NCWN

Two Estates by David Rigsbee

David Rigsbee’s seventh full-length collection, Two Estates (Cherry 
Grove Collections) follows on the heels of last year’s Cloud Journal 
(Turning Point Books).  Written in Italy in the 1990’s, Two Estates is 
about transformations:  fact to memory, life to word, matter to 
spirit.  Poet James Bertolino describes the book as “classical, 
complex, and balanced—as well as lucid, observant and precise:  
Rigsbee's poems continue to prove that beauty matters.  Two Estates is 
a collection that will last as long as there are readers.”  Poet 
Jordan Smith calls it a “masterful new collection.”

A native North Carolinian, David Rigsbee grew up in Durham and studied 
with Louis D. Rubin, Jr. and Carolyn Kizer at UNC, where he was a 
Morehead Scholar, before earning a master’s in the Johns Hopkins 
Writing Seminars and beginning a teaching career that has included 
three North Carolina colleges (UNC-G, St. Andrews, and Mount Olive 
College).  Since finishing a second master’s at Hollins (in 
philosophy) and a Ph.D. in modern American poetry from the University 
of Virginia, Rigsbee has published some 15 books and chapbooks, 
including Invited Guest:  An Anthology of Twentieth Century Southern 
Poetry (University of Virginia Press, 2001), selected as a notable 
university press book by the American Library Association and The 
Association of American University Professors, and featured on C-
Span’s Booknotes.  Rigsbee has published two critical works:  An 
Answering Music:  On the Poetry of Carolyn Kizer (1990) and Styles of 
Ruin:  Joseph Brodsky and the Postmodernist Elegy (1999).  In 
addition, he translated the poetry of Brodsky and other Russian poets 
in the 1970s (see Brodsky’s A Part of Speech, 1980).  Rigsbee’s work 
has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Black Warrior Review, 
The Carolina Quarterly, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The New 
Yorker, the Ohio Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner. The Sewanee Review, 
The Southern Review, and many others. He has won awards and 
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia 
Commission on the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and 
The Academy of American Poets.  He has also won awards from Willow 
Springs (The Vachel Lindsay Award, 1993) and from The St. Andrews 
Review (The Pound Award, 1985).

Rigsbee has lived in Raleigh since 1997 with his wife, the painter 
Jill Bullitt, and is currently contributing editor and regular book 
reviewer for the online magazine, The Cortland Review.