August Kleinzahler (born December 10, 1949) is an American poet.

Life and career

Until he was 11, he went to school in

Fort Lee, New Jersey Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop the Palisades. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the borough's population was 40,191. As of the 2010 U.S. census, t ...

, where he grew up. He then commuted to the

Horace Mann School , motto_translation = Great is the truth and it prevails , address = 231 West 246th Street , city = The Bronx , state = New York , zipcode = 10471 , countr ...

in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, graduating in 1967. He wrote poetry from this time, inspired by

Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculos ...

and Kenneth Rexroth translations, among other works. He started college at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

but dropped out and after taking a year out of school, he ended up, 1971, at the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary insti ...

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest by ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. Drawn to the New York poets, including Frank O’Hara, Kleinzahler then discovered the work of

Basil Bunting Basil Cheesman Bunting (1 March 1900 – 17 April 1985) was a British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of '' Briggflatts'' in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist traditio ...

, who had a major influence on Kleinzahler's search for his own voice in poetry. He described Bunting's 1966 long poem ''Briggflatts'' (which its author described as "an autobiography, but not a statement of fact") as "everything I wanted in poetry.” Bunting taught a creative writing course at Victoria: "He began with some poems by Hardy and Hopkins, '' The Wreck of the Deutschland'', and went up to

Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

and Pound, then David Jones, Williams, the poets who were important to Bunting,

Hugh MacDiarmid Christopher Murray Grieve (11 August 1892 – 9 September 1978), best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid (), was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Rena ...

Lorine Niedecker Lorine Faith Niedecker (English: pronounced Needecker) (May 12, 1903 – December 31, 1970) was an American poet. Niedecker's poetry is known for its spareness, its focus on the natural landscapes of Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest (particularly wa ...

, and H.D. All he did was smoke unfiltered

Player's John Player & Sons, most often known simply as Player's, was a tobacco and cigarette manufacturer based in Nottingham, England. In 1901, the company merged with other companies to form The Imperial Tobacco Company to face competition from US ma ...

and read to us". The Anglo-American poet

Thom Gunn Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement, and his later poetry in America, even after moving towards a looser, ...

(1929–2004) was also a major influence: "the honest treatment of the poetic material at hand, not slipping into rhetorical or poetic postures, inflating subject matter or dodging difficulty," Kleinzahler explained in an interview in

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phil ...

in the fall of 2007. Gunn would become a close friend.William Corbett (Fall 2007). "August Kleinzahler, The Art of Poetry No. 93". ''The Paris Review''

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

was also an important source of inspiration. Amassing gambling debts and wanted by the police, Kleinzahler's brother committed suicide in 1971, when the poet was 21. They were very close and Kleinzahler was devastated by the death. The book ''Storm over Hackensack'' is dedicated to him and '' Cutty, One Rock'' is about him. Kleinzahler commented "he remains a sort of lodestar for me, encouraging my better, braver self." After college, Kleinzahler spent a year in Alaska working in "manpower jobs: hard labor" and then got a job at the Alaska State Museum. He got his

teaching credential A United States teaching credential is a basic multiple or single subject credential obtained upon completion of a bachelor's degree, from a college or university that holds regional accreditation, and prescribed professional education requirement ...

and then lived in Montreal for two and a half years. A passionate blues lover, Kleinzahler wrote a music column for the ''San Diego Reader'' for many years. He has lived in the

Haight Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture ...

neighborhood in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

but has retained strong ties to his old home base in New Jersey. In 2005 he was named the first poet laureate of Fort Lee. Kleinzahler is the author of ten books of poetry, including ''The Strange Hours Travelers Keep'' and ''Sleeping It Off in Rapid City''. He has also published a non-fiction work, ''Cutty, One Rock (Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained)''.

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

commented: "August Kleinzahler's verse line is always precise, concrete, intelligent and rare - that quality of 'chiseled' verse memorable in Bunting's and Pound's work. A loner, a genius."

Awards

* 2008

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Lannan Literary Award The Lannan Literary Awards are a series of awards and literary fellowships given out in various fields by the Lannan Foundation. Established in 1989, the awards are meant "to honor both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional ...

in Poetry for "Sleeping it Off in Rapid City" *2004

Griffin Poetry Prize The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...

*2000 Berlin Prize * 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship

Bibliography

Poetry collections

* * ''A Calendar of Airs'', Coach House Press, 1978, * ''Storm over Hackensack'', Moyer Bell Ltd, 1985, * ''Earthquake Weather'', Moyer Bell Ltd, 1989, * ''Like cities, like storms'', Picador Australia, 1992, * ''Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow'', Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1995, * ''Green Sees Things in Waves'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, * ''Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club : Poems: 1975-1990'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000, * ''The Strange Hours Travelers Keep'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, (winner of the 2004 International

) * ''Sleeping It Off in Rapid City'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, (winner of the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award) * ''The Hotel Oneira'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, * ''Before Dawn on Bluff Road / Hollyhocks in the Fog: Selected New Jersey Poems / Selected San Francisco Poems'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017 *''Snow Approaching on the Hudson'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020

Prose

* ''Cutty, One Rock : Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, * ''Music: I-LXXIV'', Pressed Wafer, 2009, * ''Sallies, Romps, Portraits, and Send-Offs: Selected Prose, 2000-2016'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017,

Critical studies and reviews of Kleinzahler

* Review of ''The Hotel Oneira''.

References

External links

Jesse Nathan Interviews August Kleinzahler, 2016
''Cordite Poetry Review''
Diary Entry at London Review of Books February, 2010August Kleinzahler at FSGGriffin Poetry Prize biographyGriffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clipGriffin Poetry Prize 2005 keynote speech, including audio clips

* ttps://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/books/24garn.html?ex=1209700800&en=81826d8a5b068d91&ei=5070&emc=eta1 Bullies, Addicts and Losers: A Poet Loves Them All, ''New York Times'', April 24, 2008
Kleinzahleresque, ''Open Letters'', May, 2008

"Writing in the realm of fire: August Kleinzahler"
''The Guardian'', 18 April 2009, James Campbell
"An Interview with August Kleinzahler"
''Bookslut'', January 2005 * * August Kleinzahler Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kleinzahler, August Living people 1949 births Poets from New Jersey American male poets Horace Mann School alumni Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty Berlin Prize recipients Municipal Poets Laureate in the United States