David Lee Garrison

                                                206 East Dixon Avenue

                                                Dayton, OH 45419-3544

                                                david.garrison@wright.edu

                                              

DEGREES:

Ph.D., Spanish, 1975                                                  Johns Hopkins University

M.A., Comparative Literature, 1978                          Indiana University

M.A., Spanish, 1972                                                   Catholic University of America

B.A., Romance Languages (honors), 1968                 Wesleyan University

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

Wright State University                      Emeritus Professor as of 2010

                                                            Department Chair, 1999-2007

Professor, 1993-1999 

Associate Professor, 1982-1993

                                                           

Assistant Professor, 1979‑82

University of Kansas                          Visiting Assistant Professor, 1978‑79

Washington College                            Visiting Assistant Professor, 1977

Indiana University                              Visiting Assistant Professor, 1975‑76

Johns Hopkins University                   Graduate Assistant, 1971‑74

Landon School                                    Spanish Teacher, 1968‑71

Phillips Andover Academy                Summer Teaching Intern in Spanish, 1967

TEACHING SPECIALTIES:        

Spanish Language and Literature, Comparative Literature and Translation, Portuguese, Foreign Language Pedagogy, Poetry

HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS:

Finalist, True Concord Poetry Prize

Ohio Poet of the Year, 2014

Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry Prize, 2009

Wright State University Presidential Award for Outstanding Faculty Member, 1998

Wright State University Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1994

Wright State University Presidential Award for Special Contributions, 1988, for composing the lyrics to the University’s Alma Mater

LANGUAGES:

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese

Reading and basic speaking skills in German

Reading knowledge of French

PUBLICATIONS:

            Books:

David Lee Garrison, Light in the River (Loveland, OH: Dos Madres Press, 2020). 

“In accessible poems that are much like stories, David Lee Garrison finds ambiguity and mystery beneath the surface of everyday experience.  He rewrites the Biblical creation myth, positing Dog before Man; he imagines John Keats as a baseball player; he watches children play Hide and Seek and rejoice in finding and being found; he ponders the epitaphs in an old graveyard; and, he remembers a singer who came in one measure too early on the Hallelujah Chorus. The poet envisions life as a meandering journey through a summer afternoon by the river–humid and intense, with revelation everywhere, like leaves and shadows on the water.” 

David Lee Garrison, Carpeing the Diem: Poems about High School (Loveland, OH: Dos Madres Press, 2017).  Richard Hague: “David Lee Garrison executes, with cavalier ease and elegance, two dozen poems about high school.  Though their situations and characters are familiar (high school is one of the most conventional and predictable of American institutions), the poems are always fresh, and the poet’s deployment of form and rhyme, as well as his take on urban legend, are a delight, ‘Terre Haute’ and ‘Hook Man’ being especially delicious.”

David Lee Garrison, Playing Bach in the DC Metro (San Francisco: Browser Books, 2012).  Jonathan Holden, author of The Rhetoric of the Contemporary Lyric: “The imagistic poems of David Lee Garrison display a sharp eye, an admirable capacity to praise this world, and, best of all, startling and intelligent flourishes of real humor.”  The title poem of this book was featured by Poet Laureate Ted Kooser on his website, “American Life in Poetry,” and read by “Game of Thrones” star Tara Fitzgerald on the BBC in London.

David Lee Garrison, Sweeping the Cemetery (San Francisco: Browser Books, 2007).  Jared Carter, winner of the Yale Younger Poet’s Prize, the Walt Whitman Award, and the Poet’s Prize: “There is much to admire in this volume of new and selected poems.  They have the warmth, the wealth of detail, and the essential humanity of someone who has surely lived an authentic life in this world.”   

David Lee Garrison and Terry Hermsen, editors.  O Taste and See: Food Poems (Huron, OH: Bottom Dog Press, 2003).  Winner of the American Poetry Anthology Award for 2004.  From Mac’s Backs bookstore review: “Bottom Dog Press has just published a fabulous poetry anthology titled Taste and See: Food Poems.  This volume has been expertly edited by David Lee Garrison and Terry Hermsen and is beautifully designed.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many fine poems by so many fine poets under one roof.  Locals Gail Bellamy, David Hassler, Maggie Anderson, Grace Butcher, Frank Polite, Susan Grimm and Bonnie Jacobson are at the same table with Pablo Neruda, Carolyn Forché, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Jimmy Santiago Baca and many, many others.”

