91黑料网

Dr. Angela Sorby91黑料网

91黑料网 Hall, 115A/210

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of Americaangela.sorby@marquette.edu

Professor

English

My area of specialization is American poetry: reading it, interpreting it, and writing it. I am especially interested in how poetry engages with readers beyond the academy. Current projects include 鈥淐hapter and Verse,鈥� for the Cambridge History of Children Literature; a study of Viking artifacts in nineteenth-century poetry for a volume titled From Iceland to the Americas; and a new edited collection (with Sandra Lee Kleppe) on poetry and sustainability in higher education.  

Past books include Distance Learning (New Issues/Western Michigan UP, 1998); Schoolroom Poets: Poetry, Pedagogy, and Daily Life in America (UPNE 2005, a Children Literature Association Honor Book); Over the River and Through the Wood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Children Poetry, co-edited with Karen Kilcup (Johns Hopkins UP 2013, a Choice Outstanding Academic Book);  Bird Skin Coat: Poems (U of Wisconsin P 2009, winner of the Brittingham Prize and the Midwest Book Award), The Sleeve Waves: Poems (U of Wisconsin P 2014, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize); and a collection co-edited with Sandra Kleppe, Poetry and Pedagogy Across the Lifespan (Palgrave 2018).

Courses Taught

• American Literature
• Creative Writing (Poetry)

Research Interests

• American Poetry
• Children's Literature
• Creative Writing Pedagogy

Publications

Books, Editions, Collections

• 2023    Poetry and the Global Climate Crisis: Creative Educational Approaches to Complex Challenges, co-edited with Amatoritsero Ede and Sandra Lee Kleppe.
• 2022     Poetry and Sustainability in Education, co-edited with Sandra Lee Kleppe. Palgrave UK.   
• 2018    Poetry and Pedagogy Across the Lifespan, co-edited with Sandra Lee Kleppe. Palgrave UK.
• 2014    The Sleeve Waves (poems). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
• 2013    Over the River and Through the Wood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Children Poetry, co-edited with Karen Kilcup. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• 2009    Bird Skin Coat (poems). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
• 2005    Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865-1917. Becoming Modern series. Hanover, NH: University of New Hampshire/University Press of New England.
• 1998    Distance Learning (poems). Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Press/Western Michigan University.

Scholarly articles and book chapters (selected):

• 2025 鈥淪ubterranean Homesick Blues,鈥� in Chasar, Michael, ed., The Poetry of Bob Dylan:    Thirty Essays on Thirty Songs, Bloomsbury Academic.
• 2023 "Carceral Climates: Poetry, Ecology, and the U.S. Prison System," in Ede, Kleppe, and Sorby, eds., Poetry and the Climate Crisis,  Routledge UK.  Book chapter.
• 2020 鈥淪pectral Vikings in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry,鈥� in Tim Machan and J贸n Karl Helgason, eds., Vinland on the Brain. Manchester University Press, 181-197.
• 2020 鈥淪yllabus as Handwork,鈥� Syllabus 9:1 (2020), 1-2.
• 2018    鈥淏aby to Baby: Lydia Sigourney and the Origins of Cuteness,鈥� in Elizabeth Petrino and Mary Louise Kete, eds. Lydia Sigourney: Critical Essays and Cultural  Views. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
