Michael Benedikt : Early Books of Poetry

Michael Benedikt has published five collections of poetry, most recently The Badminton at Great Barrington; or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo, a book about the joys and sorrows of love (University of Pittsburgh Press, l980). His first four collections, Night Cries (prose poems, l976); Mole Notes (prose poems, l971); Sky (l970); and The Body (l968), were published by Wesleyan University Press.

Anthologies of poetry under his editorship include the landmark modern poetry anthologies The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (Dell/Laurel, l976); and The Poetry of Surrealism (Little Brown, l974). Benedikt is also the editor of four collections of plays, including three volumes of plays from the European "Theater of The Absurd" co-edited with theater critic George E. Wellwarth: Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism (E.P. Dutton, l964; in U.K., as Modern French Plays, Faber Ltd., l964); Post-War German Theatre (Dutton, l967; in U.K., Macmillan Ltd., 1968); and Modern Spanish Theatre (Dutton, l969). He's the editor of Theatre Experiment: American Plays (Doubleday, l967).

Benedikt is a former Associate Editor of Art News and Art International, for both of which he reviewed 1960's art world exhibitions in the NY Metro area. Affiliated in the early l960's with poets of "The New York School," some of whom were also poet-art critics, he was briefly Managing Editor for the first N.Y. School literary magazine, Locus Solus. Selections from his art criticism appear in book form in The Grand Eccentrics: 19th-Century French Symbolist Painters, ed. John Ashbery and Thomas B. Hess (Collier Books, 1971); and in the anthology Minimalist Art, ed. Gregory Battcock (E.P. Dutton, l968). A former Poetry Editor of The Paris Review, his editorial selections are represented in The Paris Review Anthology, ed. George A. Plimpton (Norton, l990). He's currently Contributing Ed. for The American Poetry Review and The Prose Poem: An International Journal.

His own work appears in ca. 65+ anthologies of modern and contemporary US poetry, his first anthological appearances being in The Major Young Poets (Ed. Al Lee, World Publishing Co, l968) & The Young American Poets (Ed. Paul Carroll, Follet Publ. Co., l968). His uncollected l980's & l990's poetry has appeared in (among many other literary magazines) Agni, Antioch Review, Iowa Review, Jerusalem Review, Lips, Michigan Quarterly Review, The New Republic, New York Quarterly, Partisan Review; and several times in The Paris Review--most recently, a long poem in honor of Einstein in summer '99 (#151). Grants and awards for his poetry have included an NEA Fellowship, a NY State Council On The Arts Grant, and a Guggenheim Grant. He's also won an NEA single-poem award, and, for a group of poems from The Body, Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin prize for Best Group of poems published in Poetry in 1968.

In the later l960's and in the '70's Benedikt taught as Visiting Prof. in the English & CW (Creative Writing) Departments at Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, and Vassar Colleges; and at Boston University. Over the years, he's also given over 100 readings from his verse / prose poems around the USA--including a videotaped "Mini-Retrospective" performance given in l986, at invitation of The Library of Congress. In recent years, he's read from his poetry at various Barnes & Noble 'superstores' in the NY Metropolitan area.

His poems have been praised by writers as diverse as James Dickey and Erica Jong. Benedikt is a graduate of Columbia University (1961, M.A.Comparative Lit.), and NYU's Washington Square College (l956, B.A. English & Journalism). He lives in Manhattan, NYC. Email at benedit1@aol.com

1968 Photo by Herbert Fogelson
l998 Photo by Laura Boss

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ABOUT BENEDIKT

Info. at About.com--'The Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the Net.'
(Links in addition to those cited just below, are given at end of article posted by About.com 4/99).

OTHER BENEDIKT WEBSITES

SELECTIONS  FROM  OTHER  BENEDIKT  POETRY  BOOKS

Benedikt's 4th book of  poetry, NIGHT CRIES
Brief Prose Poems
Prose Poems & Microfictions

Benedikt's 5th & most recent book of poetry
The Badminton at Great Barrington

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From a Benedikt manuscript-in-progress
The Thesaurus & Other New Verse

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