Representative Joseph Stanton

Joseph Stanton (born 1949) is an American scholar and poet who has combined an academic career in art history and American studies with a prolific output as a writer of lyric and ekphrastic poetry. He is a Professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his interdisciplinary work has often bridged visual culture, literature, and the arts of Hawaiʻi and the broader United States. Alongside his academic career, he has become widely recognized as a poet whose work appears in leading literary journals and in numerous books and anthologies.

Details of Stanton’s early life and education are less prominently documented than his later professional and literary achievements, but his birth in 1949 situates him in a postwar generation of American writers and scholars who came of age during a period of expanding university systems and a growing interest in American studies as a distinct academic field. His eventual appointment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa reflects both his scholarly engagement with American and trans-Pacific cultural exchanges and his long-term residence in Hawaiʻi, where the islands’ landscapes, histories, and communities have informed much of his creative and critical work.

Stanton’s academic career has been centered at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he serves as Professor of Art History and American Studies. In that role he has taught and written on subjects that include the relationships between text and image, the visual arts, and American cultural history. His work often emphasizes how images and narratives intersect in painting, illustration, film, and popular culture, and he has been associated with projects and exhibitions that explore these intersections. Through his teaching and scholarship he has contributed to the intellectual life of the university and to the study of American visual and literary culture in an international context.

In parallel with his academic work, Stanton has developed a substantial career as a poet. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry East, Harvard Review, Ekphrasis, New York Quarterly, Antioch Review, New Letters, and many other journals and anthologies, establishing him as a widely published voice in contemporary American poetry. He is particularly noted for ekphrastic poems—works that respond to visual art—as well as for poems that draw on the natural world, sports, and the everyday life of Hawaiʻi and the mainland United States. His writing has been discussed in venues such as “The Poetry of Joseph Stanton: Words Meet Images” and an “Ekphrastic Interview with Joseph Stanton,” which highlight his sustained engagement with the dialogue between word and image.

Stanton is the author of numerous poetry collections spanning several decades. His later volumes include Lifelines (Shanti Arts Publications, 2023), Prevailing Winds (Shanti Arts Publications, 2022), and Moving Pictures (Shanti Arts Publications, 2019), books that continue his exploration of visual culture, memory, and place. Earlier collections include Things Seen (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2016), A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban Oʻahu (Time Being Books, 2006), Cardinal Points: Poems on St. Louis Cardinals Baseball (McFarland and Company, 2002), and Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art (Time Being Books, 1999). These volumes collectively demonstrate his range—from meditations on art and film to close observations of Hawaiʻi’s flora and fauna and an enduring fascination with baseball as an American pastime.

Collaboration has also been an important part of Stanton’s literary life. He was one of four authors of What the Kite Thinks: A Linked Poem by Ooka Makoto, Wing Tek Lum, Joseph Stanton, and Jean Yamasaki Toyama (University of Hawaiʻi, 1994), a work that reflects cross-cultural and collaborative poetics. He has contributed to and helped shape several anthologies and collections, including The Quietest Singing (with Darrell H. Y. Lum and Estelle Enoki, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000), A Hawaiʻi Anthology (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1997), The Ten Rules of Fishing (with James Harstad, Bamboo Ridge Press, 1985), and British & European Literature, Vol. I, II, & III (1983). His involvement with Bamboo Ridge Press and other regional and national publishers underscores his role in both Hawaiʻi’s literary community and the broader American poetry landscape.

Stanton’s poems and prose have been widely anthologized, reflecting the breadth of his interests. His work appears in Paumanok: Transition (Island Sound Press, 2022) and in multiple editions of Paumanok (Island Sound Press, edited by Kathaleen Donnelly, 2022, 2013, and 2009), linking him to Long Island–centered literary projects. He is represented in Poets Speaking to Poets: Echoes and Tributes (ed. Nicholas Fargnoli and Robert Hamblin, 2021) and From the Farther Shore: Cape Cod & the Islands Through Poetry (ed. Alice Kociemba, Robin Smith-Johnson, and Rich Youmans, 2021), as well as in Double Features: Big Ideas in Film (Great Books Foundation, 2017), which reflects his interest in cinema. His poems have been included in Heart of the Order: Baseball Poems (ed. Gabriel Fried, Persea Books, 2014), Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems (ed. Brook Horvath and Tim Wiles, 2001), and Horsehide, Pigskin, Oval Tracks, and Apple Pie (ed. James Vlaisch, McFarland, 2006), marking him as a significant contributor to the literature of sports, especially baseball.

His work also appears in Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined (ed. Madelyn Garner and Andrea Watson, 2010), Troll’s-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales (ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Viking-Penguin, 2009), Paumanok: Poems and Pictures of Long Island (ed. Kathaleen Donnelly, Cross-Cultural Communications, 2009), We Go Eat: A Mixed Plate from Hawaiʻi’s Food Culture (ed. Craig Howes and Susan Yim, 2008), Honolulu Stories (ed. Gavan Daws, 2008), and Sinatra: …but buddy, I’m kind of a poem (ed. Gilbert L. Gigliotti, Entasis Press, 2007). Additional appearances in “Gondola Signore Gondola”: Venezia nella poesia americana del Novecento (ed. and trans. Mamoli Zorzi Rosella, Supernova Edizioni, 2007), Mona Poetica: A Poetry Anthology (ed. Diane DeCillis and Mary Jo Gillet, 2005), Of Frogs and Toads: Poems and Short Prose Pieces Featuring Amphibians (ed. Jill Carpenter, 1998), Fire in the Sea (ed. Sue Cowing, Honolulu Museum of Art, 1996), Dumb Beautiful Ministers (ed. William Heyen, Birnham Wood Graphics, 1996), In Autumn: A Collection of Long Island Poetry (ed. George Wallace, Birnham Wood Press, 1994), and Best of Bamboo Ridge (ed. Eric Chock and Darrell Lum, Bamboo Ridge Press, 1986) further attest to the diversity of themes and venues that have welcomed his work.

In addition to his books and anthology contributions, Stanton has been the subject of critical and popular attention in various media. A Kunstpedia entry on Joseph Stanton and pieces such as “The Poetry of Joseph Stanton: Words Meet Images” and “Ekphrastic Interview with Joseph Stanton” examine his methods and influences, particularly his use of visual art as a catalyst for poetry. Articles and reviews with titles such as Nights on B Street, Vice-Versa on “Nights on B Street,” Local Poet Joseph Stanton turns to the natural world for inspiration, UH professor mixes poetry, baseball in his new book, Catcher in the Wry: Baseball Poems, Our forever pastime, and a Review of Abraxas, Vol. 47, 2010, document the reception of his work and his ongoing engagement with readers and audiences. Through his dual career as professor and poet, Joseph Stanton has maintained an active presence in both academic and literary circles well into the twenty-first century.