Paul Guest is an American poet and memoirist.

Paul Guest was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee.^{[citation needed]} When he was twelve, Guest broke the third and fourth vertebrae in his neck in a bicycle accident, bruising his spinal cord and paralyzing him from the neck down.^[1] He is a quadriplegic.

He graduated from University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and from Southern Illinois University with an M.F.A. in 1999.^[2][3]

Guest's poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Slate and elsewhere. They are also published in collections as books.

• 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry^[4]
• 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers series
• 2007 Whiting Award
• 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
• 2002 New Issues Press Poetry Prize

• Because Everything Is Terrible. Diode Editions. 2018. ISBN 978-1939728234.
• My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge. Ecco. 2008. ISBN 978-0-06-168516-3.
• Notes For My Body Double. University of Nebraska Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-8032-6035-1.
• Exit Interview: Poems. New Michigan Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-9762092-7-0.
• The Resurrection of the body and the Ruin of the World. New Issues, Western Michigan University. 2003. ISBN 978-1-930974-27-2.

• One More Theory About Happiness. Ecco. 2010. ISBN 9780061685170.

• "Author's blog"
• "Character and Voice: Picks for National Poetry Month"
• "Paul Guest", Fishouse
• "An interview with poet Paul Guest", Poetry Foundation
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• One More Theory About Happiness review, Creative Loafing Atlanta

Online Poems

• Mary Karr, ed. (October 26, 2008). "User's Guide to Physical Debilitation; The Lives of the Optimists". The Washington Post.
• "The Intrusion of Ovid"; "LOVE IN THE SINGULAR"; "SMALL WONDER"; "THE ADVENT OF ZERO"; "PLUTO’S LOSS"; "CONSOLATION FOR VIRGIL"; "NOTES FOR MY BODY DOUBLE"; "Ode", The Adirondack Review
• "Apologia", Octopus, Issue 7
• "At Night, In November, Trying Not To Think Of Asphodel," "Austria," Bordering On The Tragic," "Oblivion: Letter Home, "Oblivion: Letter Home"
• "DONALD DUCK'S LAMENT", Diagram 3.5
• "Landscape With Décolletage", Slate, May 7, 2002
• "Plenitude", Crazyhorse, Number 67
• "On the Persistence of the Letter as a Form"