Background

Carter studied at Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

 and at Goddard College

Goddard College

Goddard College is a private, liberal arts college located in Plainfield, Vermont, offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Goddard College currently operates on an intensive low-residency model...

. After military service and travel abroad, he made his home in Indianapolis

Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...

, where he has lived since 1969. He worked for many years as an editor and interior designer of textbooks and scholarly works, first with the Bobbs-Merrill Company

Bobbs-Merrill Company

The Bobbs-Merrill Company was a book publisher located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Bobbs-Merrill was known for publishing such authors as Richard Halliburton, David Markson, Ayn Rand, James Whitcomb Riley, Walter Dean Myers, and Irma S. Rombauer. Bobbs-Merrill also published the early works of...

 and later in association with Hackett Publishing Company

Hackett Publishing Company

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett titles are used as textbooks, making the company very...

.

Work

Carter writes in free verse

Free verse

Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...

 and in traditional forms. Much of his early work is set in Mississinewa County, an imaginary place that includes the actual Mississinewa River

Mississinewa River

The Mississinewa River is a tributary of the Wabash River in eastern Indiana and a small portion of western Ohio in the United States. It is long. Via the Wabash and Ohio rivers, it is part of the Mississippi River watershed. During the War of 1812, the river was the site of the Battle of the...

, a tributary of the Wabash River

Wabash River

The Wabash River is a river in the Midwestern United States that flows southwest from northwest Ohio near Fort Recovery across northern Indiana to southern Illinois, where it forms the Illinois-Indiana border before draining into the Ohio River, of which it is the largest northern tributary...

. In recent years, as Carter has published increasingly on the web, his poetry has ranged farther afield.

His first collection, Work, for the Night Is Coming, won the Walt Whitman Award. His second, After the Rain, received the Poets' Prize

Poets' Prize

The Poets' Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year. The $3000 annual prize is donated by a committee of about 20 American poets, who each nominate two books and who also serve as judges...

. His poems have appeared in literary journals in the U.S. and abroad and in the anthologies
Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Contemporary American Poetry, and Writing Poems. He has received two literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Indiana Governor’s Arts Award.

In 2008 Carter's poem "Heart's Forest," which appeared in issue # 38 of Lunch, received the Rosine Offen Memorial Award given by the Free Lunch Arts Alliance.

His poem Prophet Township, which first appeared in the Valparaiso Poetry Review, was selected as one of the best poems published online during 2007. It is included in the print anthology Best of the Web 2008 published by Dzanc Books.

Carter’s tanka sequence, “A Country Visit,” first published in Simply Haiku, was selected for Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka. published in 2009 by Modern English Tanka Press.

Relevant studies

• Deines, Timothy J. The Gleaning: Regionalism, Form, and Theme in the Poetry of Jared Carter.” Master’s thesis, Cleveland State University, 1998.
• “Jared Carter.” Contemporary Authors . Vol. 145, pp. 75–76. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.
• Ponick, T. L., and Ponick, F. S. “Jared Carter.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 282, pp. 31–40. Detroit: Gale Research, 2003.

External links

• Official web site of Jared Carter Poetry
• Jared Carter's blog Rushing the Growler
• Literary criticism, “Modulation and the Poetry of Jared Carter,” at Paul Hurt's Linkagenet
• Literary criticism, "The Gleaning, Part 1" at Rushing the Growler
• Poems at Poetry X
• Poems at The HyperTexts
• Poems at The Scream Online
• Poems at Archipelago
• Poems at The Formalist Portal
• Interview at Pennsylvania Review
• Interview at Valparaiso Poetry Review
• Interview at The Formalist Portal
• Interview at Centrifugal Eye
• Interview at ShatterColors Literary Review
• Interview at Rushing the Growler
• Comprehensive page of additional links