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Keith Tuma
Professor and Co-editor, Miami University Press
English

Keith Tuma

Contact Info

(513) 529-5820
304 Bachelor Hall

Introduction

Keith Tuma is a poet and scholar-critic of modernist and contemporary writing. He is also co-editor of Miami University Press.

Research Interests

  • Creative Writing (Poetry and Creative Nonfiction)
  • Modern and Contemporary British, Irish, and American Literature
  • Poetry and Poetics

Courses Taught

  • ENG 112
  • ENG 123
  • ENG 226
  • ENG 276
  • ENG 311
  • ENG 323
  • ENG 330
  • ENG 345
  • ENG 430
  • ENG 460
  • ENG 631
  • ENG 635

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Chicago (1987)
  • M.A., University of Chicago
  • B.A., University of Akron

Publications

Books 

  • Climbing into the Orchestra. The Mute Canary. 2017. Poetry.
  • On Leave: A Book of Anecdotes. Salt Publishing, 2011. Prose.
  • Editor. Rainbow Darkness:  An Anthology of Poems and Essays from the Diversity in African American Poetry Conference. With photographs by Lynda Koolish. Miami University Press,  2005. 
  • Critical Path:  Into the Bush.  Part 1: Report to the Council. With cris cheek and William R. Howe as Three Little Heretics.  Casus Belli, 2003. Poetry and prose.
  • Editor. With David Kennedy. Additional Apparitions: Poetry, Performance, and Site-Specificity. The Paper Press, 2002. 
  • Editor. Anthology of 20th Century British and Irish Poetry. Oxford UP, 2001.  
  • Fishing By Obstinate Isles:  Modern and Postmodern British Poetry and American Readers.  Northwestern UP, 1998.  
  • Editor. With Maeera Shreiber. Mina Loy:  Woman and Poet. National Poetry Foundation/ University Press of New England, 1998.  

Chapbooks

  • 32 Nights. Smithereens Press, 2016. Poetry.
  • http://smithereenspress.com/publications/sp16.html 
  • The Paris Hilton. Critical Documents, 2009; rpt. 2010. Poetry.
  • All Our Futile Grief. With photographs by Billy Simms. Juice Press, 2010. Travel Writing/Art Criticism.
  • Holiday in Tikrit. With Justin Katko. Critical Documents, 2005. Poetry.
  • Topical Ointment. Slack Buddha, 2004. Poetry. 

