David Yezzi
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David Dalton Yezzi (born 1966) is an American poet, actor and executive editor of The New Criterion.
Yezzi is a former associate editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review and a former poetry editor at The New Criterion.[1]
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[edit] Poetry and The New Criterion
He was formerly poetry editor of the magazine and still selects the poems for it. "It is important to the magazine to publish strong poems," he said in a 2006 interview. "We publish three to five pages of poetry in every issue," in addition to a special feature on poetry in April.[2]
"[T]here is a way in which most poetry disqualifies itself within a few lines," Yezzi said. "I would like to say that there are more good poems coming into our offices than we can use, but the truth is that we're always diligently on the lookout for good work. We sometimes solicit work from poets we admire so that we can fill the thirty to fifty pages a year. There's just not that much good verse out there."[2]
Asked what living poets he admires, Yezzi mentioned Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur, Alicia Stallings, David Barber, and Adam Kirsch. He also mentioned the recently deceased Anthony Hecht and Donald Justice.[2]
[edit] Life and career
He was born in Albany, New York,[2] and earned a bachelor's degree in theater from Carnegie Mellon University and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Columbia University School of the Arts.[3]
In 1992, Herbert Leibowitz gave Yezzi his first editing job at Parnassus: Poetry in Review. Since then, he has held editing positions at The New York Observer and The New Criterion, returning to Parnassus as associate editor in 2000 and to The New Criterion as poetry editor in 2004.[3]
Before becoming execcutive editor at The New Criterion, he directed the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center, a reading series and writing program founded in 1939. Yezzi produced the weekly reading series at which poets, playwrights, novelists, and non-fiction authors share and discuss their work. In addition, he oversaw the center's youth outreach initiative, adult literacy project, writing program and he expanded the number of poetic dramas and dramatic readings[2] at the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre, which presents dramatic readings of plays written by poets.[3]
Prior to becoming director of the poetry center in 2001, Mr. Yezzi was chief administrator of The New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University.[3]
Mr. Yezzi lives in New York with his family.[3]
[edit] Drama
Yezzi was actor and co-founder of the San Francisco theater company, Thick Description, and has performed in works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Brecht, Goethe, Williams and others in the United States and Europe.[3] In 2000, he performed with the company in Bertolt Brecht's The Visions of Simone Machard.
In 2006, Yezzi was producer for the stage adaptation of Glyn Maxwell's book of poetry, The Sugar Mile.
[edit] Awards and recognition
While in college, he won The Academy of American Poets College Prize and the Thomas Auclair Award for acting from Carnegie Mellon. In graduate school, he received the David Craig Austin Memorial Award from Columbia University (judged by Jorie Graham).[3]
In 1998, he was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University (1998-2000).[3]
His poems have been published in literary journals including The Yale Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Poetry Daily and The New Criterion. His literary essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Sun, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The (London) Times Literary Supplement, Poetry and elsewhere.[3]
Yezzi's poem "The Call" appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006. The poem had originally appeared in New England Review
[edit] Works
[edit] Books
- Sad Is Eros (Aralia Press), poetry chapbook
- 2003 in poetry: The Hidden Model (TriQuarterly/Northwestern), poetry, 96 pages, ISBN-10: 0810151448 ISBN-13: 978-0810151444
- The Zoo Anthology Of Younger American Poets (Zoo Press), anthology (was due out in August 2006) ISBN-10: 193202302X ISBN-13: 978-1932023022
[edit] Music
His libretto for a new chamber opera by composer David Conte, Firebird Motel, premiered in 2003 and is to be published by E. C. Schirmer. It was recently released on CD by Arsis.[3]
[edit] External links
- [1] Biographical sketch of Yezzi at the 92nd Street Y Web site, also available on a Google cache at [2]
[edit] Articles by Yezzi online
- "The fortunes of formalism" in New Criterion
- "The Memory of Donald Justice" in New Criterion
- brief review of All of Us by Raymond Carver in The New York Times Book Review
- "An Expert on Human Failings" brief article on Anthony Hecht in The New York Times Book Review
[edit] Poems online
[edit] Reviews of Yezzi's books
- [http://www.cprw.com/Kirsch/youngpoets1.htm Adam Kirsch review of The Hidden Model
