Jesse Graves
Jesse Graves was born and raised in Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, forty miles north of Knoxville, where his family settled in the 1780s. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, and recently completed Field Portrait, his first manuscript of poems. He received his MFA degree in Poetry from Cornell University, and has taught literature and writing at UT, Cornell, and the University of New Orleans. Jesse’s poems have appeared in recent issues of Southern Poetry Review, Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, and Tar River Poetry. His essay “Lattice Work: Formal Tendencies in the Poetry of Robert Morgan and Ron Rash,” along with three of his poems, appeared in a special issue of The Southern Quarterly on the theme of “Poetry in the South.” In fall 2009, he will join the faculty at East Tennessee State University as assistant professor of English.
