Students participating in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing are among the brightest and most talented in the country. As a testimony to that fact, University of Evansville students consistently publish in some of the most respected periodicals in the nation, often while they are still undergraduates.

Currently featured writers:

Benjamin Vogt

Bill Notter

Carrie L. Jerrell

Benjamin Vogt ('99) was born in Oklahoma City and has lived in Minnesota, Indiana, and England. He has a B.F.A. from the University of Evansville, an M.F.A. from The Ohio State University, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in poetry at the University of Nebraska--Lincoln. He received the Joy Bale Boone Award from Wind Magazine and was a finalist for the 2003-04 Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell University. His newest chapbook, Indelible Marks, is currently availble from Pudding House Publications.

Click here to order Mr. Vogt's book.

A SUBURBAN AFFAIR

Men move through car engines on Saturdays,
replace the wailing fan belts and clean

brand new spark plugs. Their ash-colored hands
fall and rise like tree lines in the wind.

At mid day the push of sunlight into the
house's crevices shifts its weight from

thinning clouds, then draws out
the buried people. Grandmothers stir

like leaves to lawn chairs, nurse their walk
beneath the shade of eaves. Young men

play the driveway in one-on-one b-ball,
loop their bodies to the hoop like bows.

By afternoon the fire department is flushing
hydrants so the street moves smooth like the

Mississippi. Kids slide down the asphalt in plastic
sleds and tip their siblings on the cool curb.

In the black evening fathers will grow into their
wives' embrace on porches, wait for the

night to become too dark--when the women
can't see their own hands reaching into another's,

like planting tulip bulbs above the roots
of suddenly still birches.

*Published in The Cream City Review.

ALL THAT WAS SAID ABOUT THE KOREAN WAR

In the summers my grandparents would spray
poison on the juniper in front of their house.

The tree would soak as bagworms, grown on to
branches like pine cones, dripped to the ground.

When I became too curious Grandma would
yell to get out of the way, to move downwind

and avoid the mist. But from behind grandpa
I couldn't see a thing. His plaid shirt would

unfurl like loose sails around his gut, his heavy
arms bent and recoiled in the action like palm trees

under the rush of low-flying jets. From deep
in his shadow I could only sense the dying bugs,

the heavy-wet branches, the man with a
cigarette that balanced from his mouth like flesh.

That sweet air cut through my lungs like chlorine,
glued to my mind so that today, standing in the shower,

I understand there's nothing in the world
to protect me from dying, and that each year

the juniper now harbors every invasion.

*Published in Harpur Palate.

Mr. Notter recently completed an MFA in poetry at the University of Arkansas. After graduating from the University of Evansville, he poured concrete, fixed tires, dug post holes for John Grisham, picked cotton, and worked as an alcohol and drug counselor. He currently spends summers working as a Forest Service cultural resources interpreter in Wyoming, and enjoys photography, hiking, and drag racing. Bill has won two Walton Fellowships in Poetry from the University of Arkansas and a Chester H. Jones Foundation poetry prize. He has a chapbook forthcoming from Texas Review Press, and has been published in Alligator Juniper and The Formalist.

Click here to order Mr. Notter's book

DIRECTIONS IN THE NEBRASKA SANDHILLS

In the wind-flaked town of Lakeside,
I find two boys with a bow and arrows
shooting at starlings in the elms.
When I ask if the Lodgepole road is paved,
they stare as if I'd spoken Spanish.
But the short one cocks his tractor cap
and says the road is all caliche,
that I'd better go through Alliance.

With long hair and a ramshackle car
I must look like the drug-fiend crazies
their parents tell them about.
I want to tell them how lucky they are
to live in Nebraska's emptiest county.

Ahead of them are shotguns, pheasant,
deer from groves along the Platte.
Then clumsiness with girls, the monotony
of tractors, raking hay. They will hate Lakeside.
They will buy a pickup or souped-up car,
rumble away to Rapid City, Denver, anywhere.

When they find a place without wind
the air will feel like dirty clothes.
They will find country filled with trees,
but dream horizons. They will miss
the smell of alfalfa glistening at dawn.
In mountains they will wish for sunset
the way it looks past Alliance, nothing
but orange sky over all their families work for,
ponds like sheets of Depression glass,
trill of a fencepost meadowlark,
Angus in silhouette, more space
than anyone can stand until he leaves.

