Jena Osman is an American poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and editor, who graduated from Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, and the State University of New York at Buffalo, with a Ph.D. She teaches at Temple University

Temple University

Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...

. Osman's work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Conjunctions, Hambone, Verse, and XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics.

With Juliana Spahr

Juliana Spahr

Juliana Spahr is an American poet, critic, and editor. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S...

, she founded and edited Chain. She has been a writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony

MacDowell Colony

The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...

, the Blue Mountain Center, the Djerassi Foundation, and Chateau de la Napoule. She inspired the start of Hyphen magazine.

In her ongoing project, "Court Reports," Osman worked directly from court records, judicial opinions bearing the stamp and influence of Charles Reznikoff

Charles Reznikoff

Charles Reznikoff was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky provided his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of...

.

Awards

• 2009 National Poetry Series
  National Poetry Series
  The National Poetry Series is an American literary awards program.Every year since 1979 it has sponsored the publication of five books of poetry...
  
  
• 2006 Pew Fellowships
• 1998 Barnard Women Poets Prize
  Barnard Women Poets Prize
  The Barnard Women Poets Prize is a major American literary award for a book of poetry in the English language.From 1986-1999 the prize was called the Barnard New Women Poets Prize...
  
  
• National Endowment for the Arts
  National Endowment for the Arts
  The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
  
   grant
• the New York Foundation for the Arts grant
• The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant
• Fund for Poetry grant

Works

• "flag of my disposition"; "hurrah for positive science", 5 Trope
• "THE PERIODIC TABLE AS ASSEMBLED BY DR. ZHIVAGO, OCULIST", Zhivago, 2002-3

Reviews

Now we have Jena Osman’s new book, An Essay in Asterisks, which I necessarily read with a more open mind, but I do think this is a much richer book than The Character, more generous in its pleasures. Here she is again probing consciousness and politics and language in a variety of inventive ways. These tricks might be called wordplay but the end is anything but playful.

External links

• "Jena Osman", Penn Sound
• Faculty Homepage at Temple University
• Jena Osman and violist/composer Nadia Sirota interview each other in InDigest
  InDigest
  InDigest is a literary journal founded in 2007 by editors and David Doody. It is an online quarterly literary magazine, as well as a reading series, podcast, and publishing house located in New York City and Minneapolis, MN.-The Magazine:...