Essays and Book Chapters

  • “Christina Rossetti’s ‘Remember.’” Symposium on poetry and personal life. Forthcoming in Paideuma 46 (2023). 
  • “Ed Dorn’s Vulgate.” In Robert von Hallberg and Robert Faggen, eds., Evaluations of US Poetry Since 1950, Vol 2: Mind, Nation, and Power. University of New Mexico Press, 2021. 235-257. 
  • “AWP San Antonio Report” (on the 2020 AWP book fair and various poetry books). Dispatches from the Poetry Wars 2020. https://wayback.archive-it.org/12142/20201104201320/https://www.dispatchespoetrywars.com/commentary/awp-san-antonio-report/ 
  • Contribution to Symposium on the Social Value of Poetry and Poetry Scholarship, Paideuma 44 (2019), 125. 
  • "Portland" (on the 2019 AWP book fair and various poetry books). Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, 2019. https://wayback.archive-it.org/12142/20201105044559/https://www.dispatchespoetrywars.com/commentary/portland/
  • “Tampa.” Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, 2018. (On the 2018 AWP book fair.) https://www.dispatchespoetrywars.com/dispatches-news/tampa-by-keith-tuma/
  • “In Memoriam, Tom Raworth.” Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, 2017. https://wayback.archive-it.org/12142/20201105094834/https://www.dispatchespoetrywars.com/dispatches-news/tampa-by-keith-tuma/
  • "Basement Tapes: Chicago Review in the Early 1980s." Chicago Review 60.2 (2016): 201-04. 
  • “Mina Loy: Notes on Religion.” Edited and introduced. In A Sulfur Anthology. Wesleyan University Press, 2016. Revision of a text first published in 1990.
  • “Snifting and Snurting: The Impurity of Diction in Trevor Joyce’s What’s in Store.” In Niamh O’Mahony, ed., Essays on the Poetry of Trevor Joyce. Shearsman Books, 2015. 81-91. 
  • ‘Tom Raworth: Practice and Intervention.” In Fred Wah and Amy De’Ath, eds., Toward.Some.Air: Remarks on Poetics of Mad Affect, Militancy, Feminism, Demotic Rhythms, Emptying, Intervention, Reluctance, Indigeneity, Immediacy, Lyric Conceptualism, Commons, Pastoral Margins, Desire, Ambivalence, Disability, The Digital, and Other Practices (Banff Centre Press, 2015), 176-184.  
  • “More Wry than Spontaneous: On Trevor Joyce’s What’s in Store.” Journal of Innovative British and Irish Poetry 5.1 (2013), 53-66. 
  • “Burt Hatlen.” Sagetrieb 20 (2013) and Paideuma 40 (2013), 51-52. 
  • “The Recent Poems of Professor Matthias.” In Joe Doerr, ed., The Salt Companion to John Matthias. Salt Publishing, 2011. 118-127. 
  • “After the Bubble.” Chicago Review 56.1 (Spring 2011), 100-115.  [On Kent Johnson, Stephen Rodefer, American Hybrid, and the state of creative writing and literature programs.] 
  • “Thom Gunn and Anglo-American Modernism.” In Joshua Weiner, ed., At the Barriers: The Poetry of Thom Gunn. The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 85-103.  
  • “Some Younger British Poets.”  Chicago Review 53: 1 (Winter 2007), 213-220.
  • “After American Poetry.” Plantarchy 2 (Fall 2006), 75-87.
  • “On Tom Raworth on Tom Raworth.” Poetica 64 (2006), 87-103. 
  • “Modernism and anti-Modernism in British Poetry.”  With Nate Dorward. In Laura Marcus and Peter Nicholls, eds., The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature. Cambridge UP, 2004.  510-527.  
  • “Late Dorn.” Chicago Review 49:3-4 & 50:1(2004), 237-252. See also http://www.jstor.org/stable/25699990. 
  • “Til Mute Attention Struck My Ear.” Jacket 26: 2004. http://jacketmagazine.com/26/ra-tuma.html 
  • “Collaborating with ‘Dark Senses.’”  In Nate Dorward, ed., Removed for Further Study:  The Poetry of Tom Raworth.  The Gig, 2003. 207-216.
  • “The Poetics of the Eyelash: Marjorie Welish’s Logics and Annotations.” In Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté, eds., Of the Diagram:  The Work of Marjorie Welish.  Slought Foundation, 2003. 171-184.
  • “Slobbering Distance:  American, British, and Irish Poetries in a Global Era.”  In Romana Huk, ed., Assembling Alternatives: Essays in Transnational Reading.  Wesleyan UP, 2003.  142-156. 
  • “Cork Festival of International Poetry 2003.” BEPC Performance Archive. http://www.soton.ac.uk/~bepc/forum/cork_tuma.htm 
  • “Interlopers Aren’t Funny.”  Quid 10 (Summer 2002), 1-20. See also http://www.geocities.com/barque_press/quid.html. [On the editing/production/reception of the OUP anthology.]
  • “Beyond Found Poetry.”  In Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, eds., An Exaltation of Forms. University of Michigan Press, 2002.  352-359. 
  • “Poetry in the Wars.” Búllan 6.1 (2001), 146-156.  [On Irish modernist poetry and Edna Longley’s criticism].
  • “A Letter from Nowhere” Samizdat 8 (Fall 2001), 14-15. [On the Pound conference at the Sorbonne].
  • “Way Out in the Center:  John Matthias.” Boundary 2 28.2 (Summer 2001), 33-45.  
  • “Ed Dorn and England.” The Gig 6 (2000), 41-54.  
  • “A Moon for Sulfur.”  Sulfur 45/46 (Spring 2000), 245-248.
  • “Whatever Irish Poetry.” The Journal 2 (1999), 82-99. [On Irish poetry and national identity.] 
  • “Close Reading,” “Ghost Corner,” “Criteria.”  In Joel Kuszai, ed., poetics@.  New York:  Roof Books, 1999. 124-5, 150-1, 154-5, 157-8.
  • “Midnight at the Oasis: Performing Poetry Inside the Spectacle.”  Modernism/Modernity 6.1 (January 1999), 152-163.  Reprinted in Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 142.  Detroit: Gale Research Press.
  • “On reviewing the generations and several books by Anselm Hollo.”  Sulfur 42 (Spring 1998), 170-180.
  • “What Not to Make of Eric Mottram:  Questions and Remarks on British and American Poetry Now.”  Chicago Review 43.4 (Fall 1997), 121-136.  
  • “Stuttering Britain:  Notes on Andrew Duncan, cris cheek, and Sound & Language.”  Sulfur 41 (Fall 1997), 204-215.  
  • “Peter Riley’s Lyric Excavations.”  Chicago Review 43.3 (Summer 1997), 8-17.
  • “‘Chisselin Darkness/Writin in Light’:  Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s X/Self and Black British Poetry.”   River City:  A Journal of Contemporary Culture 16.3 (Winter 1997), 89-113.  
  • “Michael Palmer.”   In Joseph Conte, ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol.169, 1997. 215-224. 
  • “Who Needs Neo-Augustanism? On British Poetry.”  Contemporary Literature 36.4 (Winter 1995), 718-736.
  • “Bunting, Objectivism, and National Identity (Or, Why Nobody Knows Joseph Gordon Macleod),” Sulfur 34 (Spring 1994), 132-146.
  • “Is There a British Modernism?” In Ann Massa and Alistair Stead, eds., Forked Tongues?  Comparing Twentieth Century British and American Literature (Longman, 1993). 232-252.
  • “Basil Bunting’s Briggflatts and Melancholy,” Contemporary Literature 34.2 (Summer 1993), 266-292. 
  • “Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose.” Sagetrieb 11. 1-2 (Spring & Fall 1992), 207-225. 
  • “Pound, Eliot, Yeats, Auden, and Basil Bunting in the Thirties.” Sagetrieb 10. 1-2 (Spring & Fall 1991), 99-121. 
  • “Donald Davie and British Poetry.” Contemporary Literature 32: 2 (Summer 1991), 265-274.
  • “Turner Cassity.” In R. S. Gwynn, ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 105, 1991, 19-25.
  • “Ezra Pound, Progressive.” Paideuma 19. 1-2 (Spring & Fall, 1990), 77-92. 
  • “Psycho-Politics and the Conventions of Contemporary Poetry.” American Literary History 1. 4 (Winter 1989), 908-919.
  • “Contemporary American Poetry and the Pseudo Avant-Garde.” Chicago Review 36. 3-4 (Spring & Summer 1989), 43-50.
  • “Wyndham Lewis, Blast, and Popular Culture,” ELH 54. 1 (Spring 1987), 403-419. Refereed.  Rpt. in Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 104.  Gale Research.

