Education

PhD, University of Utah
M.F.A. University of Iowa

Specialization

Creative Writing
Poetry
Short Fiction

Accolades

  • PEW Forum invitation to commemorate 9/11 in New York on the evening of 9/10/02.
   • Wesleyan Writers Conference Teaching Fellowship in Poetry
   • Charles B. Wood Award for best publication in Carolina Quarterly
   • Residency Fellowship at Karolyi Foundation in Vence, France
   • Finalist in Walt Whitman Competition

Projects

   • The Blue Whale: New & Selected Poems
   • Short Story: Maiden of La Castagna

His most recent work is featured in World Literature Today (print and online editions) and forthcoming in Miramar

Publications

BOOKS   (poetry)

   • The Four Rings:  New and Selected Poems by Fred Dings
   • Eulogy for a Private Man.  Chicago: TriQuarterly Books
   • After the Solstice.  Washington: Orchises Press (Finalist for Walt Whitman Award)

CHAPBOOKS   (poetry, fine arts printing)
   • Vespers.  West Chester, PA:  Lestat Press.
   • The Bruised Sky.  West Chester, PA:  Aralia Press.

PERIODICALS   (poetry)
    • Antioch Review                             “Odysseus on the Cote d’Azur”
    • Bloomsbury Review                   “Paper Bridge”
    • Carolina Quarterly                      “Swallows at a Quarry Lake”
    • Chicago Quarterly Review       “After Picking Up My Son from Kindergarten”
    • Context South                                “The Concession”, “Grammar of Hope”, “Post Copernican”, “Renaissance”
    • Denver Quarterly                          “After the Solstice”
    • High Plains Literary Review     “At a Cemetery in the Smoky Mtns.”, “Dissertation on Dogs”, “Planes”, “Transitory Music”
    • Ironwood                                          “Padre Island”
    • James Dickey Newsletter         “The Image”
    • Jasper                                                  “West of Eden”
    • The Midnight Lamp                      “A Loving Distance”,  “Waterberries”
    • Miramar                                              “La Farge:  Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti,,"Fisherman Spearing a Fish”, “The Great Plain”, “Word Cairn”, “The Mind’s Body”, “Riva Looking Towards Sirmione”,  “Sycamores”
    • The New Yorker                               “Late Marsh”
    • The Packinghouse Review         “Words for My Wife”, “The Fish”,  “The Gentle Fire”
    • Paris Review                                      “Dido”, “The Evening After”, “The Migrant Couple”
    • Poetry Northwest                           “Blackbirds Flocked in Evergreens”
    • Poet Lore                                             “Old  Men Fishing”, “The Piano Player”, “The Season of Memory”
    • Poetry                                                   “Chains of Change”, “The Fire”, “Letter to Genetically Engineered Super Humans”, “The Man and the Cemetery Effigy”, “Migratory Flight”, “The Past”, “Revelations”, “Words for a Perfect Evening”
    • Quarterly West                                 “Japanese Screen”, “Ode to my Tongue”
    • SALT                                                        “The Moment” (forthcoming)
    • Shenandoah                                       “Crabbing”
    • Southern Florida Review             “One Reason for This”
    • Spillway                                                “A Genetically Engineered Superhuman Laments”
    • TriQuarterly                                        “The Bodily Beautiful”, “The Case Against Daedalus”, “Claims of the Past”, “Eulogy for a Private Man”, “Two Sketches of Solitude”, “The Unlived”, “The Woman with Gravitas”
    • S. Catholic “Spheres”
    • Wallace Stevens Journal               “Sunday”, “The Bridge”, “Children and Death”
    • Western Humanities Review     “The Glowing Coal”, “The Last Voyage”
    • World Literature Today                “Independence Day”, “The Blue Whale”, “Meditation Caves of Tibet”, “Making Soap Bubbles with My Daughter”, “Late Autumn”, “Stage IV”, “Stopping at a T-Intersection in Late Autumn”

POEMS FIRST PUBLISHED IN BOOKS
   • “That Day.” In One for the Money: The Sentence as a Poetic Form.  Lynx House Press.
   • “The Divers.”  In Literature: Reading and Writing with Critical Strategies by Steven Lynn.  New York:  Longman.

