Mark Halliday

Mark Halliday was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1949, and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Westport, Connecticut. Halliday lost his mother at the age of twenty-five. He has a son, Nicholas, by his first marriage. He is married to American poet Jill Allyn Rosser, whom he met at the University of Pennsylvania. They live in Athens, Ohio, and have a daughter named Devon. ==Literary influences and praise==

Halliday's poetry is characterized by close observation of daily events, out-of-the-ordinary metaphors, unsentimental reminiscence, colloquial diction, references to popular culture, and uncommon humor. The poet David Graham has described Halliday as one of the "ablest practitioners" of the "ultra-talk poem," a term said to have been coined by Halliday himself to describe the work of a group of contemporary American poets, including David Kirby, Denise Duhamel, David Clewell, Albert Goldbarth, and Barbara Hamby, who frequently write in a wry, exuberant, garrulous, accessible style. Halliday has acknowledged the influences of New York School poets Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch on some of his poems. Charles Pitter for Zouch has said Halliday's poetry "dazzles with verbal precocity." ==Published works==

Poetry • Losers Dream On University of Chicago Press, 2018 • Thresherphobe (University of Chicago Press, 2013) • Keep This Forever (Tupelo Press, 2008) • Jab (University of Chicago Press, 2002) • Selfwolf (University of Chicago Press, 1999) • Tasker Street (University of Massachusetts Press, 1992, Juniper Prize winner) • Little Star (W. Morrow, 1987, National Poetry Series selection) Criticism • Stevens and the Interpersonal (Princeton University Press, 1991) • The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, co-authored with Allen Grossman) • Against Our Vanishing: Winter Conversations with Allen Grossman (Rowan Tree Press, 1981, co-authored with Allen Grossman) ==References==