and graceful fusion of content and form, Stallings is revealing the timelessness of poetic expression and antiquity's relevance for today."[22]
PoetDana Gioia describedArchaic Smile as "a debut of genuine distinction...Stallings displays extraordinary powers of invention and delight."[16]Able Muse, a formalist online poetry journal, noted that, "For all of Stallings' formal virtuosity, few of her poems are strictly metrically regular. Indeed, one of the pleasant surprises ofArchaic Smile is the number of superb poems in the gray zone between free and blank verse."[23] Her work has been favorably compared to the poetry ofRichard Wilbur andEdna St. Vincent Millay.[24]
In a review of her collectionOlives,Publishers Weekly stated that they were most impressed with those poems that were not responses to ancient mythology, noting, "When she unleashes her technical gifts upon poems in which she builds a new narrative instead of building upon an old one, Stallings achieves a restrained, stark poise that is threatening even by New Formalism standards."[25]
ReviewingThis Afterlife for theNew York Times, poet and criticDavid Orr observed: "The main thing Stallings has going for her is that she’s good at writing poems. In particular, she’s good at writing the sort of poetry that evokes the word 'good,' rather than, for instance, 'brave' or 'disorienting.'"[26] In its review ofThis Afterlife,The New Yorker wrote: "Stallings’s formal ingenuity lends a music to her philosophically and narratively compelling verse. She draws inspiration from daily domestic life and from the mythology and history of Greece...crafting clever yet profound meditations on love, motherhood, language, and time."[27]
Stallings has received extensive recognition for her original poetry. Her debut poetry collection,Archaic Smile, was awarded the 1999Richard Wilbur Award and was a finalist for both theYale Younger Poets Series and theWalt Whitman Award. Her poems have appeared inThe Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994, 2000, 2015, 2016, and 2017. She has been awarded aPushcart Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, the 2004Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the James Dickey Prize.
Her second collection,Hapax (2006), was awarded the 2008Poets' Prize.[28] In 2012, her third collection,Olives, was a finalist for theNational Book Critics Circle Award.[5] Her fourth collection,Like, was a finalist for the 2019Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.[4] In April 2023, a volume of her selected works,This Afterlife, was shortlisted for the 2023 Runciman Award.[29]
Stallings has also won acclaim for her translations. In 2010, she was awarded theWillis Barnstone Translation Prize. Her translation of Hesiod'sWorks and Days was shortlisted for the 2019Runciman Award.[30]
In 2011, she won aGuggenheim Fellowship,[2] received aMacArthur Foundation Fellowship[3] and was named a Fellow ofUnited States Artists.[31] Stallings is also a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences.[6]
In 2023, Stallings was elected as the 47th Oxford Professor of Poetry.[7][8]
On February 4, 2025, Stallings was awarded a Lord Byron Philhellenism Medal by the Society for Hellenism and Philhellenism in recognition of her promotion of Hellenistic studies and Greek culture.[32]
| External audio | |
|---|---|
 Conversation: A.E. Stallings, Poet and Translator Inspired by the Classics,PBS Newshour, Jeffrey Brown, September 30, 2011 | |
| In Greece, Getting By On The Brink Of A Financial Meltdown,For the Record, Rachel Martin, April 5, 2015 |
