Lewis Meyers

Biography

Lewis Meyers lived a capacious life dedicated to art, music, teaching, and politics—but his true love was poetry. During his graduate studies and shortly after, he published in such August journals as Paris Review, Poetry Northwest, and Hudson Review. But after these early successes, he gave little energy to seeking recognition. For years as an academic and political activist, he
continued writing poems but seldom submitted them. Several did appear, however—Antioch Review, Field, and Literary Review—during his years in the English Department at Hunter College. After he retired from teaching in 2008, he dedicated himself exclusively to writing poems.

Echoing Joan Mitchell’s characterization of the place of painting in her life, he called writing poems an “addiction.” When he learned he had a fatal disease, he told his wife how he felt about it by handing her a book of W. S. Merwin’s translations open to an anonymous Egyptian poem from the 20 th century BCE, which begins, “Death is before me today.” Before he died in 2020, he indicated to his wife that he would like her to endeavor to publish his best work
posthumously. Since his death, Diana Tietjens Meyers has placed eleven poems in Paris Review, Poetry Northwest, Five Points, Hudson Review, Massachusetts Review, Plume, and Arkansas International.

Field Notes of a Flaneur won the 2024 New Measure Poetry Prize and was
published by Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press in January 2026.