Max Wickert
Encyclopedia
Max Wickert is an American teacher, poet, translator and publisher. He is presently Professor of English Emeritus on the English Department of University at Buffalo

Personal life

Max Wickert (original name Maxalbrecht Wickert) was born in Augsburg, Germany, the oldest child of Stephan Phillip Wickert, an artist and art-teacher (later industrial designer), and Thilde (Kellner) Wickert. Four younger children, all sisters, were born between 1940 and 1946. In 1943, he experienced the Allied bombing of his native city and evacuation to Langenneufnach
Langenneufnach
Langenneufnach is a municipality in the district of Augsburg in Bavaria in Germany....

, a small farming village. (These events are later evoked in his short story, The Scythe of Saturn). He received his early education in Langenneufnach
Langenneufnach
Langenneufnach is a municipality in the district of Augsburg in Bavaria in Germany....

, Passau
Passau
Passau is a town in Lower Bavaria, Germany. It is also known as the Dreiflüssestadt or "City of Three Rivers," because the Danube is joined at Passau by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north....

, and Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...

. In 1952 his family immigrated to Rochester, N.Y., where he completed high school at Aquinas Institute
Aquinas Institute
The Aquinas Institute is a co educational catholic school Rochester, New York established in 1902. Aquinas Institute was founded as an all boys christian academy, but became an co-educational school in 1982. It is located within City of Rochester. It has stood at its current location on Dewey...

.

After receiving his B.A. from St. Bonaventure University
St. Bonaventure University
St. Bonaventure University is a private, Franciscan Catholic university, located in Allegany, Cattaraugus County, New York, United States. It has roughly 2,400 undergraduate and graduate students....

 (1958), he went on to graduate work in English at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, studying under Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...

, E. Talbot Donaldson, Davis P. Harding, Frederick W. Hilles, John C. Pope, Eugene Waith, W.K. Wimsatt, and Alexander Witherspoon. He completed a dissertation on William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

 under the direction of William Clyde DeVane and received his Ph.D. in 1965. At Yale, while working as a reader for Penny Poems under Al Shavzin and Don Mull, he began writing poetry and briefly met Gregory Corso
Gregory Corso
Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers...

 and Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

 (then Leroi Jones). His first teaching appointment was at Nazareth College (New York)
Nazareth College (New York)
Nazareth College of Rochester, NY, is a private liberal arts college in Pittsford, New York, a suburb of Rochester.-History:Nazareth was founded in 1924 by the Sisters of St. Joseph. The first class, comprising 25 young women, began their studies in a large mansion on Lake Avenue in Rochester, New...

 in Rochester, New York (1962–1965), where he married one of his students. (The marriage ended in divorce in 1969.) A daughter, now a psychologist working in Massachusetts, was born in 1965. A year later, he was engaged by the English Department of the State University at Buffalo, N.Y., where he taught until his retirement in 2006. He remarried in 2006, and lives with his wife Katka Hammond in downtown Buffalo. His youngest sister, Gabriele Wickert, also a college professor (of German literature), teaches at Manhattanville College
Manhattanville College
Manhattanville College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college offering undergraduate and graduate degrees, located in Purchase, New York. Founded in 1841 it was known initially as Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart...

.

Professional life

Upon arrival in Buffalo, Max Wickert formed close friendships with a number of writers who were then students or fellow-teachers, including Dan Murray, Shreela Ray, Robert Hass
Robert Hass
Robert L. Hass is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He was awarded the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Time and Materials.-Life:...

 and (most importantly) John Logan
John Logan (poet)
John B. Logan was an American poet and teacher.Logan was born in Red Oak, Iowa...

. Other significant colleagues at Buffalo were poets 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...

, Irving Feldman
Irving Feldman
Irving Feldman Irving Feldman Irving Feldman (born on 22 September 1928 in Brooklyn, New York is an American poet and professor of English.-Academic career:Born and raised in Coney Island, Brooklyn, Feldman worked as a merchant seaman, farm hand, and factory worker through his university education...

, Mac Hammond and Bill Sylvester; novelists John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...

, J.M. Coetzee (his office mate for a year), and Carlene Polite; and critics Albert Cook, Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working...

