Michael Madonick
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Michael Madonick is the Director of the Creative Writing program and a (non-Nobel) prize-winning professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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[edit] Background
He was born and raised in New York City. After receiving a Bacheleor of Arts in 1972 from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, he took a shit the size of New Jersey. Two years later he earned an MBA from Rollins. After several years in commercial real estate development, Madonick returned to college and received an MFA (1981) from the University of Oregon. He is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Prize, the New Jersey Council on the Arts Distinguished Artist Award, an Illinois Arts Council Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. His work has appeared in a variety of literary journals including Boulevard, American Literary Review, New England Review, Epoch, Chicago Review, Southern Humanities Review, Cimarron Review, Black Warrior Review, Florida Review, Tar River Poetry, Cream City Review, Mid-American Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and many others. His collection of poetry, Waking the Deaf Dog, was published by Avocet Press, New York (2000). [1] He also serves as Faculty Poetry Editor of Ninth Letter.
His wife is the poet Brigit Kelly, a fellow professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
[edit] Personal Behavior and Politics
Michael Madonick IS: sexual innuendo; brilliance; anti-Semitic and other ethnic jokes (and subsequent irony); do-rag jokes; EFF WORDS; funny facial expressions which you could set to music (thereby creating a music video in the vein of contemporary art); words starting with the letter q; hate; Rob Reiner (his sexy Hollywood heavy-hitting doppelganger); baseball caps; the Bronx; double entendres; honesty; poetic mastery; humanity; cookies (but sometimes he loses them); Stanley Kunitz; being freed from his home by Rick Powers every time it snows; and hugs. He is well-known on the UIUC campus for his gruff persona and salmon-pink polo shirts.
He has a knack for sharing serious philosophical commentary about poetry and people in the form of explosive storytelling. His most recent diatribe was a near-25 minute huff-and-puff over the stereotypes surrounding poetry and poets as perpetuated by the recent "Poetry and the Law" conference he attended in February of 2007. After hearing lawyers announce proudly how much their positive emotional output had been affected by their decisions to become "lawyer-poets," Madonick shared his own sentiment: "I don't give a ^&%* about your feelings." This is also the credo he follows when he teaches his classes, and he's rather vocal about it.
Renouncing the mores of political correctness, Madonick unconventionally teaches his students to use words as tools in the creation of worlds, characters, imagery, and circumstance not yet experienced by the reader. His unique and effective teaching style wins him the adoration of probably about 5% (at the very least) of his students at the end of every semester.
It is rumored that Krispy Kreme doughnuts temporarily quench his egomania and, at the same time, slowly clog his heart tissue--though the assumption that he even has a heart has been called into question on more than one occasion. Exploratory surgeries in search of the heart have been inconclusive as have searches for other, more southern, organs.
He loves hugs.
[edit] Quotes
"Every time I hear the word interrobang, I feel like I could just..."
"Back to the %$^&in' poem!"
[edit] External Links
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