ESSAYS
   • “The Late Vision of Larry Levis.” Quarterly West 53 (2002): 213-216
   • “Partisans and Fundamentals:  The Debate on Poetic Form.”  High Plains      Literary Review  10.2 (1995) :  65-78.  Nominated for Pushcart Prize, 1995.
   • “For Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses.’ ”  In Teaching Composition with Literature. Ed. Dana Gioia.  New York:  HarperCollins, 1994.  117-120.

REVIEWS
   • Review of The Pre-Eternity of the World by Christopher Buckley.  World  Literature Today.  Summer 2021.  Forthcoming.
   • Review of Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writer’s Life by Dana Gioia.  World Literature Today.  Spring 2021.  Forthcoming.
   • Review of From There to Here: Selected Poems and Trnaslations by Ciaran Carson.  World Literature Today.  Spring 2020.  94.
   • Review of The Catholic Writer Today by Dana Gioia.  World LiteratureToday.  Winter 2020.  98.
   • Review of Looking for Dragon Smoke: Essays on Poetry by Robert Bly.  World Literature Today.  Autumn 2019.  112.
   • Review of Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems by Dorianne LauxWorld Literature Today.  Summer 2019.  92.
   • Review of Live Streaming by Conor O’Callaghan.  World Literature Today.  Nov/Dec18.  84.
   • Review of Collected Poems by Galway Kinnell.  World LiteratureToday.  May/Jun18.  90.
   • Review of James Wright: A Life in Poetry by Jonathan Blunk.  World Literature Today.  Jan/Feb18.  90.
   • Review of The Last Shift by Philip Levine. World Literature Today.  Mar/Apr 17. 83.
   • Review of Odes by Sharon Olds. World Literature Today.  Jan/Feb17.  85.
   • Review of Dothead by Amit Majmudar. World Literature Today.  Mar/Apr16.  84.
   • Review of The Road to Ballyvaughan by Gibbons Ruark.  World Literature Today.  May/Aug16.  105.
   • Review of Shanghai Redemption by Qui Xiaolong. World Literature Today.  Mar/Apr16.  84.
   • Review of One Thousand Things Worth Knowing by Paul Muldoon. World Literature Today. Jan/Feb16. 73.
   • Review of Favorite Bedtime Stories by John Fitzgerald.  World Literature Today. Jan/Feb15. 74.
   • Review of Darkness Sticks to Everything by Tom Hennen.  World Literature Today. Mar/Apr15.  69.
   • Review of Ask Me: One Hundred Essential Poems by William Stafford.  World  Literature Today.  Mar/Apr15. 72.
   • Review of Once in the West by Christian Wiman.  World Literature Today. May/Aug15. 124.
   • Review of This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems  by Wendell Berry. World Literature Today.  Sep/Oct15. 70.
   • Review of Selected Poems 1988-2013 by Seamus Heaney.  World Literature Today.  Nov/Dec15.  73.
   • Review of Caribou, by Charles Wright. World Literature Today.  Sept/Oct14.  91.
   • Review of Selected Translations, by W.S. Merwin. World Literature Today. May/Aug14.  116.
   • Review of Sailing through Cassiopeia, by Dan Gerber. World Literature Today. May/Aug14.  113.
   • Review of No Need of Sympathy, by Fleda Brown. World Literature Today. Mar/Apr14.  66.
   • Review of Varieties of Religions Experience, by Christopher Buckley. World Literature Today.  Jan/Feb14. 67.
   • Review of Come, Thief, by Jane Hirschfield. World Literature Today. Jul/Aug12, 74.
   • Review of Waking, by Ron Rash. Jasper 1(2012): 57.
   • Review of All the Whiskey in Heaven, by Charles Bernstein. World Literature Today.  Mar/Apr12, 72.
   • Review of Every Riven Thing, by Christian Wiman. World Literature Today. Mar/Apr12, 74.
   • Review of Crossing State Lines: An American Renga. Sept/Oct11, 69.
   • Review of One with Others, by C. D. Wright. World Literature Today.  Nov/Dec11, 74.
