Generations of Texas Poets

Dave Oliphant is widely considered the finest poetry critic ever produced by Texas. This volume brings together some 40 years of essays, articles, and reviews on the topic of Texas poetry -- its history as well as addressing individual poets and their books. Only one other book in the last two decades addressed the topic, and Generations of Texas Poets is larger, more comprehensive, and of superior literary quality. In 1971, Larry McMurtry famously descried the lack of good Texas poetry; Oliphant has spent a lifetime nurturing it, publishing it, and has become its best critic.

Dave Oliphant, a native Texas poet, was for 18 years the editor of The Library Chronicle at the University of Texas at Austin; in 2006 he retired from the University as a senior lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric. For 25 years he was the editor/publisher of Prickly Pear Press, and is a noted writer on the history of Texan jazz. His recent books include a collection of essays, Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State; and a  collection of his own poetry, The Cowtown Circle. His volume, The Pilgrimage: Selected Poems, 1962-2012, was published in 2013 by Lamar University Press. Dave Oliphant’s 548-page memoir, Harbingers of Books to Come: A Texan’s Literary Life, and his book-length poem on Texas trumpeter Kenny Dorham, KD: a Jazz Biography, were both published by Wings Press.