Vijay Seshadri

Vijay Seshadri is an American, Brooklyn, New York–based poet, essayist, and literary critic. Vijay won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, for 3 Sections.

Vijay’s parents immigrated to the United States from Bangalore, India when he was five. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where his father taught chemistry at Ohio State University.

In a 2004 interview, Vijay discussed the creative process and his influences, in particular Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Blake. He also reflects on his cultural influences including the experience of “strangeness” coming of age in Columbus, Ohio during the 1960s.

3 Sections

Poems

2014

First I had three apocalyptic visions, each more terrible than the last. The graves open, and the sea rises to kill us all.
Then the doorbell rang, and I went downstairs and signed for two packages―
―from “This Morning”

In an array of poetic forms from the rhyming lyric to the philosophical meditation to the prose essay, 3 Sections confronts perplexing divisions of contemporary life―a wayward history, an indeterminate future, and a perpetual longing to out-think time. This is a vital book by one of America’s best poets.

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