   • Review of The Poets Laureate Anthology, ed. Elizabeth Hun Schmidt. World Literature Today.  May/Jun11, 74.
   • Review of Human Chain, by Seamus Heaney. World Literature Today.  May/Jun11, 72.
   • Review of Wait, by C. K. Williams. World Literature Today.  Jan/Feb11, 72.
   • Review of Rain, by Don Paterson. World LiteratureToday.  Nov/Dec10, 72.
   • Review of White Egrets, by Derek Walcott. World Literature Today.  Sep/Oct10, 75.
   • Review of The Apple Trees at Olema, by Robert Hass. World Literature Today.  Sep/Oct10, 72.
   • Review of A Village Life, by Louise Glück. World LiteratureToday.  Jul/Aug10, 74.
   • Review of Shannon, by Campbell McGrath. World Literature Today.  Nov/Dec09, 73.
   • Review of Sestets, by Charles Wright. World Literature Today.  Sep/Oct09, 75.
   • Review of The Ghost Soldiers, by James Tate. World Literature Today.  May/Jun09, 75.
   • Review of Staying Blue, by Gibbons Ruark. World Literature Today.  Jul/Aug09, 74.
   • Review of Modern History, by Christopher Buckley. World Literature Today.  Mar/Apr09, 72.
   • Review of House Held Together By Winds, by Sabra Loomis. World Literature Today.  Jan/Feb09, 74.
   • Review of Behind My Eyes, by Li-Young Lee. World Literature Today.  Sep/Oct08, 74.
   • Review of Seven Notebooks, by Campbell McGrath. World Literature Today.  Jul/Aug08, 72.
   • Review of The Kitchen Sink, by Albert Goldbarth. World LiteratureToday.  May/Jun08, 71.
   • Review of Mars Being Red, by Marvin Bell. World Literature Today. May/Jun08, 69.
   • Review of Averno, by Louise Glück. World Literature Today. Mar/Apr08,  72.
   • Review of Incomplete Knowledge, by Jeffrey Harrison. World Literature Today.  Jan/Feb08, 72.
   • Review of Thirst, by Mary Oliver. World Literature Today.  Nov/Dec07, 72.
   • Review of The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, by August Kleinzahler.World Literature Today.  Aut/Online07, 20.
   • Review of Strong Is Your Hold, by Galway Kinnell. World Literature Today.  Jul/Aug07, 73.
   • Review of Man and Camel, by Mark Strand. World Literature Today.  Jul/Aug07, 71.
   • Review of Scar Tissue, by Charles Wright. World Literature Today. Mar/Apr07, 75.
   • Review of My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy, by Robert Bly.World Literature Today.  Jan/Feb07, 73.
   • Review of The Niagara River, by Kay Ryan. World Literature Today. Nov/Dec06, 73.
   • Review of Danger on Peaks, by Gary Snyder. World Literature Today. May/Jun06, 76.
   • Review of The Cuckoo, by Peter Streckfus. World Literature Today. Jan/Feb06, 58.
   • Review of Sky, by Chris Buckley. World Literature Today.  Sep/Dec05, 89.
   • Review of The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives, by Fleda Brown. World LiteratureToday.  May/Aug05, 88.
   • Review of The Voice at 3:00 a.m., by Charles Simic. World Literature Today.  Jan/Apr05, 90.
   • Review of  Peripheral Light, by John Kinsella. World Literature Today.  Jan/Apr05, 86.
   • Review of Famous Americans, by Loren Goodman. World Literature Today.  Sep/Dec04, 99.
   • Review of Sparrow, by Carol Muske-Dukes. World Literature Today.  Sep/Dec04, 101.
   • Review of One Kind of Faith, by Gary Soto. World Literature Today.  Sep/Dec04, 102.
   • Review of Dumb Luck, by Sam Hamill. World Literature Today. Oct/Dec03, 97.
   • Review of You Never Know, by Ron Padgett. World Literature Today. Apr/Jun0303, 105.
   • “Drowned Voices.”  Rev. of Raising the Dead, by Ron Rash.  Quarterly West 54 (2002):  124-26.
   • “Forms of Light.”  Rev. of Palma Cathedral, by Michael White.  Quarterly West 50 (2000):  233-36.
   • “A View of the Lethe.”  Rev. of Dark Harbor, by Mark Strand.  Quarterly West 37 (1993) :  232-36.

