Chris Stroffolino
Encyclopedia
Chris Stroffolino is an American poet
, musician, critic, performer, author of 12 books of poetry and prose, and probably best known to the general populace for working alongside Steve Malkmus and David Berman on The Silver Jews “American Water” album (1998 Drag City). Stroffolino, (born in Reading, Pennsylvania
March 20, 1963) attended Albright College, Temple University
and Bard College, The University of Massachusetts
, before receiving a Ph.D.
at Suny-Albany with a dissertation on William Shakespeare
in 1998.
, Candace Kaucher and Jerome Robinson. Stroffolino’s first book of poems, “Incidents (At The Corner Of Desire & Disgust)”, published by David Roskos’s Vendatta Books (Iniquity Press) in 1990, collected the more popular of these performance poems. Stroffolino co-edited The Painted Bride Quarterly from 1988–1990, worked on the Philly anarchist ‘zine, Talk Is Cheap, and co-founded the underground punk warehouse, KillTime Place in 1989 while organizing reading series at The Schmidt-Dean Gallery and Borders Books.
Stroffolino’s next book, “Oops” (published by Boulder Colorado’s backyard press in 1991, republished by Pavement Saw Press in 1994), while sharing many of the themes & personae of his first book, consisted of poems published in magazines but seldom performed at readings. Often considered Stroffolino’s homage to protracted adolescence, the poems in Oops got Stroffolino’s page-based poetry to a national audience and set the tone for the subsequent books of the 1990s.
and David Baratier to SUNY-Buffalo’s more academic New Coast Conference.
Light As A Fetter is a collection of hit singles with tight grooves, while Stealer's Wheel branches out more ambitiously, if slightly more unevenly. These books still stand out as Stroffolino’s best, all sharing what Mark Ducharme, in “The St. Marks Poetry Project Newsletter”, referred to as an “intellectual romanticism,” a discursive lyricism, characterized by dense post-Ashberian sentences that “bend sense into music without losing sense, or space for pause.” Both John Ashbery
and James Tate
praised its brilliance; Graham Foust
in Lagniappe wrote “there’s more of what’s great in Ashbery and Tate in [Stealer's Wheel] than there is in most Ashbery and Tate.”
What Critic Steve Evans
calls the “mordant recursivity” of Stroffolino’s style owed much more to writers such as Bob Perelman
, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Robert Creeley
, Samuel Beckett
, and above all, The New York School Poets, such as Stroffolino’s early mentor, John Yau
, than it did the Brechtian/Beat inflections of his earlier work. In the 21st century, Stroffolino continued to publish “Scratch Vocals”(2002), “Speculative Primitive” (2004), and An Anti-Emeryvillification Manifesto (2007)
, Rising Shotgun, Jolie Holland
, Continuous Peasant, Flowers & Bulls, The Root Rats, Babycakes, The Graves Brothers Deluxe, Hudson Bell, and members of Essex Green, Drunk Horse
, Flipper
& Jello Biafra’s Dick Army.
’s rock band for the Poetry Society Of America
; and, with the band Volumen, contributing to the soundtrack of Esther Bell
’s “Goddass.”
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he returned to the style of his first book with his controversial piece, “You Haven’t Done Nuthin’.” This rant-like poem helped gain Stroffolino an international audience, while alienating some of the fans of his work in the previous century. He often performed this piece backed by a loud improvisatory rock band. In other contexts, he performed political hip-hop songs in a style similar to Randy-Newman or Tom Waits style. In 2005, he toured the U.S & Canada with Continuous Peasant and rejoined Silver Jews on stage in 2006 and 2008.
and Leonard Schwartz, An Anthology of New (American) Poets for Talisman House in 1998, Stroffolino published a critical edition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with David Rosenthal
(2000); the next year saw his collection of literary criticism (Spin Cycle). Critic Charles Altieri
admired the populism of Spin Cycle’s “Radical Dogberry” essay, while “The American Book Review” lauded this collection for holding out an olive branch between the various warring factions in the literary world, especially in its “Against Lineage” essay, adding “but sometimes that branch seems to be on fire.” More recently, Stroffolino has published music and culture criticism in The Bigtakeover, Kitchen Sink, Viz, and Caught In the Carousel. In 2011, Self Portrait As Silver Jew is slated for release as an e-book (45RPM).
A recipient of a 2001 NYFA
Grant, and a 2008 grant from The Fund For Poetry, Stroffolino was Visiting Distinguished Poet at St Mary’s College
in Moraga, California from 2001 to 2005. He is the subject of a Contemporary Authors monograph.
