David Yezzi

David Yezzi

David Dalton Yezzi (born 1966) is an American poet, editor, and professor. He currently teaches poetry in the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University.

Director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City from 2001 to 2005, Yezzi has worked as executive editor of The New Criterion, associate editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and on the staff of The New York Observer.

Life and career

Yezzi was born in Albany, New York, and earned a bachelor's degree in theater from Carnegie Mellon University and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Columbia University School of the Arts.

Yezzi has held editing positions at The New York Observer and The New Criterion, returning to Parnassus as associate editor in 2000, and to The New Criterion, first as poetry editor and then as executive editor, in 2004. He continues to serve as poetry editor of TNC.

Previously, Yezzi directed the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center. In 2006, Yezzi was producer for the stage adaptation of Glyn Maxwell's book of poetry, The Sugar Mile.

Yezzi was a co-founder of the San Francisco theater company, Thick Description, and has performed in works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Brecht, Goethe, Williams, and others in the United States and Europe. In March 2010, Verse Theater Manhattan presented Yezzi's evening of verse monologues, Dirty Dan & Other Travesties, at the Bowery Poetry Club.

In 1998, he was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University (1998–2000).

His poems have been published in literary journals including The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Poetry Daily and The New Criterion. His literary essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Sun, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The (London) Times Literary Supplement, Poetry and elsewhere.

Yezzi's poem "The Call", originally published in New England Review appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006, and "Minding Rites", which first appeared in New Ohio Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2012.

In December 2008, Azores was chosen as a Slate magazine "Best Book of 2008." In 2015, Birds of the Air was a finalist for the Poets' Prize.

Works

Books

• Birds of the Air (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013), poetry, 88 pages, ISBN 978-0887485718
• Azores (Swallow Press/Ohio University, 2008), poetry, 49 pages, ISBN 978-0-8040-1112-9 ISBN 978-0-8040-1113-6
• The Hidden Model (TriQuarterly/Northwestern, 2003), poetry, 96 pages, ISBN 0-8101-5144-8; ISBN 978-0-8101-5144-4, 2003 in poetry

Chapbooks

• Two Ranges [Vertical] by Ernest Hilbert and David Yezzi (Nemean Lion Press, 2013), hand-sewn, signed-limited concertina book
• Tomorrow & Tomorrow with an afterword by Denis Donoghue (Exot Books, 2012), ISBN 978-0-9844249-7-9
• Such Root Satisfaction, 3 X 5 [Three by David Yezzi, Five by Ernest Hilbert] (Nemean Lion Press, 2010)
• A Fletching of Hackles, Fresh Verse by Ernest Hilbert and David Yezzi (Nemean Lion Press, 2009)
• Sad Is Eros (Aralia Press, 2003)

Misc.

• Yezzi is the editor of The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (Swallow Press/Ohio University, 2009), 360 pages, ISBN 0-8040-1121-4 ISBN 978-0-8040-1121-1, 2009 in poetry
• His libretto for a new chamber opera by composer David Conte, Firebird Motel, premiered in 2003 and was released on CD by Arsis.

External links

• [3] Biographical sketch of Yezzi at the 92nd Street Y Web site, also available on a Google cache at [4]
• "An Expert on Human Failings" brief article on Anthony Hecht in The New York Times Book Review
• "Bacon's Theater of the Absurd" on the paitings of Francis Bacon in The New Criterion
• "The Amis Country" on the poetry of Kingsley Amis in The New Criterion
• "Cough"
• "False Fire"
• "Acceptance Speech"