David Lee Garrison, Inside the Sound of Rain (Riverside, OH: Vincent Brothers, 1997).  Colette Inez: “In compact, deftly-written poems David Lee Garrison manages a variety of voices: humorous, down home, wildly surreal and compassionate.  The family poems, in particular, show a gift for creating character and mood, and they linger in memory.”

David Lee Garrison, editor and translator.  Pedro Salinas, Certain Chance (Lewisburg, PA:  Bucknell University Press, 2000).  A translation of Seguro azar by the Spanish poet Pedro Salinas (1891-1951).  Prologue by the poet (translated from an earlier book), reminiscence by Willis Barnstone, introduction by David Lee Garrison, art by David Leach.  From the review by Christopher Maurer in Revista de estudios hispánicos: “Other poets…have translated parts of Salinas’s poetry, but none, perhaps has been as successful as Garrison.  Gracefully, sometimes bravely, he recasts syntax, redistributes lines and stanzas, and keeps Salinas flowing smoothly, with the right touch of colloquialism.”  From the review by Federico Bonaddio in MLR: “This is a volume to be commended, particularly for the way in which Garrison’s translations struggle with Salinas and not against him.”

David Garrison, Góngora and the “Pyramus and Thisbe” Myth from Ovid to Shakespeare.  (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1994).  A comparative study of a myth from The Metamorphoses, various versions of it within European tradition, and Góngora’s parodic Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe; 230 pages.  From the Hispania review: “David Garrison has written a wonderfully readable book which conveys the beauty, wit, and complexity of Góngora’s treatments of the ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ myth, acknowledges fundamental elements of deconstruction within the narrative perspective, and yet is free of jargon and linguistic ambiguities in its explanations.” 

David Garrison, ed. and trans., Poems of José Bergamín (1895‑1983):  Echoes of a Distant Sea (Lewiston, NY:  Edwin Mellen Press, 1991).  An anthology of Bergamín translations; introduction by David Garrison; memoir of the poet by Willis Barnstone; 115 pages.  From the review in Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos: “Professor Garrison has singlehandedly assumed the daunting responsibility of making Bergamín’s poetry known to an English-speaking public and he has done a fine job.  In this volume he has collected the various translations he published in literary periodicals in the 80’s and has added many new ones, providing an illuminating overview of the different moods and recurring emphases that characterize Bergamín the poet. …The result is verse that deftly maintains the limpid, understated, hushed, conversational fluidity of the originals.”

Willis Barnstone and David Garrison, trans., A Bird of Paper: Poems of Vicente Aleixandre (Athens, Ohio:  Ohio UP, 1982).  An anthology of translations of the 1977 Nobel Laureate; preface by the poet; introduction by the translators; 75 pages.  From the review in Library Journal: “The translators present a sampling of Aleixandre’s richness, demonstrating the range and depth of his themes….  Highly recommended for poetry collections.”

Articles on Spanish Literature of the 16th and 17th Centuries:

“Los sonetos ‘descaminados’ de Guillén y Góngora,” Confluencia 26.2 (2011), 128-134.

“Lope de Vega’s Transformation of the Palinode Tradition in Rimas sacras: Sonnets I, VII, and XV” Calíope 2.2 (1996): 30-50.

“‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ in Ovid and Góngora,” Classical and Modern Literature 11.4 (1991): 355‑365.

“Góngora’s Parody of Ovide Moralisé in his Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe,” Studies in Honor of Elias Rivers, ed. Bruno M. Damiani and Ruth El Saffar.  Potomac, Maryland:  Scripta Humanística, (1989): 105‑114.

“The Self‑Conscious Intention of Góngora’s Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 7.3 (1983): 191‑200.

“The Significance of the Ballad ‘La Constancia’ in Don Quixote,” Crítica Hispánica 3.2 (1981): 26‑33.