Interviews and Miscellaneous Writing

  • Proxy Holidays. With photographs by Billy Simms. (2014-2020)
  • Liner Notes to Brain Harnetty’s musical release Rawhead & Bloodybones (Dust to Digital, 2015). http://www.brianharnetty.com/#/rawhead-bloodybones/. 
  • Exchange with Cole Swensen, Richard Owens, John Gallaher, and Kent Johnson in response to “After the Bubble” (see above). Chicago Review 56: 1 (Spring 2011), 213-226.
  • “Reply to Keston Sutherland.” Chicago Review 50:1 (Winter 2004/5), 371-76. [An exchange concerning the essay “Late Dorn.”]
  • “An Interview with Peter Riley.”  The Gig 4/5 (1999/2000), 7-27.
  • “Five Irish Poets.” Edited and introduced with William Walsh. Talisman 18 (Fall 1998), 93-135. 
  • “An Interview with Clayton Eshleman.” Contemporary Literature 37.2 (Summer 1996), 179-206.  Rpt. in Clayton Eshleman, Companion Spider (Wesleyan 2002).
  • “Interview with Robert Pinsky.” With Colin Brooke. Oxford Magazine 7. 2 (Fall & Winter 1991), 23-32.
  •  “Mina Loy:  Notes on Religion.” Edited and introduced.  Sulfur 27 (Fall 1990), 13-17. 
  • “An Interview with Michael Palmer,” Contemporary Literature 30. 1 (Spring 1989), 1-12.

