Rane Arroyo Explained

Rane Arroyo
Birth Date:15 November 1954
Birth Place:Chicago, Illinois, United States
Death Place:Toledo, Ohio. United States
Occupation:Poet, performer, playwright, professor
Nationality:American
Notableworks:Pale Ramón
Awards:Carl Sandburg Poetry Prize

Ramón Arroyo (November 15, 1954 – May 7, 2010) was an American playwright, poet and scholar of Puerto Rican descent[1] who wrote numerous books and received many literary awards. He was a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Toledo in Ohio. His work deals extensively with issues of immigration, Latino culture, and homosexuality.[2] Arroyo was openly gay and frequently wrote self-reflexive, autobiographical texts.[3] He was the long-term partner of the American poet Glenn Sheldon.

Biography

Ramón Arroyo was born in Chicago, Illinois,[4] to Puerto Rican parents. He began his career as a performance artist in the Chicago art galleries of the 1980s and eventually expanded into poetry, for which he has become best known.

Arroyo earned his Ph.D. in English and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh where he wrote his dissertation on issues surrounding the "Chicago Renaissance" that parallel the building of a contemporary Latino literary canon.[5] He served as the co-Vice President of the board of directors for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and as the co-chair for the 2009 Chicago Conference.

His last public poetry reading was at SUNY/Brockport on March 31, 2010. His last three words to the public at that reading were: "Live. Then Write." It appears on the electronic version of the DVD Brockport made, in the SUNY Digital Repository https://hdl.handle.net/1951/84065. The quote is at the end of his poem, "The Anonymous Reader" at 38:32. Those three words were words he not only lived by but demanded of his creative writing students.

Arroyo died in the early morning of May 7, 2010 due to a cerebral hemorrhage.[6] [7] [8]

Critical reception

Arroyo was included in the Heath Anthology of American Literature published in 2006; this book is commonly taught in English college classes in the U.S.[3] He won the 2004–05 John Ciardi Poetry Prize for The Portable Famine; the 1997 Carl Sandburg Poetry Prize for his book The Singing Shark; and a 1997 Pushcart Prize for the poem "Breathing Lessons" as published in Ploughshares. Other awards include: Stonewall Books Chapbook Prize; The Sonora Review Chapbook Prize, the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Prize, and a 2007 Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in Poetry.

Betsy A. Sandlin published an article on him ("Poetry Always Demands All My Ghosts: The Haunted and Haunting Poetry of Rane Arroyo") in a landmark issue of CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies on Puerto Rican queer studies.[9] Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes has also written about his work.[3] [10] [11]

Works

Books of poetry

Book of short stories

Performed plays

Published plays

Awards and honors

Legacy

In 2012, Seven Kitchens Press announced the creation of the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize for an original, unpublished poetry manuscript.[12] The editors for this prize are Dan Vera and Ron Mohring. The co-winners of the inaugural prize were Steven Alvarez and Rhett Watts.[13]

In 2015, Arroyo was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.[14]

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Rane Arroyo. 30 January 2018. AGNI Online - Boston University. March 18, 2023.
  2. Sheldon, Glenn. "Arroyo, Rane." In Latin American Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes, ed. David William Foster. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. 43-46.
  3. La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence. "Arroyo, Rane." Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume E: Contemporary Period (1945 to the Present), Fifth Ed. Paul Lauter, general ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 2989-90.
  4. Web site: UBC Press About Rane Arroyo. UBC Press. en-US. 2020-05-04.
  5. Arroyo, Rane Ramón. "Babel, United States of America: A Writer of Color Rethinks the Chicago Renaissance." Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1994. Cited in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Document ID 740927961.
  6. Fellner, Steve. "Tribute to Rane Arroyo." Pansy Poetics May 8, 2010. Accessed May 9, 2010.
  7. Rapin, Kristen. "Poet Rane Arroyo’s death a ‘great tragedy and loss’" Toledo Free Press May 11, 2010. Accessed May 11, 2010.
  8. Web site: In-Memoriam: Rane Arroyo Glass: A Journal of Poetry. www.glass-poetry.com. 2020-05-04.
  9. Sandlin, Betsy A. "Poetry Always Demands All My Ghosts: The Haunted and Haunting Poetry of Rane Arroyo." CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 19.1 (Spring 2007): 162–177.
  10. La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence. Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
  11. La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence, Lourdes Torres, and Ramón Rivera-Servera. "Toward an Archive of Latina/o Queer Chicago: Art, Politics, and Social Performance." Out in Chicago: LGBT History at the Crossroads, edited by Jill Austin and Jennifer Brier. Chicago: Chicago History Museum, 2011. 127-153.
  12. Seven Kitchens Press. "Guidelines: The Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize." SevenKitchensPress.com, accessed March 10, 2013.
  13. Seven Kitchens Press. "Rane Arroyo Prize co-winners selected: Alvarez, Watts." SevenKitchensPress.com January 27, 2013, accessed March 10, 2013.
  14. Web site: The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame - Rane Arryo. chicagoliteraryhof.org. 8 October 2017.

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