Life

Born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, New York, the daughter of editor Ross Wetzsteon (the name is pronounced "whetstone"), she graduated from Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 in 1989, where she studied with Marie Borroff

Marie Borroff

Marie E. Borroff is an American poet, translator, and the Sterling Professor Emerita in English at Yale University.-Life:She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA and MA in 1946, and from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1956...

, and John Hollander

John Hollander

John Hollander is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University...

.
She graduated from Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 with an MA, and from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 with a Ph.D. She taught at Barnard College

Barnard College

Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...

.

She lived in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 and went on to teach at William Paterson University

William Paterson University

William Paterson University is a comprehensive public institution located in Wayne, New Jersey serving nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students through five colleges: , , , , and ....

, and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the Ninety-Second Street Y

92nd Street Y

92nd Street Y is a multifaceted cultural institution and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, at the corner of E. 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association...

.

Her work appeared in many publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Nation, and The Village Voice.
She was poetry editor of The New Republic.

She took her own life on Christmas Day or eve, 2009. A prize has been established in her memory in the Columbia University English department.

Awards

• 2001 Witter Bynner Poetry Prize
  Witter Bynner Poetry Prize
  The Witter Bynner Poetry Prize was established by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980 to support the work of a young poet. It is named for poet Witter Bynner...
  
   from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Ingram Merrill grant.
• 1993 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...
  
  , for Other Stars

Works

• "Gold Leaves"; "Five-Finger Exercise", THE CORTLAND REVIEW, ISSUE 32, June 2006
• "At the Zen Mountain Monastery", Very Like a Whale, September 7, 2006
• "Manhattan Triptych"; "Sakura Park", Poetry Daily

Poetry

• The Other Stars (Penguin, 1994) ISBN 9780140587289
• Home and Away (Penguin, 1998) ISBN 9780140588927
• Sakura Park (Persea, 2006) ISBN 9780892553242
• Silver Roses (Persea, 2010)

Criticism

• "Rachel Wetzsteon on Auden", NEWSLETTER 21, The W. H. Auden Society, February 2001 (reprint CRC Press, 2007)
• "Marvellous Sapphics", Poetry Society: "Crossroads", Fall 1999

Reviews

In a perfect world, Rachel Wetzsteon would be one of the most popular poets of her generation. You would see people in the outdoor cafes along Upper Broadway reading copies of Sakura Park, her third collection, the way pilgrims to Greenwich Village carry Scott Fitzgerald

Scott Fitzgerald

Scott Fitzgerald may refer to:*F. Scott Fitzgerald , American author*Scott L. Fitzgerald , member of the Wisconsin State Senate*Scott Fitzgerald , former Wimbledon defender, former manager of Brentford...

 or Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...

. For Wetzsteon's poems manage to turn Morningside Heights—a quiet, bourgeois neighborhood near Columbia University, home to the park of her title—into a theater of romance, an intellectual haven, a flaneur's paradise. Her poems evoke the kind of life that generations of young people have come to New York to live—earnest, glamorous, and passionate, full of sex and articulate suffering...

Rachel Wetzsteon’s inheritance from W.H. Auden (she’s the author of Influential Ghosts: A Study of Auden’s Sources) is nowhere more apparent than in her third collection. Just as in Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts,” where life goes on as Icarus plunges into the sea, Wetzsteon has set a tale of personal heartbreak against the bustling, vivid life of New York City.

External links

• "Rachel Wetzsteon, Poet of Keen Insights and Wit, Dies at 42", New York Times, December 31, 2009
• "Rachel Wetzsteon, poet mixed melancholy, wit", Boston Globe, January 2, 2010
• "RIP Rachel Wetzsteon", Avoiding the Muse
• "RIP Rachel Wetzsteon (1967-2009)", Pugnacious Pinoy
• "E-Verse is deeply saddened by the death of the poet Rachel Wetzsteon", E-Verse Radio
• "Rachel Wetzsteon dead", Eratosphere
• "Remembering Rachel Wetzsteon", The Best American Poetry, January 8, 2010
• Rachel Wetzsteon 1967 - 2009 This "cyber-tombeau
  Tombeau
  A tombeau is a musical composition commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date from the 17th century and were composed for lute or other plucked string instruments...
  
  " at Silliman's Blog by poet Ron Silliman
  Ron Silliman
  Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...
  
  includes comments, tributes, and links
• "Home and Away." The Paris Review sessions, Issue 143, Summer 1997
• "A Sad Goobye to Rachel Wetzsteon", The Drabbler, January 28, 2010