, Lionel Abel
Lionel Abel
Lionel Abel was an eminent American playwright, essayist and theater critic. His first success was a tragedy, Absalom, staged off-Broadway in 1956. It was followed by three other works of drama, before he turned to criticism...

, and Dwight MacDonald
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...

.

For the English Department, he has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and as Chair of the Charles D. Abbott Poetry Readings Committee. He also helped to establish and frequently judged the University’s annual Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...

 Student Poetry Prize Competition. With Dan Murray and Doug Eichhorn, he founded the Outriders Poetry Project
Outriders Poetry Project
Outriders Poetry Project, started in 1968, is a non-profit organization operating in Buffalo, NY that sponsors readings and publishes books by poets and writers based in the greater Niagara-Erie region.-History:...

 in 1968 and has been its Director ever since. (Outriders, originally a sponsor of poetry readings in Buffalo bistros, became a small press in 2009.)

Between 1968 to 1972, he published verse translations from the Austrian expressionist, Georg Trakl
Georg Trakl
Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.- Life and work :Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria...

, and from various German poets. In collaboration with Hubert Kulterer, he also translated 1001 Ways to Live Without Working by the American Beat poet Tuli Kupferberg
Tuli Kupferberg
Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg was an American counterculture poet, author, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, publisher and co-founder of the band The Fugs.-Biography:...

, into German.

During the early 1970s, he wrote essays on early opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 and briefly worked as a radio station host for WBFO
WBFO
WBFO, broadcast on 88.7 FM, is the largest NPR member station for Buffalo, New York. It is broadcast from the South campus of the University at Buffalo....

's "The World of Opera."
His short story, The Scythe of Saturn was a prize-winner in the 1983 Stand Magazine (Newcastle-on-Tyne) Fiction Competition.
Over the years, over 100 of Max Wickert’s poems and translation have appeared in journals, including American Poetry Review, Chicago Review
Chicago Review
The Chicago Review is a literary magazine published four times per year in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago. It was founded in 1946. Three stories published in the Chicago Review have won the O. Henry Prize...

, Choice: A Magazine of Poetry and Photography, The Lyric, Malahat Review, Michigan Review, Pequod, Poetry (magazine)
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

, Chicago Review
Chicago Review
The Chicago Review is a literary magazine published four times per year in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago. It was founded in 1946. Three stories published in the Chicago Review have won the O. Henry Prize...

, Sewanee Review
Sewanee Review
The Sewanee Review is a literary journal established in 1892 and the oldest continuously published periodical of its kind in the United States. It incorporates original fiction and poetry, as well as essays, reviews, and literary criticism...

, Shenandoah (magazine)
Shenandoah (magazine)
Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee Review is a major literary magazine published by Washington and Lee University.- History :Originally a student-run quarterly, Shenandoah has evolved into a triannual literary journal edited by author R. T...

 and Xanadu, as well as in several anthologies.

As a scholar, Max Wickert produced a handful of articles and conference papers (on Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

, Shakespeare and early opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

), but was principally known as a teacher of a lower-division course on Dante’s Divine Comedy and of an Intensive Survey of English Literature, a seminar of his own design for specially motivated majors. Among his students were Neil Baldwin, Michael Basinski
Michael Basinski
Michael Basinski is an American text, visual and sound poet. He is the curator of The Poetry/Rare Books Collection of the University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo. He performs as a solo poet and with the performance/sound ensemble, Bufffluxus.-References:...

, Charles Baxter (author), Patricia Gill, and Neil Saccamano.

In 1985, he received an NEH Summer Fellowship to the Dartmouth Dante Institute, and for several summers thereafter pursued intensive study of Italian at the Università per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy. He has since turned increasingly to translation from Italian. He published The Liberation of Jerusalem, a verse translation of Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...

’s epic, Gerusalemme liberata, in 2008, and a year later completed translations of a medieval prose romance, Andrea da Barberino
Andrea da Barberino
Andrea Mangiabotti, called Andrea da Barberino was an Italian writer and cantastorie of the Quattrocento Renaissance. He was born in Barberino di Val d'Elsa and lived in Florence...

