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Celebrate
National
Poetry Month by celebrating
forest trail worker, animal caretaker, journeyman ironworker,
poet, essayist, and all 'round good fellow Art Homer,
who recently won a National Endowment for the
Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. Art, who was raised in Missouri, has been a resident of
Omaha for some years, where he teaches and sometimes directs the writers'
workshop
at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. An excellent poet and a writer of
evocative and powerful prose, Art Homer is the author of
The Drownt Boy (memoir),
Skies of
Such Valuable Glass (poetry), and
Tattoos (poetry).
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Art Homer, the Man, the Legend
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"In high school, there were those guys doubly blessed with rugged good
looks and high intelligence who always escorted the loveliest women to the
dances. They were, of course, elegant in their formal clothes, and we
used to call them Tuxedo Toms. Art Homer is fast becoming a Tuxedo Tom
writer: not only is he a talented poet with three books of verse under his
cummerbund, he is also an outstanding prose writer, who has recently
waltzed off with an NEA Fellowhship for Nonfiction. If he ever decides
to write fiction, too, I will retire not so gracefully from the
floor while he dances away with my date in his
arms."--Richard Duggin
"I've known Art for some dozen years now, and whenever I've had good news to
share with him about my work, his response has been to smile and say, 'It's
about time.' That's how I feel about his receiving the NEA. As all of us who
know him know, Art not only is one of our most talented poets and essayists
(not to mention a virtuoso sparkling-cider brewmaster!), but also that sort of
artist who is both too modest and too busy actually doing his work--as well
as being a teacher, friend, and what used to be called 'family-man'--to
spend much time on self-promotion. It's wonderful to see his good work
honored in this way."--Susan Aizenberg
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