Jeffrey Gray , Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of English
(973) 761-9388
Email
Fahy Hall
Room 361
Jeffrey Gray, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of English
Jeffrey Gray is a scholar of U.S. poetry, postcolonial literature, and literary theory. He is the author of Mastery’s End: Travel and Postwar American Poetry (University of Georgia Press) and of many articles on American and Latin American literature. His poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Yale Review, the Atlantic, Triquarterly, Western Humanities Review, and other periodicals.He is also the English translator of Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s novels The African Shore (Yale University Press) and Chaos: A Fable (Amazon Crossing), and editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including the five-volume Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, The News from Poems (University of Michigan Press), The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st Century Anthology (McFarland Press), and the recent Companion to American Poetry (Wiley-Blackwell Press). He has been the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Geraldine Dodge foundation. He lives in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, and Alghero, Sardinia.
Education
- Ph.D., University of California, Riverside
- M.A., University of Washington
- B.A., University of Washington
Scholarship
Books
- Mastery’s End: Travel and Postwar American Poetry, University of Georgia Press, 2005.
- The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, five volumes, ed. with Mary Balkun and James McCorkle, Greenwood, 2006.
- The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st Century Anthology, ed. with Ann Keniston, McFarland Press, 2011.
- The News from Poems: Essays on the New American Poetry of Engagement, ed. with Ann Keniston, University of Michigan Press, 2014.
- The African Shore, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Trans. Jeffrey Gray, Yale University Press. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300196108/african-shore/
- Chaos, A Fable, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Trans. Jeffrey Gray, Amazon Crossing Press.
- American Poets and Poetry: From the Colonial Era to the Present, ed. with Mary McAleer Balkun and James McCorkle, Greenwood, 2012.
- A Companion to American Poetry, ed. with Mary McAleer Balkun and Paul Jaussen, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.
Selected Articles:
- “Robert Lowell in New York City.” Robert Lowell in Context. Ed. Grzegorz Kosz and Thomas Austenfield. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
- “The Lost Steps: W.S. Merwin and the Journey Backward.” Reading W. S. Merwin in a New Century. Ed. Cheri Langdell, Palgrave MacMillan, 2023.
- “Travel.” Elizabeth Bishop in Context. Ed. Angus Cleghorn and Jonathan Ellis. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
- “Data Dump: Poetry and Information in the 21st Century.” Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry. Ed. Steven Axelrod and Craig Svonkin, Bloomsbury, 2023.
- “Engagement Again: American Poetry Then and Now.” American Poetry Review 49.5 (October 2020).
- “Hands Off: Official Language in Contemporary Poetry.” In The News from Poems: Essays on the New American Poetry of Engagement, ed Gray and Keniston, University of Michigan Press, 2016.
- “’Pathology of the Provinces’: Frank Bidart and the Object of the West.” New Perspectives on American Poetry, from Whitman to the Present. Ed. Jiri Flajsar, Palacky University Press (Czech Republic), 2015.
- “Roberto Bolaño, Juárez, and the Future of Nativism.” Pacific Coast Philology (Special Issue: “Migration, Immigration, and Movement”) 49.2 (2014).
- “Essence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 4.1 (2012): 15-29.
- “Identity Cards: Autobiography and Critical Practice.” Selves in Dialogue. Ed. Begoña Bismal. Berlin: Rodopi, 2011.
- “Postcards and Sunsets: Bishop’s Revisions and the Problem of Excess.” Elizabeth Bishop in the Twenty-first Century. Ed. Thomas Travisano, et al. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2011. 26-40.
- “History and Erasure in One Hundred Years of Solitude." In Colonialism and Exploration: Bloom’s Literary Themes. Ed. Harold Bloom, et al. Chelsea House, 2010.
- “Howl: Moloch and Beat Transgression.” Taboos: Bloom’s Literary Themes. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2010. 37-49.
- “United Fruit Co.,” Canto General, and the Critique of Capitalism.” Imperialism: Bloom’s Literary Themes. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2010. 201-211.
- “Borges and the Legacy of ‘The Garden of Forking Paths.’” The Labyrinth: Bloom’s Literary Themes. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2009. 29-36.
- “Poets’ Puffery.” Chronicle of Higher Education. 55.25. 27 February 2009. B14.
- “The Dream of Possession: Robert Frost’s Paradoxical Gift.” The American Dream: Bloom’s Literary Themes. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2009. 57-66.
- “Precocious Testimony: Poetry and the Uncommemorable.” In Literature after 9/11, ed. Ann Kenniston and Jeanne Follansbee Quinn, Routledge, 2008.
- “Walcott’s Traveler and the Problem of Witness.” Callaloo 28.1 (2005).
- “Literature, Difference, and the Land of Witness.” Profession 2002. Modern Language Association, 2002. 51-62.
- “’Beyond the Letter’: Identity, Song, and Strick.” Callaloo 23.2 (Spring 2000): 621-639.
- “’Necessary Thought’: Frank Bidart and the Post-Confessional.” Contemporary Literature 34.4 (1993): 714-739.
Recent Poetry and Memoir:
- “Calle del Desengaño,” On the Seawall. Forthcoming, 2024.
- “The Idiot,” “Processions,” “Rosi in Samoa”, Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion.
- “Incident in Escuintla,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2024.
- “If Only,” “Blob in an Old Sink,” and “Postcard from Meteora,” Evergreen Review, Winter 2024.
- Five poems (“The Aquarian Foundation,” “Jersey Spring,” “The Sea from Ozette,” “Seattle Induction Center,” and “Homiletic Ode to the Everly Brothers). Open: A Journal of Arts and Letters, May 2023.
- “Gare du Nord.” Fjords, April, 2023.
- “Bananera (the United Fruit Co.).” Triquarterly, 2023 https://www.triquarterly.org/issues/bananera-united-fruit-company
- “The Station.” Conduit, 2023.
- “Last Air.” The Yale Review, 2020.
- “After Three Years.” The Yale Review, 2020.
- “Too Late.” Tupelo Quarterly, Nov. 14, 2018.
- “Voice Lessons: A Notebook.” PN Review, 46.3 (Jan-Feb 2020).
- Three Poems (“Marbling,” “My 20th Century,” and “Query”). Western Humanities Review, 2022.
- “The West.” Notre Dame Review 34 (Summer-fall 2012).
- “Likewise.” Notre Dame Review 31 (Winter-Spring 2011).
- “Crepuscule for Sandy.” Notre Dame Review 32 (Summer-Fall 2011). https://ndreview.nd.edu/archived-issues/ndr-32/
Accomplishments
Honors and Awards
- Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship in Poetry, 2007.
- MacDowell Colony Residency, Fall 2007.
- Researcher of the Year Award, College of Arts & Sciences, Seton Hall University, 2006.
- Fulbright Fellowship, Nanjing, China, 2006.
- Booklist's Editor's Choice Award for Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets & Poetry.
- Fulbright Fellowship, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2000.
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute: Performance and Text in Caribbean Literature and Art, San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 9--July 21, 1997.