’s Reali di Francia (The Royal House of France) and of Università per Stranieri (University for Aliens) by the contemporary Italian poet, Daniela Margheriti. His edition and verse translation of Tasso's early love poems (Love Poems for Lucrezia Bendidio)appeared in 2011. He is presently working on versions of Tasso’s first epic, Rinaldo.

Under his direction, Outriders Poetry Project
Outriders Poetry Project
Outriders Poetry Project, started in 1968, is a non-profit organization operating in Buffalo, NY that sponsors readings and publishes books by poets and writers based in the greater Niagara-Erie region.-History:...

, reborn as a small press in 2009, is the publisher of Ann Goldsmith’s The Spaces Between Us (April 2010), Martin Pops’ Minoxidyl and Other Stories (September 2010). his own No Cartoons and Judith Slater's The Wind Turning Pages (both June 2011). Two further volumes, Gail Fischer's Red Ball Jetsand Jeremiah Rush Bowen's Consolations are scheduled for publication in Fall/Winter 2011-12 and a retrospective Outriders Anthology is in preparation.

Published books

  • All the Weight of the Still Midnight (Buffalo, NY: Outriders Poetry Project
    Outriders Poetry Project
    Outriders Poetry Project, started in 1968, is a non-profit organization operating in Buffalo, NY that sponsors readings and publishes books by poets and writers based in the greater Niagara-Erie region.-History:...

    , 1972; poems)
  • Pat Sonnets (Sound Beach, NY: Street Press, 2000; poems)
  • The Liberation of Jerusalem (Oxford University Press
    Oxford University Press
    Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

    : Oxford World’s Classics, 2008; verse translation of Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...

    ’s Gerusalemme liberata)
  • (with Hubert Kulterer), 1001 Wege ohne Arbeit zu leben (Vienna [Austria]: Eröffnungen, 1972) and Wenzendorf [Germany]: Stadtlichter Presse, 2009; translation of Tuli Kupferberg
    Tuli Kupferberg
    Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg was an American counterculture poet, author, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, publisher and co-founder of the band The Fugs.-Biography:...

    ’s 1001 Ways to Live Without Working
  • No Cartoons (Buffalo, NY: Outriders Poetry Project, 2011; poems)
  • Love Poems for Lucrezia Bendidio (New York, NY: Italica Press, 2011; edition and verse translation from Torquato Tasso's Rime d'Amore)

Articles

  • "Structure and Ceremony in Spenser
    Spenser
    Spenser is an alternative spelling of the British surname Spencer. It may refer to:Geographical places with the name Spenser:* Spenser Ecological District in New Zealand* Spenser Mountains, a range in the northern part of South Island, New Zealand...

    ’s ‘Epithalamion'", ELH: A Journal of English Literary History, XXXV:2 (June, 1968), 135-5.
  • "Karl Mickel: A Voice from East Germany, Books Abroad, XLIII:2 (Spring, 1969), 211-12.
  • "Librettos and Academies: Some Speculations and an Example", Opera Journal, VII:4 (1974), 6-16.
  • "Bellini’s Orpheus
    Orpheus
    Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

    ", Opera Journal, IX:4 (1976), 11-18.
  • "Orpheus
    Orpheus
    Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

     Dismembered: Operatic Myth Goes Underground", Salmagundi (magazine)
    Salmagundi (magazine)
    Salmagundi is a quarterly periodical of the Humanities and Social Sciences which aims to address the general reader. It was founded in 1965, and Skidmore College has produced it since 1969. The name refers to Salmagundi, a salad dish originating in early 17th century England.-External links:* *...

    , XXVIII/XXXIX (Summer/Fall, 1977), 118-136.
  • "Che Farò Senza Euridyce: Myth and Meaning in Early Opera", Opera Journal, XI: 1 (1978), 18-35.

Verse and Fiction (selection)

  • "Dawn Scene", Choice: A Magazine of Poetry and Photography, #6 (1970), p. 46.
  • "Three Poems", Descant
    Descant
    Descant or discant can refer to several different things in music, depending on the period in question; etymologically, the word means a voice above or removed from others....

    , XIV (Winter, 1970), pp. 13–15.
  • "Warning", "For Esther", "He is the Mother" and "The Months", Michigan Quarterly Review
    Michigan Quarterly Review
    The Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...

