New York, New York
Born 1941, Brooklyn, New York
Poet, Teacher
Most of the time, at least when I think I’m writing well, I don’t quite know what I’m after: I hope to surprise myself. Naturally, it doesn’t always work, nor does the surprise, even when it comes, guarantee the success of what’s producing it. One thing that’s always inspired me is seeing what I can get away with, like making baseball lineups into poems or making “lyrical” poems out of material and language that have no business being lyrical. I think my poetry these days is “messier” than it used to be, which I hope is a good thing, some sort of departure. The long poems that begin and end the new book, Cadenza, are, in this sense, more cadenza-like, freer, with more tone-changing, etc. I do a lot of scribbling and a fair amount of putting away and later—sometimes much later—re-locating.
1964 M.A., English and American Literature, Columbia University
1962 B.A., English and Philosophy, Tufts University
1997 Poet-in-Residence, Pace University
1993 Poet-in-Residence, Pace University
2007 Cadenza. Brooklyn, NY: Hanging Loose
2004 Tulips (with Trevor Winkfield). New Haven, CT: Phylum
2001 The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight. New York, NY/Boston, MA: Adventures in Poetry
1999 New and Selected Poems. Los Angeles, CA: Sun & Moon
1998 No Other Way: Selected Prose. Brooklyn, NY: Hanging Loose
1989 The Year of the Olive Oil. Brooklyn, NY: Hanging Loose
1978 Leap Year: Poems 1968-1978. New York, NY: Kulchur
1974 Elizabethan & Nova Scotian Music. New York, NY: Adventures in Poetry
2005, 1998, 1989, 1987 Fund for Poetry Award
2001, 1980 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship
2001 Finalist for inaugural Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award for The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight
1972 Poets Foundation Award