Reviews

  • “Attention Span 2012,” Third Factory. http://www.thirdfactory.net/attentionspan.html
  • Short reviews of Ted Greenwald, Clearview / Lie; Jenny Sampirisi, Croak; Benjamin Friedlander, One Hundred Etudes; Norman Finkelstein, Inside the Ghost Factory; Ian Brinton, ed., An Andrew Crozier Reader; J. H. Prynne, Kazoo Dreamboats, Or, On What There Is; Neil Pattison, Reitha Pattison, and Luke Roberts, eds., Prose of The English Intelligencer; Fanny Howe, Come and See; Mairéad Byrne, Lucky; and Tom Raworth, Got On.
  • Review of Linh Dinh, Some Kind of Cheese Factory (Chax Press, 2009) and Love Like Hate (Seven Stories Press, 2010), Chicago Review 56:4 (Winter 2012), 127-130.
  • “Attention Span 2011,” Third Factory. http://thirdfactory.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/attention-span-2011-keith-tuma/
  • Short reviews of Steven Zultanski, Cop Kisser; Rae Armantrout, Money Shot; Jeff Hilson, In the Assarts; William Fuller, Hallucination; Frances Kruk, Down You Go; Sara Crangle, ed., Stories and Essays of Mina Loy; Tom Pickard, More Pricks Than Prizes; Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schleslinger, eds., Mimeo Mimeo 4; Gizelle Gajelonia, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Bus; Rachel Warriner, Eleven Days; and Ron Silliman, Wharf Hypothesis.
  • “Attention Span 2010,” Third Factory.  http://thirdfactory.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/attention-span-2010-keith-tuma/
  • Short reviews of Tom Leonard, Outside the Narrative; Clark Coolidge, The Act of Providence; Bill Griffiths, Collected Earlier Poems, 1966-80; Hoa Nguyen, Hecate Lochia; Tom Raworth, Windmills in Flames: Old and New Poems; Francis Crot (aka Jow Lindsay), Pressure in Cheshire; Barbara Claire Freeman, Incivilities; Elizabeth Arnold, Effacement; Frederick Farryl Goodwin, Buber’s Bag Man; K. Silem Mohammad, Sonnagrams 1-20; and Lisa Samuels, Throe.
  • “Attention Span 2009.” Third Factory. http://thirdfactory.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/attention-span-2009-keith-tuma/
  • Short reviews of Stephen Rodefer, Call It Thought: Selected Poems; Robert von Hallberg, Lyric Powers; William Fuller, Three Replies; Norma Cole, Natural Light; Joseph Macleod, Cyclic Serial Zeniths from the Flux: Selected Poems; Rodrigo Toscano, Collapsible Poetics Theater; Tim Atkins, ed., Onedit 13; John Wilkinson, Down to Earth; and cris cheek, part: short life housing.
  • “Attention Span 2008.” Third Factory. http://thirdfactory.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/attention-span-keith-tuma/
  • Short reviews of Trevor Joyce, What’s in Store; Linh Dinh, Jam Alerts; Marjorie Welish, Isle of the Signatories; Norma Cole, Do the Monkey; Tyrone Williams, On the Spec; Catherine Wagner, everyone in the room is a representative of the world at large; Tom Raworth, Let Baby Fall; Devin Johnston, Sources; Rod Smith, Deed; and Frances Kruk, A Discourse of Vegetation and Motion.
  • Review-essay on Romana Huk and James Acheson, eds., Contemporary British Poetry (Wesleyan, 1995) and Clive Bush, Out of Dissent:  A Study of Five Contemporary British Poets (Talus, 1997).  Criticism XL: 2 (Spring 1998), 313-323.
  • “The Inobvious Mina Loy,” Notre Dame Review 5 (Winter 1998), 147-151. Rpt.in Jacket 5.
  • Review of Harryette Mullen, Muse & Drudge (Singing Horse, 1995); Will Alexander, Stratospheric Canticles (Pantograph, 1995); John Rodker, Poems & Adolphe 1920 (Carcanet, 1995) [3 books of poetry].  Sulfur 39 (Fall 1996), 171-177.  
  • “How Did I Get So Black and Blue?”  Review of Kamau Brathwaite, Black + Blue (New Directions, 1995) [poetry], American Book Review 17.3 (February 1996), 8. Rpt. in Emily Allen Williams, ed., The Critical Response to Kamau Brathwaite (Greenwood, 2004), 119-123.
  • “Notes Toward a Review of Clayton Eshleman’s Under World Arrest.”  Review of Clayton Eshleman, Under World Arrest (Black Sparrow Press, 1994) [poetry], Talisman 14 (Fall 1995), 81-84.
  • “Erasing Modern Poetry” [on the ACLS list in American literature], “Pig Press” [on books of poetry by Catherine Walsh, Maurice Scully, and Roy Fisher], and “Red Sauce, Whisky, and Snow” [on poems by August Kleinzahler]. Sulfur 37 (Fall 1995), 201-211.
  • Review of Hugh MacDiarmid, Selected Poetry (New Directions); W. N. Herbert, To Circumjack MacDiarmid: The Poetry and Prose of Hugh MacDiarmid; and Nancy Gish, ed., Hugh MacDiarmid Man and Poet, Modernism/Modernity 1.3 (September 1994), 286-289.
  • Review of Bernadette Mayer, A Bernadette Mayer Reader (New Directions, 1992) [poetry], Sulfur 35 (Fall 1994), 220-223.
  • Review of Peter Quartermain, Disjunctive Poetics: From Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky to Susan Howe (Cambridge UP, 1992), Sulfur 34 (Spring 1994), 231-234.
  • Review of Peter Makin, Bunting:  The Shaping of His Verse (Clarendon, 1992), Sulfur 32 (Spring 1993), 336-338.
  • Review of Ivan Argüelles, “That” Goddess (Pantograph, 1992), Denyse DuRoi, Filmmaking (Pantograph, 1992), Andrew Joron, Science Fiction (Pantograph, 1992) [3 volumes of poetry], Sulfur 32 (Spring 1993), 339-343.
  • Review of Rob Wilson, American Sublime:  The Genealogy of a Poetic Genre (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), Sulfur 30 (Spring 1992), 198-200.
  • Review of Charles Bernstein, Rough Trades (Sun & Moon, 1991) [poetry], Sulfur 30 (Spring 1992), 202-204.
  • Review of Victoria Forde, The Poetry of Basil Bunting (Bloodaxe, 1992) and Basil Bunting, Uncollected Poems (Oxford UP, 1992), Sulfur 30 (Spring 1992), 200-202.
  • “MLA,” Sulfur 30 (Spring 1992), 196-198.
  • Review of John Matthias, A Gathering of Ways (The Swallow Press, 1991) [poetry], Sulfur 29 (Fall 1991), 233-235.
  • Review of Nathaniel Tarn, Seeing America First (Coffee House Press, 1989) [poetry], Sulfur 29 (Fall 1991), 235-236.
  • Review of Marjorie Perloff, Poetic License:  Essays on Modernist and Postmodernist Lyric (Northwestern UP, 1989), Sulfur 28 (Spring 1991), 216-218.

