Terry Randolph Hummer (born August 7, 1950) is an American poet and professor. His most recent books of poetry are After the Afterlife (Acre Books) and the three linked volumes Ephemeron, Skandalon, and Eon (Louisiana State University Press). He has published poems in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The Literati Quarterly, Paris Review, and Georgia Review. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship inclusion in the 1995 edition of Best American Poetry, the Hanes Prize for Poetry, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and three Pushcart Prizes. His Zeitgeist Lightning: New and Selected Poems 1976 to 2026 will be published in March of 2027 by Louisiana State University Press.
Early life Hummer was born and raised in Mississippi, and graduated from University of Southern Mississippi with a B.A. in 1972 and M.A. in 1974. He graduated from the University of Utah with a PhD, where he studied with Dave Smith and was editor of Quarterly West in 1979.
Career He taught at Oklahoma State University, where he was poetry editor of The Cimarron Review. In 1984 he relocated to Kenyon College; there, after visiting positions at Middlebury College (where he guest edited New England Review) and the University of California, Irvine, he became editor of The Kenyon Review. In 1989 he returned to Middlebury as editor of New England Review. He relocated to the University of Oregon in 1993, where he directed the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In 1997, he taught at Virginia Commonwealth University. He taught at the University of Georgia, and was editor of The Georgia Review. He retired from Arizona State University.
Honors and awards 1992 Guggenheim Fellowship National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Pushcart Prize (twice) Donald Justice Award for Poetry
Bibliography
Poetry Collections
Lower-Class Heresy (University of Illinois, 1987)
Walt Whitman in Hell: Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1996)
Eon: Poems. LSU Press Southern Messenger Poets. 2018.
Zeitgeist Lightning: New and Selected Poems 1976-2026, forthcoming from LSU Press Southern Messenger Poets, 2027.
Chapbooks Urn (Diode Editions, 2015) Translation of Light (Cedar Creek Press, 1976) Appearances in anthologies
List of poems TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedGlass ceiling2015As for the housefly2016
Essays The Muse in the Machine: Essays on Poetry And the Anatomy of the Body Politic (The Life of Poetry: Poets on Their Art and Craft). University of Georgia Press, 2006.
Available Surfaces: Essays on Poesis (Poets on Poetry). University of Michigan Press, 2012
References
External links Author's Website Author's Blog Author Page: Louisiana State University Press > T.R. Hummer Interview: Blackbird, February 16, 2004 Poems: Little Epic Against Oblivion> October 7, 2008 > Poems by T.R. Hummer Poems: Mudlark Poster 81 > 2009 > System, Fallacy of Composition, Bald Man, Fallacy The Illegibility of Providence, Infinite by Virtue of Its Everlastingness, Bounded by its Own Completeness by T.R. Hummer Poems: The Poetry Foundation > Poets > Greek by T.R. Hummer