Minnesota State University, Mankato

230 Armstrong Hall
Mankato, MN 56001
507-389-1354
507-389-5362 (fax)

richard.robbins@mnsu.edu

Education

M.F.A., University of Montana, 1979
A.B., San Diego State University, 1975

Teaching Assignments, 2008-2009

Fall semester 2009

English 219: Visiting Writers Series
English 344 (Edina): Creative Writing—Poetry
English 647: Contemporary Poetry
English 649: Teaching Creative Writing

Spring semester 2010

English 219: Visiting Writers Series
English 344: Beginning Poetry Workshop
English 4/544: Advanced Poetry Workshop
English 448 (Edina): Contemporary Literature

Continuing Administrative Assignments

Director, Good Thunder Reading Series
Director, M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing

Publications

Books

Other Americas, Blueroad Press, forthcoming 2010
Radioactive City, Bellday Books, 2009
The Untested Hand, Backwaters P, 2008
Famous Persons We Have Known, Eastern Washington UP, 2000
The Invisible Wedding, U of Missouri P, 1984
Toward New Weather [chapbook], Frontier Award Committee, 1978
Where We Are: The Montana Poets Anthology [co-editor], SmokeRoot P, 1978

Periodical publications

Recent poems in Basalt, CrazyHorse, Field, Indiana Review, and Stand.
Recent fiction in Weber: The Contemporary West and Chariton Review.
Recent creative nonfiction in Brevity and The New Ohio Review.

[additional publication information]

Résumé versions

Academic résumé
Artistic résumé

Quotes

"The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance starts when you try to convert it into language. Language itself is a kind of resistance to the pure flow of self. The solution is to become one's language. You cannot write a poem until you hit upon its rhythm. That rhythm not only belongs to the subject matter, it belongs to your interior world, and the moment they hook up there's a quantum leap of energy. You can ride on that rhythm, it will carry you somewhere strange. The next morning you look at the page and wonder how it all happened. You have to triumph over all your diurnal glibness and cheapness and defensiveness."

— Stanley Kunitz

"A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu."

— William Stafford

"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation."

—Alasdair Gray

Links

For links to organizations, periodicals, etc., click here.

Photo credit: "Waimea" Copyright © James Daigh