*Published in 1999 Chester H. Jones Foundation contest winners' anthology.

HAVE YOU SEEN ANNA?

I see the first flyer on a message board
in Wheatland. They are everywhere after that, blue,
green, pink, all with your smiling face.
Last seen jogging the mountain loop near Lander,
five-foot-six, one-ten, blonde. Cash
for information, your family desperate with hope.

I imagine you, twenty-two, hopeful,
waiting on a bench at the station, ready to board
a gone-bound bus. With your bank accounts all cashed,
you left that dusty, one-horse town, blew
that popstand for good. Who knows where you landed--
the West Coast maybe, someplace with an ocean of faces.

The townspeople talk of tragedy, can¹t face
thoughts of deliberate disappearance. Instead, they hope.
The able-bodied citizens of Lander
have scoured the canyon along the Shoshoni border,
suggesting you slipped. They remember you as a blue-
eyed rodeo queen, as the bank's liveliest cashier.

Out hiking, you stumbled onto a bear's cache,
a fresh deer. You glimpsed a shaggy face,
a mound of muscle reared against the blue
of spruce. Fighting, jabbing at its eyes was hopeless,
it splintered you like a thin pine board.
Your body will grow columbines, you're part of the land.

Or it happened like this--You were drawn by all that land,
the wilderness west of town. With gear secretly cached
you went for the hills, escaping the life that bored
you. Now your home is Mount Washakie's face.
Your folks, and the rancher's son they loved, lost hope
but they¹ll always remember your eyes when the mountains go blue.

Maybe you met the perfect man at the Bluestem
Club. He travels, photographing landscapes,
camping by streams in his truck. Your parents hoped
you'd settle down with Travis, heir to the Cash
Creek Ranch--a pedigreed life you couldn't face.
You¹re headed for Alaska, bare feet propped on the dashboard.

We hope against the truth--a van slows, you're pulled aboard.
Our hearts blue like steel toward a man we¹ll never catch.
An impartial patch of land holds you. We have posters of your face.

*Published in Alligator Juniper, 2000

THE GROOM'S CAKE

Legend states that if a single woman sleeps
with a piece of groom’s cake under her pillow,
she will dream of her future husband.

Afraid to stifle its prophetic powers
with Tupperware or plastic wrap, you leave
it on a plate and tell yourself eight hours
alone with your Prince Charming, make believe
or not, is worth one ruined pillowcase.

But then you meet him. Balding, doughy, squat,
he’s drinking Perrier at a NASCAR race.
Your first thought: Where’s Dale, Jr.? Your second: What
if this comes true? You wave red flags at him—
your psycho ex, your O.C.D., your love
of Maker’s Mark. He doesn’t get the warning,
although to you these secrets serve as grim
reminders that you’re sweet—just not enough,
and the one mess you can’t clean up in the morning.

THE PROCESSIONAL
(“Here Comes the Bride”)

It comes from Wagner’s opera Lohengrin,
when Elsa weds the knight whose identity
she swore she’d never ask. But mystery
is always overwhelming—the heroine
betrays their love to learn his name, and when
he disappears across the river, she
calls after him, then dies in agony.

The congregation rises. The strings begin
To play. Out steps another Elsa, veiled
today from the truth that all love coexists
with death. She’s just a momentary queen,
starting her own long walk from fairy-tale
first act to tragic final scene, who risks
them both for all the drama in between.

WHEN THE RIDER IS TRUTH

I am froth and lather, sent steaming
through jade fields while he sits
heavy in the saddle, beating love songs
on my flanks I’m slow to learn.
His snapped whip rings like church bells.
He prays my name. In different winds,
it rhymes with win and race. At night,
he rests against my neck and tells me
stars are born between my heartbeats,
though they’re unreachable this trip.
Still, with him I feel sure-footed
running on this soil of sand,
this miraculous green,
where every day is like no other
in its symmetry of hill and valley.
When shadows blend, I want the blinders on.
I want the spurs and speed. It’s then
I understand tight reins, the firm grip,
the bitter iron on my tongue,
the blood and sharper bit I’m driven with.

For a recent interview with Carrie Jerrell, click here.