Brett Foster
1973—2015
Poet and Renaissance scholar Brett Foster earned his BA at the University of Missouri, MA at Boston University, and PhD from Yale University. His first collection of poetry, The Garbage Eater (2011), was a finalist for a Drake University Emerging Writer Award and was selected for the Debut Poets feature in Poets & Writers magazine. He also published the chapbook Fall Run Road (2011). In an interview, Foster noted the role of the spiritual or religious in his work: “poetry is for me … a place to work out ideas, sure, but more centrally the heart’s matters, the cries of the heart—those things that the mind would deign to ponder, or might be confounded by. That’s poetry’s forge, and when it’s most exciting and satisfying (on poetry’s own terms, I mean), it’s a place that is free, open, safe, and surprising. Poems aren’t catechisms. They are, in their insights and vulnerabilities, better than that.”
Foster’s creative work frequently includes references to his scholarly pursuits; he has written on Donne, Shakespeare, and Renaissance-period Rome. His editing projects and works of scholarship included Shakespeare’s Life (2012), Shakespeare Through the Ages: The Sonnets (2009), Shakespeare Through the Ages: Hamlet (2008), and Rome (2005). Foster was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and taught at Wheaton College in Illinois. He died in 2015 at the age of 42.
Foster’s creative work frequently includes references to his scholarly pursuits; he has written on Donne, Shakespeare, and Renaissance-period Rome. His editing projects and works of scholarship included Shakespeare’s Life (2012), Shakespeare Through the Ages: The Sonnets (2009), Shakespeare Through the Ages: Hamlet (2008), and Rome (2005). Foster was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and taught at Wheaton College in Illinois. He died in 2015 at the age of 42.