“Ballad as Code in Don Quixote,” Neophilologus 64 (1980): 384‑389.

“The Linguistic Mixture of Góngora’s Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe,” Romance Notes 20.1 (1979): 108‑113.

Articles on Spanish Literature of the 20th Century: 

“Rhetorical Structure and Poetic Vision: The Frame and Title Poems of Seguro azar by Pedro Salinas,” Hispanófila 151 (2007).

“José Bergamín y la poesía del Siglo de Oro.”  In En torno a la poesía de José Bergamín, ed. Nigel Dennis.  Lleida, Spain:  Universitat de Lleida, 1995.  31-44.   Republished in Homenaje a José Bergamín, ed. Gonzalo Penalva Candela.  Madrid, Spain: Consejería de Educación y Cultura de la Comunidad de Madrid.

“José Bergamín; ‘A Shadow in Your Shadow,’” The Literary Review 32.2 (1989): 163‑165.

“Tradition and the Individual Talent of José Bergamín: Esperando la mano de nieve,” Hispania 71.4 (1988): 793‑797.

“Rhetorical Strategy in the Surrealist Poetry of Vicente Aleixandre,” Denver Quarterly 15.3 (1980): 21‑26.  Republished in Poetry Criticism, Vol. 15 (Detroit:  Gale, 1997), pp. 24-27.

“An Introduction to the Poetry of Vicente Aleixandre,” Modern Poetry in Translation 34 (1978): 1‑3.

            Article on Comparative Literature and Translation:

“Translations and Poems in Honor of Elias L. Rivers” Confluencia 30.3 (2015): 167-177.

“Ovid’s Metamorphoses in E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime” Classical and Modern Literature 17.2 (1997):  103-115.

“English Translations of Lope de Vega’s ‘Soneto de repente,’” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 19.2 (1995):  311-325.

“Translating Antonio Machado: Four Versions of ‘En el entierro de un amigo,’” Translation Review 30/31 (1989): 15‑20.

            Articles on Foreign Language Pedagogy:

“Inductive Strategies for Teaching Spanish‑English Cognates,” Hispania, 73.2 (1990):  508‑512.

“Formal Introductions in the Foreign Language Class,” Foreign Language Annals 18.2 (1985):  133‑135.

“Teaching the Relatedness of Spanish and Portuguese,” Modern Language Journal 63.1‑2 (1979):  8‑12.

POEMS

            In Journals (selection):

Bellowing Ark, Chiron Review, The Classical Outlook, Comstock Review, Connecticut Review, Denver Quarterly, Everyday Poems, Gulf Coast Review, Innisfree, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Laurel Review, Pegasus, Poem, Rattle, Shot Glass Journal, Slippery Elm, Tipton Poetry Journal.

            In Anthologies (selection):

American Poetry Anthology, Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio, Family Matters: Poems of our Families, I Have My Own Song for It: Poems of Ohio, O Taste and See: Food Poems.

            On the Radio:

Garrison Keillor read two poems from Sweeping the Cemetery on his syndicated program, The Writer’s Almanac.  “Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro” was featured on two different programs on the BBC in London.  WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio, has aired several poems.

            Poetry Column:

United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser featured “Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro” in his syndicated weekly newspaper/on-line column, American Life in Poetry. 

COMMUNITY SERVICE TRANSLATION WORK

Translation for local businesses:  translated documents and interpreted for many Dayton businesses, including:  Ali Industries; Bank One; Centrix; Columbia Great Lakes Corporation; Coolidge, Wall, Womsley and Lombard; Dayco and Day International; Delco‑Moraine; Djinni Industries; First National Bank; Informed; Inland; Lightech; Mazer Corporation; Miami Valley Hospital; Miami Valley Worldwide; NCR; Penny, Ohlmann, Neimann, Inc.; Ponderosa; Sycamore Hospital; Systematic Business Forms; TechPak; Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

Legal interpreting:  served as an interpreter in the following courts:  U.S. District Court; Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas; Greene County Court of Common Pleas; Fairborn Municipal Court.  Interpreted for various federal agencies including the FBI, U. S. Attorney, Pre-Trial Services, and Montgomery County Probation Department.