Djanikian, Gregory
Born: August 15, 1949, in Alexandria, Egypt
Vocations: Poet, Professor
Geographic Connection to Pennsylvania: Williamsport, Lycoming County

Keywords: Anahid Literary Award, Carnegie-Mellon University, creative writing, Falling Deeply into America, imagery, National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry, University of Pennsylvania, Years Later

Abstract: Born in 1949 in Alexandria, Egypt, Gregory Djanikian grew up in Williamsport, PA. After receiving degrees from both the University of Pennsylvania and Syracuse University he began a career teaching English and Creative Writing. Djanikian's interest in poetry first began in college, and he has currently published four books of poems. Today he lives and works in Pennsylvania.

Biography:

Gregory Djanikian was born on August 15, 1949 in Alexandria, Egypt and at age six moved with his family to Williamsport, PA. He received his undergraduate degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania and then went on to graduate from Syracuse University's Creative Writing Program. Djanikian has worked as an English teacher at New York public schools, as well as a lecturer at both Syracuse University and the University of Michigan. Since 1983 he has worked at the University of Pennsylvania as both a professor of English and as the head of the Creative Writing Department.

The desire to write didn't come to Djanikian until he became inspired about poetry by his freshman English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and since then it has continued to be an important part of his life. Djanikian's passion for poetry is evident in his purpose behind his writing: “I feel that poetry is a communication between people on the most intense level, even if it's only between two people, writer and reader. This relationship may be one of the most intimate we might experience, when one intuitively and deeply speaks to another.”

Since his first collection of poems, The Man in the Middle, was published by the Carnegie-Mellon University Press in 1984, Djanikian has produced three more books of poems and is currently working on his fifth book. In addition to his books, Djanikian's poetry has also been featured in several magazines and journals including The American Scholar, The Nation, Poetry, Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, as well as the Anthology of Magazine Verse.

Djanikian has won many awards for his work. These include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, the Friends of Literature Award in 2002, and the Anahid Literary Award from the Armenian Center of Columbia University in 2004.

In addition to the awards that he has won, Djanikian's poetry has also received strong praise from critics. Howard Frank Mosher wrote in the Washington Post “[Falling Deeply into America is] one of the most lyrical, and readily accessible, books of poetry I've read in years.” In The Georgia Review, Judith Kitchen writes a review of Djanikian's Years Later, praising the insightfulness of his poems. She comments, “With its gentle handling of psychology and its playful speculations, Years Later is. . .a study in tone. Tone dictates what attitude the reader will take toward content, and Djanikian masterfully modulates tone, playing something in each key in order to give us the full range of experience.”

The themes present in Djanikian's poems range from his boyhood growing up in Alexandria, Egypt, to romantic love, as well as the Armenian genocide of 1915. One common feature of all his poems is his gift for descriptive language that creates an image that transports the reader inside of each poem. An example of his lyrical writing can be seen in “Alexandria, 1953” from Falling Deeply into America:

You could think of sunlight
Glancing off the minarets,
You could think of guavas and figs
And the whole marketplace filled
With the sumptuous din of haggling,
But you could not think of Alexandria
Without the sea, or the sea,
Turquoise and shimmering, without
The white city rising before it.

The poem “Lac de Nom Perdu” from Years Later employs similar nature imagery to compliment a different theme—love.

and the beaded water
falling off their oarblades

like stars, like prisms
of happiness falling

from a long way off
and with hardly a sound.

Djanikian is currently living in Narberth, PA with his wife and two children. He continues to teach at the University of Pennsylvania and his fifth book, So I Will Till the Ground, will appear in 2006.

Works:

Books:

• The Man in the Middle. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon U, 1984.
• Falling Deeply into America. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon UP, 1989.
• About Distance. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon UP, 1995.
• Years Later. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon UP, 2000.

Sources:

• Djanikian, Gregory. Email interview with Alan Jalowitz. 3 Nov. 2005.
• “Greg Djanikian.” The University of Pennsylvania Department of English. Online. 15 Mar. 2006. <http://www.english.upenn.edu/People/Faculty/ profile.php?pennkey=djanikia>.
• Kitchen, Judith. “In Pursuit of Elegance.” The Georgia Review 54 (2000): 763-780.
• Mosher, Howard Frank. “Good Times and Verse.” The Washington Post 06 Aug. 1989, Final ed., section X: 5.
• Sternstein, Aliya. “'Penn'ing Great Poetry.” The Daily Pennsylvanian. 26 Oct. 2000. Online. 15 Mar. 2006. <http://writing.upenn.edu/~wh/news/djanikian.html>.

This biography was prepared by Lauren Hall.