    , X:3 (Summer, 1971), pp. 195–99.
  • "Nocturne" and "Aubade", Poetry (magazine)
    Poetry (magazine)
    Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

    , CXIX:4 (January, 1972), pp. 218–19.
  • "Two Polemics of Departure", Choice: A Magazine of Poetry and Photography, #7/8 (1972), pp. pp. 310–11.
  • "Is This Typical?" Street, II:2 (1976), p. 58.
  • "Born Lucky", American Poetry Review VIIL:4 (July/August, 1978), p. 22.
  • "Goodbye" and "More Slowly", Choice: A Magazine of Poetry and Photography, #10 (1978), pp. 256–7.
  • from the "Pat Sonnets", Poetry (magazine)
    Poetry (magazine)
    Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

    , LXXXVII:1 (October, 1980), pp. 18–21.
  • "Dawn Song", Pequod (Winter, 1980), p. 8.
  • "A Little Satori Take", Berkeley Poetry Review
    Berkeley Poetry Review
    The Berkeley Poetry Review is a widely-distributed American poetry journal published by the undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley and is considered the premier student-run poetry journal in the United States...

    , #13 (Spring, 1980), p. 22.
  • "Parallax, Twenty-two-hundred Hours" and "Letters to Your Grandfather", Pacific Poetry and Fiction Review, VIII:2 (Fall, 1980), pp. 43, 58.
  • "Slugabed", Xanadu, #8 (1982), p. 34.
  • "Two Poems", Pembroke Magazine, #14 (1983), pp. 42–43.
  • from the "Pat Sonnets", Poetry (magazine)
    Poetry (magazine)
    Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

    , CXL:1 (April,1982), pp. 8–11.
  • "Two Poems", Shenandoah (magazine)
    Shenandoah (magazine)
    Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee Review is a major literary magazine published by Washington and Lee University.- History :Originally a student-run quarterly, Shenandoah has evolved into a triannual literary journal edited by author R. T...

    , XXXIII:2 (Winter, 1983), pp. 53–54.
  • "Pastoral", The Lyric, LXIII:1 (Winter, 1983), p. 14.
  • "Three Sonnets from The Unholy Weeks", Shenandoah (magazine)
    Shenandoah (magazine)
    Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee Review is a major literary magazine published by Washington and Lee University.- History :Originally a student-run quarterly, Shenandoah has evolved into a triannual literary journal edited by author R. T...

    , XXXV:1 (1983-4), pp. 52–53.
  • "Parsifal", Sewanee Review
    Sewanee Review
    The Sewanee Review is a literary journal established in 1892 and the oldest continuously published periodical of its kind in the United States. It incorporates original fiction and poetry, as well as essays, reviews, and literary criticism...

    , XCII:4 (Fall,1984), pp. 541–42.
  • "The Scythe of Saturn" (fiction) in: Michael Blackburn
    Michael Blackburn (poet)
    - Career :From 1976 to 1978 Blackburn was an editor on Poetry & Audience, the poetry magazine produced by The School of English at the University of Leeds...

    , Jon Silkin
    Jon Silkin
    Jon Silkin was a British poet.-Early life:Jon Silkin was born in London, in a Jewish immigrant family and named after Jon Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga, and attended Wycliffe College and Dulwich College During the Second World War he was one of the children evacuated from London ; he remembered that...

     and Lorna Tracy (ed.), Stand One (London: Victor Gollancz
    Victor Gollancz
    Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking...

    , 1984), pp. 93–115.

Fellowships and awards

  • Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1957–58
  • NYS Research Foundation Grant-in-Aid, 1968 (for Trakl translations)
  • Co-Winner, New Poets Prize, Chowan University
    Chowan University
    - Other Notable Former Students :* Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confessed architect of the September 11 attacks.- External links :* *...

    , 1980
  • Co-Winner, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY, Poets-on-Paintings Competition, 1982
  • Co-Winner, Mason Sonnet Award, World Order of Narrative Poets, 1983
  • Winner, Burchfield Penney Art Center Poetry Competition, Buffalo, NY 1983
  • Honorable Mention, Stand Short Story Competition, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, 1983
  • NEH Summer Fellowship, Dartmouth Dante Institute, Summer 1986


Faculty listing, University at Buffalo, retrieved 2010-04-18.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK