Background

Matthew Cannon Brennan was born on January 18, 1955, in Richmond Heights, Missouri, United States. He is the son of William J. and Suzanne (Simon) Brennan.

Education

Brenna graduated from Grinnell College with a bachelor's degree in 1977 and received his master's degree from the University of Minnesota in 1980. He then also earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1984, specializing in English.

Career

Brennan started his career working as a visiting assistant professor of English at the University of Minnesota from 1984 to 1985, and since then he has taught at Indiana State University, first as an assistant professor of English, then as an associate, and since 1992, as a professor of English there.

Achievements

• A professor of English and creative writing, Matthew Brennan has successfully combined his roles as poet and literary scholar. He is the author of two previous collections of poems, Seeing in the Dark (1993) and The Music of Exile (1994), as well as the verse-narrative The Sea-Crossing of Saint Brendan (2008). His poems have appeared widely in such publications as Poetry Ireland Review, Notre Dame Review, South Dakota Review, Poet Lore, Sewanee Review, and Blue Unicorn.
  
  During his career, Brennan has also written two critical studies—Wordsworth, Turner, and Romantic Landscape (1987) and The Gothic Psyche (1997)—and has contributed articles and reviews to South Carolina Review, South Atlantic Quarterly, Sewanee Review, Georgia Review, The Wordsworth Circle, English Language Notes, and other journals.

Works

Works Gallery

• book

  • One Life

    (It's a book of a spare and dark American love and loss, w...)

    2016
  • The Gothic Psyche: Disintegration and Growth in Nineteenth-Century English Literature

    (The Gothic Psyche offers close readings of poems by Coler...)

    1997
  • The Poet's Holy Craft: William Gilmore Simms and Romantic Verse Tradition

    (The Poet's Holy Craft represents the first full-length an...)

    2012
  • The Sea-Crossing of Saint Brendan

    (A classic Irish sea adventure translated from Latin prose...)

    2008
  • The House with the Mansard Roof 2009
  • Wordsworth, Turner, and Romantic Landscape: A Study of the Traditions of the Picturesque and the Sublime 1987
  • The Music of Exile: Poems 1994

Membership

Brennan is a member of the Institute for Evolutionary Psychology, Indiana College English Association, Indianapolis Writers’ Center, Wordsworth-Coleridge Association and Phi Beta Kappa.

Connections

Brenna was married Laura L. Fredendall from 1977 to 1987 when the couple decided to get divorced. He then married Beverley Simms on May 21, 1994, with whom he has one son, Daniel William. They live in Terre Haute.

father:

William J. Brennan - health insurance executive

mother:

Suzanne (Simon) Brennan - artist , programmer

ex-wife:

Laura L. Fredendall

wife:

Beverley Simms - educator , pianist

son:

Daniel William Brennan