Larry Eigner (August 7, 1927 – February 3, 1996), also known as Laurence Joel Eigner, was an

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q *George Quasha (born 1942 in poetry, 1942) R ...

of the second half of the twentieth century and one of the principal figures of the Black Mountain School. Eigner is associated with the Black Mountain poets and was influential among

Language poets The Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (magazine), ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Berna ...

. Highlighting Eigner's influence on the "Language School" of poetry, his work often appeared in the journal '' L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'', and was featured on the front page of its inaugural issue in February 1978. Ron Silliman dedicated the 1986 anthology of

Language poetry The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Sca ...

, ''In the American Tree'', to Eigner. In the introduction to ''In the American Tree,'' Silliman identifies Eigner as a poet who has "transcended the problematic constraints" of Olson's speech-based projectivist poetics. Eigner has himself pointed out that his poetry originates in 'thinking' rather than speech. During his lifetime, Eigner wrote dozens of books and published poems in more than 100 magazines and collections.

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambien ...

once called him the "greatest living poet."

Life and work

Eigner was critically palsied as a result of a bungled forceps delivery at birth. He grew up in

Swampscott, Massachusetts Swampscott () is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, located up the coast from Boston in an area known as the North Shore. The population was 15,111 as of the 2020 United States census. A former summer resort on Massachusetts ...

. Despite his impairments, Eigner's mother, Bessie, was an advocate for his education. Eigner began writing poetry around the age of 8, which he transcribed to his mother and brother, Richard. He attended middle school at Massachusetts Hospital School and completed high school and some college (at the University of Chicago) through correspondence. His first works were published at age 9. As he matured into an artist, Eigner overcame many physical obstacles and limitations to achieve a mastery over the material text, producing his typescripts on a 1940 Royal manual typewriter using only his right index finger and thumb. Perhaps the best realization to date of the idea of "composition by field" proposed by

Charles Olson Charles John Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modernist United States poetry, American poet who was a link between earlier Literary modernism, modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams an ...

in his landmark essay "Projective Verse," the physical act of writing took tremendous effort from Eigner. Larry Eigner authored more than 40 books, among them ''From the Sustaining Air'' (1953), ''Another Time in Fragments'' (1967), ''Country/Harbor/Quiet/Act/Around-selected prose'' (1978), and ''Waters/Places/a Time'' (1983). His work appeared in well over a hundred magazines and collections, most notably '' Origin'', ''The Black Mountain Review'', L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and in Don Allen's anthology '' The New American Poetry''. In 2010, Stanford University Press published ''The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner'', Volumes 1–4 (Vol. I: 1937–1958; Vol. II: 1958–1966; Vol. III: 1966–1978; Vol. IV: 1978–1995). The four volumes were edited by Robert Grenier and Curtis Faville. Larry Eigner died from

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

and other complications on February 3, 1996. Poet Jennifer Bartlett is currently working on a biography of Eigner.''The Larry Eigner Project'' Kickstarter
/ref>Jennifer Bartlett

''Jennifer Bartlett, Poet''. November 17, 2015. Jon David Polansky is currently the acting executor for the literary estate of Larry Eigner.

References

External links

;Eigner exhibits, sites and homepages
Larry Eigner Author Homepage at EPC

housed at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Larry Eigner Papers
housed at th
Kenneth Spencer Research Library

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

Eigner Author Page at Stanford University Press
The publisher of ''The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner, Volumes 1-4'' offers extensive resources on Eigner's life to include reviews, descriptions, and a pdf file of editor Robert Grenier's "Introduction"

include audiofiles of readings and interviews
of the Larry Eigner Papers
hosted by Online Archive of California (OAC)
Larry Eigner Papers
a
Brown University Library
;Selected online publications, poems and poetry

Originally published by Black Sparrow Press in 1968 and long out of print, the text is presented here on-line and complete
"how many years / without death": Larry Eigner's memento mori
five poems from ''readiness / enough / depends / on'', then a brief essay

;Reviews and perspectives

essay on Eigner's poetry in

Jacket A jacket is a garment for the upper body, usually extending below the hips. A jacket typically has sleeves and fastens in the front or slightly on the side. Jackets without sleeves are vests. A jacket is generally lighter, tighter-fitting, and ...

Reading Eigner and ''readiness / enough / depends / on''
Poet and indefatigable blogger Ron Silliman discusses a recent Eigner (posthumous) publication
Missing Larry: The Poetics of Disability in Larry Eigner
This online essay makes up Chapter 5 of poet and scholar Michael Davidson's book ''Concerto for the Left Hand; Disability and the Defamiliar Body'', published by University of Michigan Press in 2008.
Born from the Head - Larry Eigner's 1st Published Poem in 1952
this essay is by Curtis Faville, who coedited Eigner's ''Collected''

Here began a controversy surrounding the 2010 publication of Eigners ''Collected'' initiated by Steven Fama. Fama argues that the editors and publishers of the ''Collected'' have not shown the requisite fidelity to the spacing & visual presentation of Eigner's typescripts. In the comment section after the article, a coeditor of the ''Collected'', Curtis Faville, defends the editorial decisions made to bring a ''Collected'' Eigner into print.

Ron Silliman's first response to the publication of Eigner's ''Collected''. Silliman also weighs in on the publication controversy surrounding the layout of the ''Collected''. ;Obituaries

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eigner, Larry 1927 births 1996 deaths Jewish American poets Language poets Black Mountain poets People from Swampscott, Massachusetts 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American Jews