Biography

Benjamin Myers is the 2015-2016 Poet Laureate of the State of Oklahoma and the author of two books of poetry: Lapse Americana (New York Quarterly Books, 2013) and Elegy for Trains (Village Books Press, 2010). His poems may be read in The Yale Review, The New York Quarterly, 32 Poems, The Christian Century, Nimrod, Measure and other journals, as well as in general readership publications like Oklahoma Today and In Touch. He has been honored with an Oklahoma Book Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book and with a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He reviews poetry and books on poetics for several publications, including World Literature Today and Books and Culture.

Education

• B.A., University of the Ozarks
• M.A., Washington University in St. Louis
• Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis

Courses Taught

• Advanced Poetry Workshop
• Intermediate Poetry Workshop
• Introductory Poetry Workshop
• Contemporary Literature
• Early English Literature
• Western Civ. I & II
• Comp I & II

Publications and Presentations

Books

• Lapse Americana (New York Quarterly Books, 2013)
• Elegy for Trains (Village Books Press, 2010)

Poems in Selected Journals

• Nimrod, The Iron Horse Literary Review, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, The New York Quarterly, Measure, Christianity and Literature, Ruminate, The Pedestal Magazine, The New Plains Review, The Chiron Review, Westview.

Poems in Anthologies

• Ain’t Nobody that Can Sing Like Me: New Oklahoma Writing. Mongrel Empire Press, 2010. Travelin’ Music: A Poetic Tribute to Woody Guthrie. Village Books Press, 2010. America at War. McElderry, 2008.

Scholarly Articles

• “The Green and Golden World: Spenser’s Rewriting of the Munster Plantation” English Literary History (ELH) 76 (2009): 473-490.
• “Wordsworth’s Financial Sublime: Money and Meaning in Book VII of The Prelude” South Central Review 25.2 (2008): 80-90.
• “Pro-War and Prothalamion: Queen, Colony, and Somatic Metaphor Among Spenser’s ‘Knights of the Maidenhead,’” English Literary Renaissance 37 (2007): 215-249.
• “‘Such is the Face of Falsehood’: Spenserian Theodicy in Ireland,”Studies in Philology 103 (2006): 383-416.

Scholarly Notes

• “Malory’s Balin and Spenser’s Bourbon” Discoveries: The Newsletter of the South Central Renaissance Conference 27.1 (2010).
• “Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene 6.10.1-4” The Explicator 66 (2008): 237-240.
• “John Ashbery’s ‘Definition of Blue’ and ‘They Dream Only of America’” The Explicator 65.1 (2006): 47-50.