• 2018    鈥淭he Chemistry of Poetry: Transfer Across Disciplines,鈥� with Tracy Thompson,  Sandra Kleppe and Angela Sorby, eds., Poetry and Pedagogy Across the Lifespan (London: Palgrave UK, 2018) 19-36.
• 2017    "鈥橝 Dimple in the Tomb": Cuteness in Emily Dickinson.鈥�" ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 63: 2 (2017) 297-328.
• 2017    鈥淐onjuring Readers: Antebellum African-American Children Poetry,鈥� a chapter in Anna Mae Duane and Kate Capshaw Smith, eds., Who Writes for Black Children? African-American Children Literature Before 1900. University of Minnesota Press.
• 2016    鈥淲omen Poets, Child Readers,鈥� in Jennifer Putzi and Alexandra Socarides, eds., A History of American Women Poetry. Cambridge University Press.
• 2016    鈥淐hildren Culture,鈥� in Gary Burns, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Popular Culture. New York: Blackwell.
• 2015    鈥�At Home in the Stranger House: Poetic Revision and Spiritual Practice,鈥� in Anne M. Pasero and John Pustejovsky, 鈥淎nd have you changed your life?鈥� The Challenge of Listening to the Spiritual in Contemporary Poetry. 91黑料网 Press.  
• 2014    鈥淒isciplined Play:  Children Poetry to 1920,鈥� a chapter in Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt, eds., The Cambridge History of American Poetry. Cambridge University Press.
• 2013    鈥淓ducation,鈥� in Eliza Richards, ed., Emily Dickinson In Context. Cambridge University Press, 36-45.
• 2013    鈥淧retty New Moons: Contact Zones in Nineteenth-Century American Children Poetry,鈥� with Karen Kilcup. Introduction to Over the River and Through the Wood. Johns Hopkins UP.
• 2012    鈥淩ecitation鈥� and 鈥淔ireside Poets,鈥� entries in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton UP, 2012.
• 2011    鈥淲ho Wrote 鈥淩ock Me to Sleep?: Elizabeth Akers Allen and the Profession of Poetry鈥欌�� in MLQ: A Journal of Literary History.
• 2011    鈥淭he Poetics of Bird-Defense, 1860-1918鈥� in Mike Chasar and Heidi Bean, eds., Poetry After Cultural Studies. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
• 2011    鈥淭he Golden Age,鈥� in Philip Nel and Lissa Paul, eds., Keywords for Children  Literature, NY: New York University Press, 96-99.
• 2010    鈥淎nimal Poems and Children's Rights in America, 1820-1890,鈥� in Morag Styles, et. al., eds., Poetry and Childhood.  Stoke-on-Kent, UK: Trentham Books.
• 2010    鈥淟ongfellow Ghost: Writing Popular Poetry,鈥� in Blas Falconer, ed., Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets.  Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• 2009    鈥淭he Milwaukee School of Fleshly Poetry:  Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Popular Aestheticism,鈥� Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.
• 2008    鈥淩aymond Carver Poetry and the Temperance Tradition,鈥� Raymond Carver Review.
• 2007    鈥淪ymmetrical Womanhood:  Poetry in the Woman Building Library,鈥� Libraries and Culture.
• 2007    "Approaches to Teaching the Schoolroom Poets," in Paula Bennett and Karen Kilcup,  Approaches to Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. NY: Modern Language Association Press.
• 1999    鈥淧erforming Class:  James Whitcomb Riley Poetry of Distinction,鈥� MLQ: A Journal of Literary History.
• 1998    鈥�St. Nicholas Magazine and the Poetics of Peer Culture, 1872-1900,鈥� American Studies.
  
