David Gewanter is author of three books of poetry: In the Belly (1997), The Sleep of Reason (2003), and War Bird (2009), all published by the University of Chicago Press; and co-editor, with Frank Bidart, of Robert Lowell: Collected Poems (2003). He earned a BA in Intellectual History from the University of Michigan, an MA and PhD in English at U.C. Berkeley, and then ran writing programs at Harvard. His work appears in Threepenny Review, Poetry, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Tikkun, Slate.com, Harvard Review, PoetryMagazine.com, Crossroads, Boston Globe, Semicerchio (Italy), PMLA, and elsewhere; and has been anthologized in Handbook of Heartbreak, The National Poetry Competition, Arvon (UK), Literature, The Bread Loaf Anthology, New Voices (Academy of American Poets), The Hell with Love, Beltway.com, and elsewhere. Book awards: the John C. Zacharis first book prize, Ploughshares (for In the Belly); finalist, James Laughlin Award, American Academy of Poets (for The Sleep of Reason); the Ambassador Book Award, English Speaking Union - US, and the Contemporary Poetry Review “Book of the Year” (for Robert Lowell: Collected Poems). Other awards include: the Witter Bynner Fellowship, (US Library of Congress); the Hopwood Essay Prize (Michigan); Eisner Prizes, Academy of American Poets prizes, (Berkeley); Levinson Teaching Award (Harvard). He has been a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writer's conference; resident faculty at Georgetown’s Villa Le Balze; exchange scholar at the University of Florence; and visiting writer at the University of Lodz (Poland).
-
In the BellyPoemsFrom"Conduct of Our Loves"
There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –
a field of starfish, turning slowly
like cogs inside
a water-watch, wound by a sea river;
the star’s five fingers tremble and
reach for a clam’s book of meat,
into which it will inject a sedative
and then its stomach.
In The City, escaped parrots colonize
a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that
In a bag? More hits after this…
In the Belly:Poems -
In the BellyPoemsFrom"Tetragrammaton"
Recovery, an itch itched in every poem.
The notebook is now wholly in my head –
it was under the seat when my car was hit,
burned, blew. Unharmed and angry, I hustled home
and to the hospital to tell Dad before
he saw it on TV. His heart had been bad,
and they said that shock… “Poppa Doc” lay there,
old, cored-out, fat, and draped his feelings in odd
disaster-jokes: “your juvenilia burned –
so what? Look at me – prostrate, no prostate.”
And no story of mine could hurt him, not Dad.
Vines of blood and sugar swayed from his arms.
We watched the news. On he one-legged nighttable
I put the charred black coin of the gas cap.
In the Belly:Poems -
In the BellyPoemsFrom"Tribute"
I leapt up in my sleep
again they come
forms of cadavers
my father has entered
crackling the papers
crumpled by the bed
Each held what killed it
for me to inscribe
I learned the final causes
tumor clots a child a knife
I fell down sleeping
What I do and cannot do is one gesture
At dawn I tasted print
smeared across the pages.
In the Belly:Poems
“Gewanter is at his best as a peripatetic, expository poet . . . The Sleep of Reason is a strong collection from a writer who seems to possess that most curious and necessary of literary attributes—a moral vision.” —David Orr, The New York Times
“The poems . . . are unapologetically eclectic and intellectual, yet never inaccessible. Gewanter tempers his scholarship with humor and irony, a combination which produces some truly beautiful results.” —Kathleen Rooney, Harvard Review [on The Sleep of Reason]
"The poems are funny, vicious, and swirling. Many are politically motivated, their ironic language lobbying for connections between strata of meanings. How do politics and history and culture sound in the subjective, as something spoken by the poet who cares about the texture of language, the privileged placement of sound and sense, above a layer of ‘meaning?’ Gewanter's history feels personal, a history he creates consciously in the present, as a preparation for the future." —Sean Enright, Tikkun [on War Bird]
Selected Works