REPRINTS IN ANTHOLOGIES/ TEXTBOOKS
   • “Letter to Genetically Engineered Super Humans.” In The Winter’s Tale: Evans Shakespeare Edition, 1^st Edition, 2012 .
   • “Mathew 6: 9-13” and “Redwing Blackbirds.” In One for the Money: The Sentence as a Poetic Form.  Lynx House Press, 2012.
   • “Words for My Wife.”  In the Alhambra Poetry Calendar (English Edition) [an internationally published and distributed calendar in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish].  Belgium: Alhambra Publishing, 2012.
   • “The Divers.”  In the Alhambra Poetry Calendar (English Edition) [an internationally published and distributed calendar in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish].  Belgium: Alhambra Publishing, 2011.
   • “The Poetry Stone.”  In the Alhambra Poetry Calendar (English Edition) [an internationally published and distributed calendar in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish].  Belgium: Alhambra Publishing, 2010.
   • “At the Grand Canyon.”  In the Alhambra Poetry Calendar (English Edition) [an internationally published and distributed calendar in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish].  Belgium: Alhambra Publishing, 2009.
   • “The Man and the Cemetery Effigy.”  In the Alhambra Poetry Calendar (English Edition) [an internationally published and distributed calendar In English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish].  Belgium: Alhambra Publishing, 2008.
   • “A Last Request.”  In the Alhambra Poetry Calendar (English Edition) [an internationally published and distributed calendar in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish].  Belgium: Alhambra Publishing, 2007.
   • “Letter to Genetically Engineered Super Humans.”  In the Alhambra Poetry Calendar (English Edition) [an internationally published and distributed calendar in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish].  Belgium: Alhambra Publishing, 2006.
   • “Chains of Change” and “The Divers.”  In Literature: Reading and Writing with Critical Strategies by Steven Lynn.  New York:  Longman, December2003.
   • “Chains of Change” and “Letter to Genetically Engineered Super Humans.”  In Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry.  Palm Springs, CA:  Monitor Book Company, 1996.
   • “Redwing Blackbirds.”  In What Will Suffice: The Ars Poetica in Contemporary American Poetry.  Layton, UT:  Peregrine Smith Books, 1995.

REPRINTS
ESSAYS
   • “The Late Vision of Larry Levis.” Originally in Quarterly West 53 (2002): 213-216.    Forthcoming in a festschrift to be published this year by Eastern Washington University Press.

POEMS
   • “Letter to Genetically Engineered Super Humans” reprinted in Cutting-Edge Bioethics.  Ed. Kilner, John; Hook, Christopher; and Diann B. Uustal. Grand Rapids/ Cambridge:  Eerdmans, 2002.
   • “Aspen Grove in Autumn Snow,” “Claims of the Past,” “The Force of Intent,” “Letter to Genetically Engineered Super Humans,” and “Matthew 6: 9-13” reprinted in Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Who Are We?: Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities.Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000.
   • “Matthew 6: 9-13” was reprinted in Jean Bethke Elshtain’s “Shame and Public Life.”  In Trauma and Self.  Ed. Flynn, Michael and Charles Strozier. New York:  Rowan & Littlefield, 1996.  279-286.
   • “Redwing Blackbirds” was reprinted in Dana Gioia’s “Notes Toward a New Bohemia.”  Grantmakers in the Arts 5.1 (1994):  1-5.

PAPERS
   • “What We Have Learned.”  Original poetry and prose remarks delivered in the PEW Forum in New York City on September 10, 2002, in commemoration of 9/11.  Other participants included E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago, James Forbes of The Riverside Church, Aasma Khan of Muslims Against Terrorism, and Rabbi Visotsky of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
   • “Poetry and Music.” Panel with composers Libby Larsen and Stephen van Wye. James Dickey Conference, University of South Carolina.
   • “Partisans and Fundamentals:  The Debate on Poetic Form.”  American and British Conference on Poetic Form, West Chester University.

TELEVISION
   • “Interview with Fred Dings.” Ex Libris.  Host Ellen Arl.  SC Educational Television.  WRJA, Sumter, SC.  4 Nov. 2001.

MUSIC
   • Choral setting of “Letter to Genetically Engineered Superhumans” by Steven van Wye, UCLA.  Premier performance in Columbia, SC, February, 2003.