Poems in Journals and Anthologies 

  • American (e.g., Chicago Review, Coast/No Coast, The Dan River Review, eratio, Flights, Fulcrum, Georgetown Review, Hundreds, The Laurel Review, Notre Dame Review, Plantarchy, Michael Boughn, et al, eds., Resist Much, Obey Little: Poems for the Inauguration, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars; Australian (Famous Reporter)
  • Canadian (Open Letter, The Gig, Onsets)
  • British (Friends Magazine, Datableedzine, nthposition, Zarf, A. Brady, ed.,100 Days)
  • Mexican (Periódica de Poesia), and Continental (Poetry Salzburg) journals, webzines, and anthologies. 

Video Poems

  • everybody is nobody is. 2008. http://www.youtube.com/meshworks. Screened at Miami University Art Museum, May 2008.
  •  This is Not Your Father’s Recession.  2008. With Daniel Ereditario. http://www.youtube.com/meshworks 
  • Swarm Intelligence (for Tom Raworth). 2006. With Justin Katko. http://www.youtube.com/meshworks. 
  • Screened at the SoundEye International Poetry Festival (Cork, Ireland, July 2005), The E-Poetry Conference (Birkbeck College, London, September 2005), Raworth Day (University of Notre Dame, September 2005), and elsewhere. 
  • The Leap.  With Justin Katko. 2006. http://www.youtube.com/meshworks. 
  • Screened at the Cambridge Experimental Women’s Poetry festival, Cambridge University, October 2006; The Oxford Community Arts Center, November 2007; and elsewhere.  
  • Ornithoooneiric. With Justin Katko. 2005.  http://www.youtube.com/meshworks. See also Drunken Boat 8: http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/
  • Nominated for the Panliterary Award in Video by Drunken Boat.  Screened at the SoundEye International Poetry Festival (Cork, Ireland, July 2005); The E-Poetry Conference (Birkbeck College, London, September 2005); and elsewhere.  

Work in Progress

  • Selected Poems and Prose, with translations by María Alvarez
  • "Studies in the Unnatural World," a book of prose poems
  • Essays on poetry and travel