Deborah Garrison

Deborah Garrison. Courtesy Dylan Foley's BookPush.

Deborah Garrison (born February 12, 1965) is an American poet.

Life

Youth and education

Garrison was born Deborah Gotleib in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her father, Joel Gotlieb, died when she was 14, and she and her 2 sisters were raised by their mother, Naomi Weisberg Harrison, an accountant.

Garrison earned a bachelor's degree in creative writing from Brown University in 1986. She subsequently earned a master's degree in Literature from New York University.

Career

On August 10, 1986, she married attorney Mathew C. Garrison. Also in 1986, Garrison joined the staff of The New Yorker, where she worked for the next 15 years, starting on the editorial staff and ultimately becoming the senior non-fiction editor.

She is the poetry editor at Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon Books. She was hired for Knopf by Sonny Mehta, president of the Knopf group, to replace publishing industry icon Harry Ford. Under Ford's direction, Knopf had become a prominent publisher of poetry. Mehta chose Garrison to fill Ford's shoes because "there was something so fresh about Deborah, and I admired her poetry." Garrison also edits fiction and nonfiction for Pantheon Press. Novelist Julia Glass, winner of the 2002 National Book Award calls Garrison an "incredible editor."

Garrison's debut volume of poetry, A Working Girl Can't Win, was published in 1998, and. sold over 30,000 copies.

Garrison resides in Montclair, New Jersey with her husband and their 3 children.

Writing

The poems in her debut volume, A Working Girl Can't Win, focus on themes relating to the young female professional: friendship, love, grief and passion. Her 2nd volume, The Second Child, published almost ten years after the first, deals mainly with themes related to motherhood.

Reviews of Garrison's poetry have been mixed. A reviewer for Library Journal claimed that "Garrison entertains, but shallowly." Similarly, William Logan of The New Criterion wrote, "It's not that these poems are bad, though they're bad enough; it's that they're not sure what poems should do." On the other hand, other critics are more positive in assessing her work. John Updike's comments are printed on the book jacket of Working Girl and reprinted liberally throughout book reviews. Of her poems he declares that, "with their short lines, sneaky rhymes, and casual leaps of metaphor, Garrison's poems have a Dickinsonian intensity and the American recluse's air of independent-minded, lightly populated singleness."

Garrison acknowledges that her poetry would not be on Knopf's publication list and insists that her own poetry is not indicative either of her taste in poetry or in her breadth as an editor. However, her supporters suggest that the fact that her poetry is "accessible" and commercially successful does not detract from its value. One critic warns that the reader should notice that "the accessibility of Garrison's free verse should not obscure the sound effects and subtle rhymes which give shape to the work...when the occasion calls for metaphor, Garrison is ready with appropriate responses."

Discussion of Garrison's work has led to a debate over whether poetry that is not obscure can be considered good. As a poet and an editor, Garrison expresses an interest in having more readers experience the enrichment that poetry can bring because, as she says, "most readers don't even know they need poetry." She also notes that, "Poetry can be pretentious sometimes, and if people feel poetry is this high citadel that you can't get into, it's bad for poetry."

Publications

• A Working Girl Can't Win, and other poems. New York: Random House, 1998. ISBN 978-0-375-75540-8
• The Second Child. New York: Random House, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4000-6359-8

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Deborah Garrison reads four New York poems

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "She Thinks of Him on Her Birthday"

Audio / video

• Deborah Garrison at YouTube

Books

• Deborah Garrison at Amazon.com

About

• Deborah Garrison at the Poetry Foundation
• Winerip, Michael (2007-05-06). "Poet, Mother, Editor, Wife - New York Times". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/06Rpoet.html. Retrieved 2008-03-16. 
• "Poet, Editor, Working Girl". People Columns-Ohio State. http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/herman2/garrison.html. Retrieved 2008-04-19. 
• "Deborah Garrison Explores Motherhood and Romance in "The Second Childhood" at Dylan Foley's BookPush