Duane Locke: The First Decade (1968-1978)
Duane Locke was born in 1921 on a farm near Vienna, Georgia. His undergraduate work at the University of Florida led to his Masters studies on John Keats and set the foundation for his Doctoral thesis on the poetry of John Donne and Andrew Marvell. He received a Ph.D. in English Renaissance Literature in 1958 and was Professor of English and Poet in Residence at the University of Tampa for over twenty years. At the University of Tampa, he edited three critically acclaimed journals of poetry,Poetry Review(1964-1971),UT Review(1972-1982), andAbatis(1983-1986). He taught courses on every period of poetry ranging from Old English to contemporary, with a concentration in contemporary European and Latin American poetry. Locke's poems have appeared in such journals asAmerican Poetry Review,The Nation,The Literary Review,Kansas Quarterly,Black Moon,Ann Arbor Review, andThe Bitter Oleanderto name but a few. At present count he has had over 6,000 poems published in both print and more currently e-zine formats. He is the author of fifteen books of poetry. His honors include the Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize for best sonnet written in that year, the Charles Agnoff Award for best poem in a literary review, and the Walt Whitman Award bestowed upon him by the Poetry Society of America.