Susan Wheeler

Susan Wheeler (born July 16, 1955) is an educator and poet. She is professor emeritus at Princeton University. She has also taught at the University of Iowa, New York University, Rutgers University, Columbia University and The New School.

Wheeler was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Minnesota and throughout New England. She received a BA from Bennington College in 1977 and pursued graduate studies in art history at the University of Chicago between 1979 and 1981.

Wheeler was the first example of an Elliptical poet described by Stephanie Burt in her coinage of the term in 1998 and expanded upon in an eponymous essay in American Letters & Commentary. Her work is also referred to in Jed Rasula's Syncopations: The Stress of Innovation in Contemporary American Poetry.

Awards and honors 1978 Vermont Arts Council grant 1987 Grolier Award for Poetry 1988 Roberts Foundation Prize for Poetry 1994 Norma Farber First Book Award, Bag o' Diamonds 1994 Pushcart Prize, Bag o' Diamonds 1997 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship 2000 Pushcart Prize, Bag o' Diamonds 2012 National Book Award for Poetry finalist, Meme

Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry series in these editions: 1988, 1991, 1993, 1996, 1998, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997, 2003, and 2005.

Works

Poetry Bag 'o' Diamonds, University of Georgia Press, 1993 Smokes, Four Way Books, 1998 Source Codes, Salt Publishing, 2001 Ledger, University of Iowa Press, 2005 Assorted Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010 Meme, University of Iowa Press, 2012

Novels

Record Palace, Graywolf Press, 2005