Rachel Todd Wetzsteon (; November 25, 1967 – December 25, 2009) was an American poet.

Life

Born in New York City, New York, the daughter of editor and critic Ross Wetzsteon, she graduated from Yale University in 1989 where she studied with Marie Borroff and John Hollander. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with an MA, and from Columbia University with a Ph.D. She taught at Barnard College.

She lived in Manhattan and went on to teach at William Paterson University and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the Ninety-Second Street Y.

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.

Wetzsteon committed suicide on Dec. 24 or early on the 25th, 2009. Since 2010, a writing prize has been offered in her memory in the Columbia University English Department. Since 2014, the William Paterson University English Department's in-house literary journal, Map Literary, has produced The Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award every two years.

Awards

• 2001 Witter Bynner Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

• Ingram Merrill grant

• 1993 National Poetry Series, for Other Stars

Works

• "Gold Leaves"; "Five-Finger Exercise",

• "At the Zen Mountain Monastery",

• "Manhattan Triptych"; "Sakura Park", Poetry Daily

Poetry

• The Other Stars (Penguin, 1994)

• Home and Away (Penguin, 1998)

• Sakura Park (Persea, 2006)

• Silver Roses (Persea, 2010)

Anthologies

• Mark Jarman and David Mason, eds. (1996). Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism. Story Line Press.

• Gerald Costanzo and Jim Daniels, eds. (2000). American Poetry: The Next Generation. Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Criticism

• "Rachel Wetzsteon on Auden",

• (reprint CRC Press, 2007)

• "Marvellous Sapphics",

Editor

• Virginia Woolf, Night and Day (Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005)

References

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

• "E-Verse is deeply saddened by the death of the poet Rachel Wetzsteon",

• "Rachel Wetzsteon dead",

• "Remembering Rachel Wetzsteon", The Best American Poetry, January 8, 2010

• "Home and Away." The Paris Review sessions, Issue 143, Summer 1997