Logan Esdale


Department of English
One University Drive
Chapman University
Orange CA    92866


PhD, SUNY Buffalo (2003)
MA, U of Western Ontario
BA, U of British Columbia


›››  Two chapters from my book manuscript – “Interpersonal Space: Epistolarity and American Writing, 1852-1937” – have been published: “Dickinson’s Epistolary ‘Naturalness’” and “Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding and The Space of Letters.” Both are available at Project Muse, the former in The Emily Dickinson Journal (14.1) and the latter in the Journal of Modern Literature (29.4). Other chapters in the book are on the work of Henry James, Edith Wharton, George Saintsbury and Marianne Moore.

Out of the early 20th-century commentary on letter writing, I generate in “Interpersonal Space” a theoretical perspective on the period’s aesthetics, examining the role of privacy in the creative process, the interplay of sociality and authorship, and the poetics of difference. Working in archives – the American literature collection at the Beinecke Library and the Marianne Moore collection at the Rosenbach Museum in particular – is both a cause and an effect of my interest in the line between what is written to be published and what is not. What is the difference between a poem (public, in a book) and a letter (private, at home or in an archive)?

›››  A National Poetry Foundation collection on Ronald Johnson includes an essay of mine. Then there are some shorter pieces, on Gertrude Stein, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Women Poets, Australian poets, Juliana Spahr’s Everybody’s Autonomy, Thomas Gardner’s A Door Ajar, Graham Foust’s As In Every Deafness and Closure. I have also published a couple of poetry chapbooks, one out from Phylum Press and the other available here. Both were written in collaboration with the artwork of Lara Odell; for an exhibition of her work I wrote the catalogue introduction. As well, I co-edit an advice column with Lara, and make t-shirts.