Although Stroffolino has curtailed activities after an bike accident left him permanently disabled in 2004, he has done stints at Mills College
, San Francisco Art Institute
, University of California, Berkeley
and Laney College
.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, musician, critic, performer, author of 12 books of poetry and prose, and probably best known to the general populace for working alongside Steve Malkmus and David Berman on The Silver Jews “American Water” album (1998 Drag City). Stroffolino, (born in Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...
March 20, 1963) attended Albright College, Temple University
Temple University
Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...
and Bard College, The University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts
This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...
, before receiving a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
at Suny-Albany with a dissertation on William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
in 1998.
Early Performance Poetry
After moving to Philadelphia in 1986 to, Stroffolino auditioned for Lamont Steptoe of The Painted Bride Art Center, and soon became one of the young stars of Philly’s burgeoning spoken word scene, alongside writers such as C.A. Conrad, Linh DinhLinh Dinh
Linh Dinh is a Vietnamese-American poet, fiction writer, translator, and photographer. He was a 1993 Pew Fellow.-Biography:...
, Candace Kaucher and Jerome Robinson. Stroffolino’s first book of poems, “Incidents (At The Corner Of Desire & Disgust)”, published by David Roskos’s Vendatta Books (Iniquity Press) in 1990, collected the more popular of these performance poems. Stroffolino co-edited The Painted Bride Quarterly from 1988–1990, worked on the Philly anarchist ‘zine, Talk Is Cheap, and co-founded the underground punk warehouse, KillTime Place in 1989 while organizing reading series at The Schmidt-Dean Gallery and Borders Books.
Stroffolino’s next book, “Oops” (published by Boulder Colorado’s backyard press in 1991, republished by Pavement Saw Press in 1994), while sharing many of the themes & personae of his first book, consisted of poems published in magazines but seldom performed at readings. Often considered Stroffolino’s homage to protracted adolescence, the poems in Oops got Stroffolino’s page-based poetry to a national audience and set the tone for the subsequent books of the 1990s.
New York Years
With the dissolution of the spoken-word and punk scenes in the early 90s, Stroffolino left Philadelphia to attend the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and SUNY-Albany, receiving a Ph.D in 1998 with a dissertation on Shakespeare’s middle-comedies. In the meantime, he published “Cusps” (Edge Books, 1995), “Light As A Fetter” (1997) and “Stealer's Wheel” (1999), performing his work from the more populist “Lollapalooza Tour” alongside Jeffrey McDanielJeffrey McDaniel
Jeffrey McDaniel is an American poet. He has published four books of poetry, most recently 'The Endarkenment' . He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts...
and David Baratier to SUNY-Buffalo’s more academic New Coast Conference.
Light As A Fetter is a collection of hit singles with tight grooves, while Stealer's Wheel branches out more ambitiously, if slightly more unevenly. These books still stand out as Stroffolino’s best, all sharing what Mark Ducharme, in “The St. Marks Poetry Project Newsletter”, referred to as an “intellectual romanticism,” a discursive lyricism, characterized by dense post-Ashberian sentences that “bend sense into music without losing sense, or space for pause.” Both John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
and James Tate
James Tate
James Tate may refer to:* James Tate , Headmaster of Richmond School 1796–1833)* James "Honest Dick" Tate , State Treasurer of Kentucky...
praised its brilliance; Graham Foust
Graham Foust
Graham Foust is an American poet and currently is an associate professor at Saint Mary's College of California.-Early life:...
in Lagniappe wrote “there’s more of what’s great in Ashbery and Tate in [Stealer's Wheel] than there is in most Ashbery and Tate.”
What Critic Steve Evans
Steve Evans
Steve Evans or Stephen Evans may refer to:*Steve Evans , Major League Baseball player*Steve Evans , Scottish football manager with Crawley Town*Steve Evans , Welsh international footballer...
calls the “mordant recursivity” of Stroffolino’s style owed much more to writers such as Bob Perelman
Bob Perelman
Bob Perelman is an American poet, critic, editor and teacher. He is often associated with the Language School group of poets. Perelman is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.-Life and work:...
, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, and above all, The New York School Poets, such as Stroffolino’s early mentor, John Yau
John Yau
John Yau is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978...
, than it did the Brechtian/Beat inflections of his earlier work. In the 21st century, Stroffolino continued to publish “Scratch Vocals”(2002), “Speculative Primitive” (2004), and An Anti-Emeryvillification Manifesto (2007)
Silver Jews
Stroffolino joined David Berman and Steve Malkmus to play on The Silver Jews American Water album; his keyboard and trumpet are most prominently featured on “The Wild Kindness” and “Random Rules” A longtime busker, this was Stroffolino’s first experience in studio; as he puts it in “Still Life With Silver Jew,” “American Water may have been the end of David and Steve, but It was a beginning for me.”Session Work
In the 21st century, Stroffolino has recorded or performed with Sir Lord Von Raven, Brian Glaze, Greg Ashley, Steve AlbiniSteve Albini
Steven Frank Albini is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman, and Flour, and is currently a member of Shellac...
