Introduction
Jena Osman is an American poet and editor, who graduated from Brown University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo, with a Ph.D.She teaches at Temple University. Osman's work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Conjunctions, Hambone, Verse, and XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics.
With Juliana Spahr, she founded and edited Chain. She has been a writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony, 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.
Awards
- 2009 National Poetry Series
- 2006 Pew Fellowships
- 1998 Barnard Women Poets Prize
- National Endowment for the Arts grant
- the New York Foundation for the Arts grant
- The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant
- Fund for Poetry grant
Works
- The Network. Fence Books. 2010. ISBN 978-1-934200-40-7.
- "flag of my disposition"; "hurrah for positive science", 5 Trope
- "THE PERIODIC TABLE AS ASSEMBLED BY DR. ZHIVAGO, OCULIST", Zhivago, 2002-3
- An Essay in Asterisks. Roof Books. 2004. ISBN 978-1-931824-10-1.
- The Character. Beacon Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-8070-6848-9.
- Jury. Meow Press. 1996.
- Amblyopia. Avenue B. 1993. ISBN 978-0-939691-09-8.
- Twelve Parts of Her. Burning Deck Press. 1989. ISBN 978-1-886224-48-3.
Anthologies
- The Best American Poetry 2002, (editor: Robert Creeley)
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.