Seth Abramson
Born	October 31, 1976 Concord, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Education	Master of Fine Arts, Juris Doctor, Doctor of Philosophy (candidate)
Occupation	Poet
Known for	The Suburban Ecstasies, The Creative Writing MFA Handbook

Seth Abramson (born October 31, 1976, Concord, Massachusetts) is an American poet and attorney.

Contents 1 Life 2 Awards 3 Works 3.1 Books 3.2 Anthologies 3.3 Selected Poems 3.4 Interviews 3.5 Articles 4 Reviews 5 Articles 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Life

Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He is currently a doctoral student in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[1]

His poems have been published in AGNI, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, Barn Owl Review, Boston Review,^[2] Colorado Review, Concho River Review, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Florida Review, The Gettysburg Review,^[3] Green Mountains Review, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, jubilat, New American Writing, New York Quarterly, Pleiades, Poetry, Poetry Daily,^[4] Potomac Review, Salmagundi, The Southern Review,^[5] Subtropics, Sycamore Review,^[6] Third Coast, Verse Daily,^[7][8] and elsewhere.

Abramson authors The Suburban Ecstasies, a website that ranks MFA programs in part by polling current applicants to these programs.^[9] In October of 2009, Poets & Writers published these rankings as the first-ever comprehensive ranking of full-residency creative writing MFA programs in the United States.^[10][11]

A former public defender, magazine editor, and commentator for Air America Radio, Abramson was nominated for a Koufax Award in 2005. ^[12][13]

[edit] Awards

• 2008, J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize ^[14]

[edit] Works

[edit] Books

• The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, 2009)
• The Creative Writing MFA Handbook (Continuum Publishing, 2008) [contributing author]

[edit] Anthologies

• Law Poems (University of Iowa Press, 2009)
• Best New Poets 2008 (University of Virginia Press, 2008) ^[15]
• Digerati (Three Candles Press, 2006) ^[16]
• Lawyers and Poetry (West Virginia University Press, 2001) ^[17]
• XConnect (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)

[edit] Selected Poems

• "Biography I"; AGNI (June 2009)
• "Duties of Waste Also"; "God (sic)", Conjunctions (Spring 2009)
• "Final Boy," Barn Owl Review (February 2009)
• "Rape of Myself", Linebreak (February 2009)
• "Bronx Flyweight in Drag"; "Ruin"; three others, Notre Dame Review (Fall 2008)
• "Final Boy", Barn Owl Review (Fall 2009)
• "The Nigerian Metanarrative", Subtropics (Winter/Spring 2009)
• "Provincetown Fourth"; "What I Have"; "Nebraska"; two others, Poetry (May 2008)
• "Cash at Folsom", Linebreak (April 2008)
• "Assassin Song"; "House of Corrections"; two others, Keep Going (No. 29, Fall 2007)
• "Enki and Inanna, After the Underworld", Gettysburg Review (Summer 2007)
• "The Ark Of", Boston Review (July/August 2006)
• "Self-Portrait (With Self-Portrait)," The Literary Review (Spring 2006)
• "Valentine to a Blackguard", The Southern Review (Spring 2006)
• "Gainsborough Paints Man into Rocks", Sycamore Review (Winter/Spring 2005)

[edit] Interviews

• Sycamore Review (September 30, 2009) [1]
• The Daily Iowan (September 3, 2009) [2]
• The Cherwell (May 8, 2009) [3]
• UCSD Guardian (March 30, 2009) [4]
• Emprise Review (February 15, 2009) [5]
• Inside Higher Ed (January 18, 2008) [6]
• Nerve (September 1, 2006) [7]

[edit] Articles

• Poets & Writers ("The Top 50 MFA Programs," October 14, 2009) [8]
• Poetry Daily ("On Apollinaire's 'Lundi rue Christine,'" April 7, 2009) [9]
• Poets & Writers ("Show Me the Money," November 1, 2008) [10]

[edit] Reviews

"The lines seem to bounce back and forth between real, tactile experience and the kind of wordy hum that we love (some of us) so much in John Ashbery's work. When you see Seth Abramson's poems on the page, the lines sort of move around a little bit as far as where the spacing occurs, and there are a lot of ampersands, and it just bumps along, and it gives the poem a kind of rhythm....the poem absorbs certain details but doesn't fasten upon them the way poets are tempted to do; it's not adjectival, it's not descriptive, it's not painting a kind of canvas with scenery on it, and yet those details are really fascinating." -- Don Share, Poetry (March 2009) ^[18]

"A poetics of economy often results in staid lines, the severe compression wrangling emotion from the verse. Yet such compression can also produce a curious mixture of specificity and spaciousness, as in the poetry of Seth Abramson. In an eight-poem set profiled in the current issue of the Notre Dame Review, Abramson often opts for lines of medium length, and yet his decision to fragment and indent the structure implies a world beyond the lines no less important and visceral than the words presented to the reader." -- Nicholas Ripatrazone, Luna Park (October 2008) ^[19]

[edit] Articles

•   New Hampshire Bar Association ("Two Attorneys Publish Books of Poetry," August 14, 2009) [11]
•   University of Arizona ("MFA in Nonfiction Ranked Second Overall," March 3, 2009) [12]
•   Dartmouth College ("More Green News," January 5, 2009) [13]
•   University of Minnesota ("MFA Program Named the #3 Program in the Country," December 11, 2008) [14]
•   Burlington [IA] Hawk Eye ("Series Features Noted Poets", November 23, 2008) [15]
•   Luna Park ("Effusion Through Compression: Seth Abramson's Poetics," October 9, 2008) [16]
•   Rake Magazine ("Minnesota's MFA Program Skyrockets Up List," August 30, 2008) [17]
•   The Los Angeles Times ("A Thesis Statement," March 28, 2008) [18]
•   The Kenyon Review [Website] (August 4, 2007) [19]
•   Jacket (July 1, 2007) [20]
•   The Nashua Telegraph ("Poets Have Statewide Outlet Thanks to New Hampshire Review," July 30, 2006) [21]
•   Harvard Law Record ("Living on LIPP," September 22, 2005) [22]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

•   The Suburban Ecstasies Blog (Author), featuring a new ranking system for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing
•   The Master of Fine Arts Blog (Contributor)