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James Longenbach is an American critic and poet. His early critical work focused on modernist poetry, namely that of Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, and Wallace Stevens, but has come to include contemporary poetry as well. Longenbach has published four books of poems: Threshold, Fleet River, Draft of a Letter, and The Iron Key. One recent book of criticism, The Resistance to Poetry, has been described as a "compact and exponentially provocative book."
Longenbach is Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester and has taught at the University since 1985. His poems have appeared in many magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, and The Yale Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 1995 anthology. He frequently reviews books for Boston Review, the Nation, and the Los Angeles Times Book Reivew.
He received his bachelor's degree in 1981 from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and his PhD. from Princeton University. His wife, novelist Joanna Scott and fellow Trinity graduate, also teaches at the English Department of the University of Rochester. They have two children.