George Starbuck (1931-1996) was an American poet of the neo-formalist school. His work is marked by clever rhymes, witty asides, and the fusing of Romantic themes with cynicism towards modern life. Starbuck called his style of formalism SLABS, for Standard Length And Breadth Sonnets. He was not widely appreciated by mainstream culture during his lifetime, but in the few years since his death his work has earned favor from both literary critics and casual readers of poetry. Two new collections of his poems have been published in the last few years (Poems Selected from Five Decades and Visible Ink) and have helped win him a wider audience. Starbuck's best-known poems include "Tuolomne," "On an Urban Battlefield," and "Sonnet With a Different Letter At the End of Every Line." He fathered five. Margret, Stephen, John, Anthony and Joshua. He taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop and, later, at Boston University. 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... The term formalist can have many applications: The Chambers 1994 edition Dictionary indicates a pejorative quality, a person having an exaggerated regard to rules or established usages. In the philosophy of mathematics a formalist is a person who belongs to the school of formalism, a certain mathematical-philosophical doctrine which...
Partial Bibliography (incomplete)
The Works: Poems Selected from Five Decades, November 2003
Established in 1975, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize is (currently) a $25,000 award recognizing the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year. ...
GeorgeStarbuck (1931-1996) is a poet known for his wit, intelligence, and precision; he was the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize for his first book of poems and director of writing programs at the University of Iowa
Don Share, curator of the Woodberry Poetry Room, said, "GeorgeStarbuck was a renowned figure from the great era of the Boston/Cambridge poetry giants and I was lucky to study under him at Boston University.
Starbuck once said, "For me, the long way round, through formalisms, word games, outrageous conceits (the worst of what we mean by 'wit') is the only road to truth....
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