Frank Judge

Frank Judge is an American poet, publisher, translator, journalist, film critic, teacher, and arts administrator.^[1] His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including New Directions, The Greenfield Review, The New Orleans Review, The Bellingham Review, Miller's Pond, HazMat Review, Bitterroot, Invisible City, Blank Tape, Manticora, Brass Bell, Troutswirl, Lake Affect, and Writer Online. His translations have appeared Poesia verde, Rapporti and Tam-Tam (Italy), and other journals. In 2012, he was among the first poets inducted into the Rochester Poets Walk,^[2] a walk of fame in the sidewalk along University Avenue in front of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery. Other inductees included such poets as John Ashbery, William Carlos Williams, Galway Kinnell, W.D. Snodgrass, and E.E. Cummings.

Career

Judge declined an offer to teach at Rochester Institute of Technology to accept a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy. He spent spent over a year in Rome. During his time in Italy and for several years after his return, he was a contributor to and an editor of The Vanderbilt Poetry Review.^[3] and compiled and edited material for an anthology of contemporary Italian poetry published as a special issue of the Review. In his introduction to the anthology, Italian poet Pietro Cimatti notes that it "presents itself as honestly as its poems -– tastefully and unpretentiously; including some notable poets, many who have been writing for years, and some relatively new -– an open-ended package, a heterogenous product of language by skilled craftsmen" ^[4] Of Judge’s work as a poet and translator, scholar and translator Cambon observed that "he moves at ease between English and Italian literature, between writing his own poetry and translating poems from other languages.".^[5]

The volume contained his translations of poems by Sandro Penna, Danilo Dolci, Nelo Risi, Vittorio Sereni, Andrea Zanzotto, Pietro Cimatti, and others. He has also translated the work of Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach, as well as his own poetry and the work of other American poets such as John Berryman, William Heyen and Lyn Lifshin into Italian.

As a journalist, Judge was an editor and writer on arts, entertainment, consumer affairs and consumer electronics. He's written on film for over for 40 years, starting during his stay in Rome where he wrote film reviews for the Rome Daily American, the daily English language newspaper for expatriates and tourists. After his return to Rochester, he became Entertainment Editor for the Rochester-based Valley Magazine, which covered the entire Genesee Valley Region. He also wrote reviews and entertainment-related articles for the Rochester Times-Union and the Wolfe newspaper chain, then became Managing Editor of the arts newspaper, Rochester Routes.

He has interviewed a host of authors, actors, directors and other celebrities, among them novelist Norman Mailer; poets Earle Birney, Jim Carroll and William Heyen; directors Sidney Lumet, Oliver Stone, Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, James Bridges; actors Jane Fonda, Michael J. Fox, Gene Hackman, Jeff Bridges, Diane Keaton, Richard Dreyfuss, Meg Ryan, James Caan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Dennis Quaid, Martin Sheen, Madeleine Stowe, Robert Loggia, Mark Wahlberg; publisher Hugh Hefner; film executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, and music-TV impresario Dick Clark.

Judge's poetry has been anthologized in such publications as Poets Against the War (2003), VoicesInWartime.org, Summer Songs (2004), Knocking on the Silence (2005), an anthology of poetry inspired by the Finger Lakes region of New York State, and Uncensored Songs (2007), a collection of poems honoring poet Sam Abrams; and, most recently, Liberty's Vigil: 99 Poets Among the 99% (2012), a volume dedicated to the Occupy Movement.^[6] A number of his poems have been published as broadsides, mounted art, and poem-postcards as well on several Dial-a-Poem services.

His books include Two Voices and Approximations. His poetry broadsides have been included in exhibitions in the Rochester area at such venues as the Center at High Falls Gallery, the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, the Fourwalls Gallery, the Books, Etc. Gallery (Macedon, NY), and the Williams Art Gallery of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester.

He is editor and publisher of Exit Online and the Pinnacle Hill Review. Since 2003, he's been the President of Rochester Poets; in October, 2004 he was one of the founding members of the Rochester Area Haiku Group; in 2005 he became Director of the Rochester Poetry Workshop, which he formed from the Rochester area Meetup poetry group when Meetup announced it would begin levying a monthly fee for its previously free flagship service. In 2011, he began teaching creative writing at OASIS,^[7] the group of educational centers founded in 1983 and supported for many years by The May Company, now part of Macy's.

From 2004 to 2011, Judge was the Rochester area organizer for Poets Against the War & Occupation; from March 2007 to September 2009, he hosted a monthly reading series at Rochester's anti-war Peace Storefront, a program of the Peace Action & Education task force of Metro Justice of Rochester.^[8] The Storefront closed at the end of September 2009 due to lack of funding, and, when no new location materialized, the series was suspended. He remains a member of PA&E and is involved in its PeaceWorks Rochester project.

Since March 2006, Judge has served as coordinator for the Western New York World Poetry Day Festival held annually at St. John Fisher College. In 2011, he became a Rochester area coordinator for 100 Thousand Poets for Change, an annual event held in September started by poet Michael Rothenberg.^[9]

In December 2008, he started the monthly series, Rochester Poets @ Lovin' Cup, a cafe which opened in the summer of 2008 in the Park Point at RIT in Henrietta, New York. The series was discontinued in 2009 when time constraints, audience mix, lack of publicity and promotion and changing focus by the venue owneers made an ongoing literary event unfeasible.

From August 2007 to August 2009, Judge hosted the bi-weekly Free Speech Zone series at Rochester's Mez Cafe. The Mez closed in August 2009. In October, the venue was renovated and re-opened under new management as the Tango Cafe. The Free Speech Zone resumed in November, 2009 and ran until December, 2011.

Notable relatives

Judge is a cousin of Italian-born film and television actor and Academy member Cesare Danova, and prominent, award-winning Roman artist Sergio Deitinger, who paints under the name DeiTinger. He is also related to Italian novelist Alberto Moravia via another Italian cousin. His cousin Edmund Wall was a well-known poet in the Troy-Albany, NY area.

References