Robert Polito
Encyclopedia
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
since 1992. He received the National Book Critics Circle Award
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
and an Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
for Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction....
.
Personal
Polito is from Boston, Massachusetts, and lives in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He received a Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in English and American Language and Literature from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Recent work
Polito is working on Detours: Seven Noir Lives, a nonfiction book. He is editing an anthology of Manny Farber’s film and art criticism.Selected work
Doubles (a book of poems); A Reader's Guide to James MerrillJames Merrill
James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies...
's The Changing Light at Sandover
The Changing Light at Sandover
The Changing Light at Sandover is a 560-page epic poem by James Merrill . Sometimes described as a postmodern apocalyptic epic, the poem was published in three separate installments between 1976 and 1980, and in its entirety in 1982...
; and At Titan's Breakfast: Three Essays on Byron's Poetry. Editor of the Library of America
Library of America
The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
volumes Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s. Essays and poems in Best American Poetry, Walk on the Wild Side: American Urban Poetry Since 1975, O.K. You Mugs, and Communion; also in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, The Yale Review
The Yale Review
The Yale Review is the self-proclaimed oldest literary quarterly in the United States. It is published by Yale University.It was founded originally in 1819 as The Christian Spectator. At its origin it was published to support Evangelicalism, but over time began to publish more on history and...
, ArtForum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
, BOMB
Bomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...
, Black Clock
Black Clock
Black Clock is an American literary magazine. Edited by Steve Erickson and published bi-annually by CalArts in association with the MFA Writing Program, the magazine is "dedicated to fiction, poetry and creative essays that explore the frontier territory of constructive anarchy." According to the...
, Verse, Pequod
Pequod
Pequod may refer to:*Pequot, tribe of Native Americans*Pequod , a fictional whaleship that appears in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick...
, Open City
Open City (magazine)
Open City Magazine and Books was a New York City based magazine and book publisher that features many first-time writers alongside those who are well known. The editors are Thomas Beller and Joanna Yas. It is published by a nonprofit organization, Open City, Inc. Open City Magazine is released...
, Ploughshares
Ploughshares
Ploughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...
, New York Times Book Review, and VLS
VLS
VLS may refer to:*Vapor-Liquid-Solid method, a method to grow nanocrystal*Vermont Law School, an institution of higher learning.*Vertical Launching System*Von Luschan's chromatic scale a scale for detirmining skin colour....
, among other magazines. Fellowships from the Ingram Merrill and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundations. Contributing editor of BOMB
Bomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...
and The Boston Review. Has taught at Harvard, Wellesley, and New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
.
Quotes
- "Ed Hood knew everyone. Through him I encountered most of the Cambridge WarholAndy WarholAndrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
crowd that would [be] people [heard about in] Edie (Jean SteinJean Stein-Biography:Jean Stein grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of Dr. Jules Stein and his wife, Doris. She authored of two books and a pioneer of the narrative form of oral history. She is presently at work on a cultural and political history of Los Angeles, to be published by Farrar, Straus and...
and George PlimptonGeorge PlimptonGeorge Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...
’s oral history of Edie SedgwickEdie SedgwickEdith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s...
) along with that crowd’s assorted New York visitors: Ed Hennessy, Chuck WeinChuck WeinChuck Wein was an American promoter and manager of entertainment acts whose celebrity stemmed from his five-year association with Andy Warhol and from his discovery of Edie Sedgwick who became Warhol Superstar of 1965.Wein graduated from Pittsburgh's Taylor Allderdice High School in 1957 and...
, John Hallowell, Gerard MalangaGerard MalangaGerard Joseph Malanga is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator and archivist.-Early life:Born in the Bronx, New York, Malanga graduated from the School of Industrial Art in Manhattan and attended Wagner College on Staten Island...
, Lou ReedLou ReedLewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
, René RicardRené RicardRené Ricard is an American poet, art critic and painter.Ricard grew up in Acushnet, Massachusetts. As a young teenager he ran away to Boston and assimilated into the literary scene of the city. By age eighteen he’d moved to New York City, where he became a protege of Andy Warhol...
, Donald Lyons, Patrick FlemingPatrick FlemingPatrick Fleming was an Irish Franciscan scholar.-Life:His father was great-grandson of Lord Slane; his mother was daughter of Robert Cusack, a baron of the exchequer and a near relative of Lord Delvin...
, Dorothy DeanDorothy DeanDorothy Dean Is a fictional character from Hilton Als's 'The Women' book. According to the book she was an African American socialite, connected to Andy Warhol's The Factory—for which she appeared in the 1965 films My Hustler and Afternoon—and Max's Kansas City, where she worked as door person....
, Jonathan RichmanJonathan RichmanJonathan Michael Richman is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. In 1970 he founded The Modern Lovers, an influential proto-punk band. Since the mid-1970s, Richman has worked either solo or with low-key, generally acoustic backing...
, and Andy PaleyAndy PaleyAndy Paley is a noted record producer and musician who has been active since the late 1960s. His work includes stints as a producer for such noted musicians as Madonna, the Ramones, Jonathan Richman, Debbie Harry, Brian Wilson and Jerry Lee Lewis....
." - Among my Boston CollegeBoston CollegeBoston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...
friends, Warhol radiated a sly, sinister hipness, a tangent to the dread, doom, and spectacle of our Catholic childhoods." - "CainJames M. CainJames Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
ultimately didn’t invent anything. He is often celebrated as the axial figure in the history of the crime novel...Yet the [shift from detective-focus to criminal-focus] was already implicit in the literary fiction of the 1920s and 1930s that cultivated violence and gangsters – F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
’s The Great GatsbyThe Great GatsbyThe Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....
(1925), Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
’s "The KillersThe Killers (short story)'"The Killers"' is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. It first appeared to the public in 1927 in Scribner's Magazine. How much Hemingway received for the literary piece is unknown, but some sources state it was $200. Historians have some documents showing that the working title of the piece was...
" (1927), and William FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
’s SanctuarySanctuaryA sanctuary is any place of safety. They may be categorized into human and non-human .- Religious sanctuary :A religious sanctuary can be a sacred place , or a consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar.- Sanctuary as a sacred place :#Sanctuary as a sacred place:#:In...
(1931)."
External links
- Peter Carey Interviewed by Robert Polito, Salon.com, May 8, 2001
- Ploughshares articles by or about Robert Polito, Ploughshares bibliography.