, Rising Shotgun, Jolie Holland
Jolie Holland
Jolie Holland is an American singer and performer who combines elements of folk, traditional, country, rock, jazz, and blues...
, Continuous Peasant, Flowers & Bulls, The Root Rats, Babycakes, The Graves Brothers Deluxe, Hudson Bell, and members of Essex Green, Drunk Horse
Drunk Horse
Drunk Horse is a rock band from Oakland, California. Formed in 1998, the band released several albums on Man's Ruin Records before the label went out of business. The band then moved on to Tee Pee Records with 2003's Adult Situations, which was followed in 2005 by In Tongues. Drunk Horse has toured...
, Flipper
Flipper (band)
Flipper is a punk band formed in San Francisco, California in 1979, continuing in often erratic fashion until the mid-1990s, then reuniting in 2005. The band influenced a number of grunge,, punk rock and noise rock bands...
& Jello Biafra’s Dick Army.
Performances
In 2000, Stroffolino collaborated with conceptual artist Christine Hill in her Volksboutique project while acting in HBO’s Sex And The City and recreating Anne SextonAnne Sexton
Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967...
’s rock band for the Poetry Society Of America
Poetry Society of America
The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists including Witter Bynner. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the have included such renowned writers as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent...
; and, with the band Volumen, contributing to the soundtrack of Esther Bell
Esther Bell
Esther Bell is an American film director. Her two feature films, Godass and Exist, have received critical acclaim in The New York Times and Variety for their tones of social and political relevance....
’s “Goddass.”
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he returned to the style of his first book with his controversial piece, “You Haven’t Done Nuthin’.” This rant-like poem helped gain Stroffolino an international audience, while alienating some of the fans of his work in the previous century. He often performed this piece backed by a loud improvisatory rock band. In other contexts, he performed political hip-hop songs in a style similar to Randy-Newman or Tom Waits style. In 2005, he toured the U.S & Canada with Continuous Peasant and rejoined Silver Jews on stage in 2006 and 2008.
Recordings
Stroffolino one-off topical songs have appeared in www.RawStory.Com, The Thom Hartmann Show, Deep Oakland, and Not Broken (a film about post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans). In 2010, Stroffolino is releasing his first solo album, Single-Sided Doubles, on Pop Snob Records, as a vinyl/CD hybrid.Criticism, Prose, Teaching, Awards
After co-editing, with Lisa JarnotLisa Jarnot
Lisa Jarnot is an American poet and translator. She has published several volumes of poetry. She is an anti-war activist, works as a horticulturalist and lives in Sunnyside, Queens.-Bibliography :*The Fall of Orpheus, Shuffaloff Press, 1993....
and Leonard Schwartz, An Anthology of New (American) Poets for Talisman House in 1998, Stroffolino published a critical edition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with David Rosenthal
David Rosenthal
David Rosenthal may refer to:*David Rosenthal , American keyboardist, music producer, and songwriter*David H. Rosenthal , American author, poet, editor and translator*David M. Rosenthal , multiple people...
(2000); the next year saw his collection of literary criticism (Spin Cycle). Critic Charles Altieri
Charles Altieri
Prof. Charles Altieri is presently the Rachel Stageberg Anderson Chair in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Prof...
admired the populism of Spin Cycle’s “Radical Dogberry” essay, while “The American Book Review” lauded this collection for holding out an olive branch between the various warring factions in the literary world, especially in its “Against Lineage” essay, adding “but sometimes that branch seems to be on fire.” More recently, Stroffolino has published music and culture criticism in The Bigtakeover, Kitchen Sink, Viz, and Caught In the Carousel. In 2011, Self Portrait As Silver Jew is slated for release as an e-book (45RPM).
A recipient of a 2001 NYFA
NYFA
The acronym NYFA can refer to:* New York Film Academy* New York Foundation for the Arts...
Grant, and a 2008 grant from The Fund For Poetry, Stroffolino was Visiting Distinguished Poet at St Mary’s College
Saint Mary's College of California
Saint Mary's College of California is a private, coeducational college located in Moraga, California, United States, a small suburban community about east of Oakland and 20 miles east of San Francisco. It has a 420-acre campus in the Moraga hills. It is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church...
in Moraga, California from 2001 to 2005. He is the subject of a Contemporary Authors monograph.
Although Stroffolino has curtailed activities after an bike accident left him permanently disabled in 2004, he has done stints at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
, San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
, University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and Laney College
Laney College
Laney College is a community college located in Oakland, California, next to the Lake Merritt BART station and the Kaiser Convention Center. Laney is the largest of the four colleges of the Peralta Community College District which serves northern Alameda County.Laney College originally opened in...
.