  

Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction Publications (selected)

• 2025 鈥淗eat Dome,鈥� Cortland Review 93. Poetry.
• 2024 鈥淭he Healer,鈥�Contemporary Verse 2 (Spring 2024) 56. Poetry.
• 2024  鈥淔ind a Penny, Pick It Up,鈥� Southern Humanities Review 57:2 (Summer 2024) 37-38. Poetry.
• 2023 鈥淥ur Bodies Ourselves,鈥� Plume, vol. 146.  Poetry.
• 2023 鈥淭he Heist,鈥� 鈥淩eading Trouble,鈥� 鈥淭he Amp,鈥� and 鈥淎pocrypha,鈥� Maple Tree Literary Supplement, October 2023.  Poetry.
• 2023 鈥淎MC Seating Tiers Explained,鈥� The Belladonna, February 2023.  Creative nonfiction.
• 2022 鈥淢idden,鈥� Third Coast 52, 113-14. Poetry.
• 2022 鈥淐admium Red,鈥� Calyx 33: 2, 90-91 Poetry..
• 2022 鈥淔irst Apiary, 鈥� Terrain: Place, Climate, Justice. Poetry.
• 2021 鈥淭he Family,鈥� 鈥淒ash,鈥� 鈥淪ome Drew Horses,鈥� Prairie Schooner 95:1. Poetry.
• 2021  鈥淗ope is Feathers Spreading,鈥� in B.J. Hollars, ed. Hope is the Thing (Wisconsin  Historical Society Press), Poetry.
• 2020   鈥淏ird Tree,鈥� 鈥淭ake It All Off,鈥� Fiddlehead: Atlantic Canada International Literary Journal.  Poetry.
• 2020     鈥淥rchard,鈥� Westerly 64:2. Poetry.
• 2019    "Big Rig," in New Ohio Review 25. Poetry 
• 2018    鈥淟imn,鈥� in Feminist Studies. Poetry.
• 2017    鈥淭he Boring Side of the Family,鈥� in Tina Schumann, ed., Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents.  Los Angeles: Red Hen P. Poetry.
• 2017    鈥淓xercise,鈥� Poetry Northwest. Poetry.
• 2017    鈥淣o One Knows Where the Ladder Goes,鈥� The First Line. Fiction. Finalist, Best Small Fictions 2017.
• 2016    鈥淐ode Violations: Chicago Review in the 1990s,鈥� in Chicago Review.  Creative nonfiction.
• 2014    鈥淪tranger Danger,鈥� Journal of the West 53 (4): 56-59.  Creative nonfiction.
• 2014    鈥淢emo from the Center for Teaching and Learning,鈥� The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Creative nonfiction.
• 2013    鈥淧aradise, Wisconsin,鈥� Barrow Street.  Poetry.
• 2013    鈥淪ivka-Burka,鈥� 鈥淚nterstate,鈥� 鈥淎 is for Air,鈥� 鈥淣otes from a Northern State,  Prairie Schooner Poetry.
• 2013    "A Walk Across the Ice," "Golden Spike," "Ink.鈥� Mesa, AZ: Superstition Review, 2013. Poetry.
• 2012    鈥淔allout,鈥� 鈥淲ide Boulevard, Tiny Apartment,鈥� Zone 3. Poetry.
• 2012    鈥淪topping At the Joyce Kilmer Rest Area On a Snowy Evening,鈥� North American Review. Poetry.
• 2011    鈥淐reating a Cone of Silence in China,鈥� The Chronicle of Higher Education. Creative nonfiction.
• 2011    鈥淪napshots of a Semester in China,鈥� The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2011. Creative nonfiction.
• 2011    鈥淭hrifting,鈥� Massachusetts Review. Poetry.  
• 2011    鈥淧engyou,鈥� read by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Weekend All Things Considered (NPR), April 2011.  Fiction.
• 2010    鈥淪pill,鈥� Poets for Living Waters. Poetry.
• 2009    鈥淟ooking Backward: 2020,鈥� The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2009.  Creative nonfiction.
• 2009    鈥淭he Suburban Mysteries,鈥� Jacket 38.
• 2009    鈥淟etter to Hugo from the Land of the Living,鈥� Babel Fruit. Poetry.
• 2009    鈥淔lyover State,鈥� Shepherd Express. Reprint.
• 2008    鈥淪ix Degrees of Separation,鈥� Willow Springs. Poetry.
• 2008    鈥淣ostalgia for the Present,鈥� 鈥淭wo Toyotas Crash,鈥� and 鈥淏reathing Out Smoke,鈥� Southern Review. Poetry.
• 2004    鈥淓mpire Builder鈥� in John Burnside, ed. Wild Reckoning:  An Anthology Provoked by Rachel Carson 鈥楽ilent Spring.鈥� Gulbenkian Foundation (UK), 2004. Reprint. Poetry.
• 2004    鈥淐atch and Release,鈥� Pinyon (2004): 18. Special issue on Norwegian poetry; in English, and translated into Norwegian (as 鈥淪lip og Fang鈥�) by Sandra Lee Kleppe. Poetry.
• 2003    鈥淕lossolalia鈥� in Diane Boller, et. al., eds.  Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the World Most Popular Website.  Sourcebooks, 2003. Reprint; also appeared on the Poetry Daily website. Poetry.
• 2001    鈥淩eally Barely There,鈥� Born: Art and Literature Collaboration (2001): n.p.  Art by Karen Ingram.
• 2000    鈥淚nsomnia鈥� and 鈥淭he Attic of the Attic,鈥� Portland Review. Poetry.
• 2000    鈥淟and of Lincoln鈥� and 鈥淭he Man Without a Middle,鈥� in America Poetry: The Next Generation. Jim Daniels and Gerald Constanzo, eds., Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2000.  Reprint. Poetry.
• 1998    鈥淟and of Lincoln,鈥� 鈥淩eally Barely There,鈥� and 鈥淜ate Fox,鈥� Third Coast. Poetry.
• 1996    鈥淲eather at Ten,鈥� North American Review.  Poetry.
• 1995    鈥淢useum Piece,鈥� in Richard Howard, ed., Best American Poetry 1995, Simon & Schuster, 1995. Reprint. Poetry.
• 1994    鈥淢useum Piece,鈥� The Nation. Poetry.

Reviews and Review Essays:

