David R. Slavitt
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
David R. Slavitt was born in White Plains, New York, in 1935, and educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia University. A poet, translator, novelist, critic, and journalist, he is the author of more than 100 works of fiction, poetry, and poetry and drama in translation.
Before becoming a full-time freelance writer in 1965, Slavitt worked at various jobs in the literary field. These included a stint in the personnel office of Reader’s Digest in Pleasantville, New York; teaching English at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (1957–1958); and a variety of jobs at Newsweek in New York. Slavitt began there as a mailroom clerk, was promoted to the positions of book reviewer and film critic, and earned the position of associate editor from 1958 to 1963. He edited the movies pages from 1963 to 1965.
Slavitt taught as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1977, and at Temple University, in Philadelphia, as associate professor from 1978 to 1980. Slavitt was a lecturer at Columbia University from 1985 to 1986, at Rutgers University in 1987, and at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and other institutions. He has given poetry readings at colleges and universities, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and at the Library of Congress.
Slavitt is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for translation, an award for literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Rockefeller Foundation artist’s residency. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
David R. Slavitt is an important Jewish/American poet who, in his words is, “trying to find my way—as all of us are.”
Some of his works which most directly address Jewish themes include Pilpul: Talmudic Sonnets, The Book of Lamentations, The Book of the Twelve Prophets, The Poem of Queen Esther by Joâo Pinto Delgado, Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s A Crown for the King, Shiksa, and Vidui.
Published Works
Most Recent Poetry
Death Benefits: A Century of Sonnets (LSU Press, 2024)
Opus Posthumous and Other Poems (LSU Press, 2021)
Pilpul: Talmudic Sonnets (Self-Published, 2019)
The Octaves: Poems (LSU Press, 2017)
Civil Wars: Poems (LSU Press, 2013)
Most Recent Fiction
Dwindling: A Novel (New American Press, 2020)
Turkish Delights: A Novel (Self-Published, 2020)
The Hussar: A Novel (Self-Published, 2020)
Lives of the Saints: A Novel (Self-Published, 2020)
Fabrications (Anaphora Literary Press, 2015)
Shiksa (C&R Press, 2014)
Walloomsac: A Week on the River (Anaphora Literary Press, 2014)
Most Recent Translation
The Rig Veda: First Mandala (Anaphora Literary Press, 2021)
The Ramayama of Valmiki (Self-Published, 2019)
The Jungle Poems of Leconte De Lisle (New American Press, 2017)
Mahabharata (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
Choruses from the Lost Plays of Sophocles (Barefoot Muse Press, 2015)
From the Fragrant East (Miracolo, 2014)
Odes (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014)
The Other Four Plays of Sophocles (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)
Links to Sample Works
Education
Yale University, Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude
Columbia University, Master of Arts