Presentation Title
Great River Reading Series: Melissa Range
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Location
Winona, Minnesota
Start Date
4-12-2022 7:00 PM
End Date
4-12-2022 8:00 PM
Presentation Type
Video
Description
On April 12, 2022 poet Melissa Range read from her work at Winona State University as part of WSU’s John S. Lucas Great River Reading Series.
Melissa Range was born and raised in East Tennessee. She received a BA from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville in 1995, an MFA from Old Dominion University in 1998, and an MTS from Emory University in 2005. She is the author of Scriptorium (Beacon Press, 2016), selected for the National Poetry Series by Tracy K. Smith, and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010). Of Scriptorium, poet Tracy K. Smith writes:
What may likely strike you on the first read is Range’s remarkable facility with form. She moves nimbly, naturally, with comfort and acrobatic delight through the rigors of sonnets, villanelles, anagrams, cento and the like. She submits joyfully to the whims of rhyme, allowing music to exert its will upon her train of mind, and she does so with such virtuosic ease that you may not even detect it on a first read. But what you will feel more than any of this, I am certain, is an urgent usefulness. These are poems for which form is not an end in itself.
Range has received awards and fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, among others. She currently teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Wisconsin.
Recommended Citation
Range, Melissa, "Great River Reading Series: Melissa Range" (2022). Great River Reading Series. 5.
https://openriver.winona.edu/greatriverreadingseries/ay2022/Schedule/5
Closed Captions for Melissa Range Reading
Unique Identifier
WSUENGGRRS_2022_Range_Melissa
Great River Reading Series: Melissa Range
Winona, Minnesota
On April 12, 2022 poet Melissa Range read from her work at Winona State University as part of WSU’s John S. Lucas Great River Reading Series.
Melissa Range was born and raised in East Tennessee. She received a BA from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville in 1995, an MFA from Old Dominion University in 1998, and an MTS from Emory University in 2005. She is the author of Scriptorium (Beacon Press, 2016), selected for the National Poetry Series by Tracy K. Smith, and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010). Of Scriptorium, poet Tracy K. Smith writes:
What may likely strike you on the first read is Range’s remarkable facility with form. She moves nimbly, naturally, with comfort and acrobatic delight through the rigors of sonnets, villanelles, anagrams, cento and the like. She submits joyfully to the whims of rhyme, allowing music to exert its will upon her train of mind, and she does so with such virtuosic ease that you may not even detect it on a first read. But what you will feel more than any of this, I am certain, is an urgent usefulness. These are poems for which form is not an end in itself.
Range has received awards and fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, among others. She currently teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Wisconsin.