• 2019   Review of Patricia Crane, Reading Children: LIteracy, Property, and the Dilemmas of Childhood in Nineteenth-Century America in American Literary History Review Series XX.
• 2017    Review of Denise Duhamel, Scald, in Chicago Review 60:4 (2017), 3 pp.
• 2016    Review of Donelle Ruwe, British Children's Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme in Children's Literature Association Quarterly  40: 1 (Winter 2016), 420-422.
• 2015    Review of Claudia Stokes, The Altar at Home:  Sentimental Literature and Nineteenth-Century American Religion. Modern Philology 113, 2 (November 2015): E112-E114
• 2015    Review of Mary Robson, Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem. MLQ 76: 1 (March 2015): 212-214.
• 2014    Roundtable review (with Monika Elbert) of Anna Mae Duane, Suffering Childhood: Violence, Race, and the Making of the Child Victim.  Journal of American Studies 48:1(February 2014): 1-9.
• 2010    鈥淚t's (Not) All Small Stuff: The Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children Poetry,鈥� with Michael Heyman and Joseph T. Thomas, in The Lion and the Unicorn 34 (September 2010): 354-363.
• 2009    Lively Rigor:  the 2009 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children Poetry,鈥� with Michael Heyman and Joseph T. Thomas, in The Lion and the Unicorn 33: 3 (September 2009): 376-396.
• 2008    Review of Joseph T. Thomas, Poetry Playground, in Children Literature 36: (2008): 245-247.
• 2008    鈥溾�榝rom the brain all the way to the heart鈥�: the 2008 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children Poetry,鈥� with Richard Flynn and Joseph T. Thomas, in The Lion and the Unicorn 32: 3 (September 2008): 344-356.
• 2008    Featured essay review of Joan Shelley Rubin, Songs of Ourselves, American Historical Review 113 (April 2008): 449-451.
• 2007    鈥淢essage in a Bottle:  the 2007 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Children Poetry,鈥� with Richard Flynn and Joseph T. Thomas, The Lion and the Unicorn 31 (2007): 264-281.
• 2007    Review of Christopher Irmscher, Longfellow Redux, in New England Quarterly, 80:1 (March 2007): 40-41.
• 2006    Review of Joel Scott and Matthew Pace, eds., Wordsworth in American Literary Culture, in European Romantic Review 11:4 (2006): 502-507.
• 2004    Review of James Guthrie, Above Time:  Emerson and Thoreau  Temporal Revolutions, in M/MLA Journal 37:1 (Spring 2004): 117-118.
• 2001    Review of J.D. McClatchy, Twenty Questions:  Posed by Poems, in M/MLA Journal  34: 3 (Autumn, 2001): 89-91
• 1999    Review of Elizabeth Arnold, The Reef,  in Chicago Review 49: 2 (1999): 137-139.
• 1996    Review of Lynne Crosbie, VillainElle, in Chicago Review, 42:2 (1996): 117-119.
• 1996    Review of Fatima Lim-Wilson, Crossing the Snow Bridge, in Chicago Review,42:1 (1996): 88-89.
• 1995    Review of Lawrence Graver, An Obsession with Anne Frank:  Meyer  Levin and the Diary, in Chicago Review 41:4 (1995): 142-144.
• 1995    Review of Natasha Saj茅, Red Under the Skin, in Chicago Review 41:1 (1995): 97-98.

Honors and Awards

• Won Outstanding Achievement in Poetry award (for The Sleeve Waves), Wisconsin Library Association, 2015
• Won the 2013 Felix Pollak book prize for poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. Book forthcoming March 2014.
• NEH grant (in collaboration with Sarah Wadsworth) from the American Library Association for an outreach project titled Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. 2011.
• Brittingham Prize for poetry manuscript Bird Skin Coat, 2008.
• Honor Book Prize, Children Literature Association, 2007
• Summer Faculty Fellowship, 91黑料网, 2006.
• Schlesinger Library Fellowship, Harvard University, 2005.
• Vivian Pollak Scholar-in-Amherst Award, Emily Dickinson International Society, 2003
• Urban Studies Institute Course Development Grant, 91黑料网,2003.
• Summer Faculty Fellowship, 91黑料网, 2002.
• Korzenik Fellowship, Longfellow Friends, 2002.
• 91黑料网 PT-3 Grant, 2001.
• Linfield College Faculty Fellowship, 1998.
• Stuart Tave Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1996.
• Discovery/The Nation (writing) Prize, The Nation and the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street 鈥淵,鈥� 1994.
• Brauer Grant, 鈥淓ducating Emily Dickinson,鈥� University of Chicago, 1994.
• John Fiske Poetry (writing) Prize, University of Chicago, 1993.

Additional Information

Office Hours

Spring 2026

• Monday 3:30PM - 5:00PM (in-person)
• Wednesday 12:30PM - 2:00PM (virtual)

Teaching Schedule

Spring 2026

• ENGL 4260-101:  Creative Writing: Poetry
  • Monday and Wednesday 2:00PM-3:15PM
• ENGL 4954-701:  Seminar in Creative Writing - Advanced Writing Workshop 
  • Monday 5:00PM-7:30PM
• ENGL 4986-102:  Writing Internship
  • TBA
• ENGL 4988-101:  Practicum in Literature and Language Arts
  • MoWeFr 9:00AM-9:50AM
• ENGL 5988-101:  Practicum in Literature and Language Arts
  • MoWeFr 9:00AM-9:50AM