SLAVITT, David (Rytman)

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Nationality: American. Born: White Plains, New York, 23 March 1935. Education: Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, graduated 1952; Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1952–56, B.A. (magna cum laude) 1956; Columbia University, New York, M.A.1957. Family: Married 1) Lynn Meyer in 1956 (divorced 1977), three children; 2) Janet Abrahm in 1978. Career: Instructor, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, 1957–58; associate editor, 1958–65, and movie editor, 1964–65, Newsweek magazine, New York; associate professor of English, Temple University, Philadelphia, 1978–80. Lecturer in English and comparative literature, Columbia University, New York, 1985–86; teacher of creative writing, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey, 1987; associate fellow, Trumbull College, Yale University; lecturer in English, University of Pennsylvania, 1990–96; lecturer, Princeton University, 1996. Book reviewer for Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and New York Times.Awards: Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship, 1985, 1987; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1988; American Academy award, 1989; Rockefeller Foundation artist's residence, 1989; PEN/ Book-of-the-Month Club Citation for Distinguished Translation, 1991, for Ovid's Poetry of Exile; Arts and Humanities grant, Project on Death in America, 1999. Address: 523 South 41st Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Suits for the Dead. New York, Scribner, 1961.

The Carnivore. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1965.

Day Sailing and Other Poems. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1969.

Child's Play. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1972.

Vital Signs: New and Selected Poems. New York, Doubleday, 1975.

Rounding the Horn. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1978.

Dozens. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1981.

Big Nose. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

The Walls of Thebes. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1986.

Equinox and Other Poems. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

Eight Longer Poems. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

Crossroads. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

A Gift. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1996.

Epic and Epigram: Two Elizabethan Entertainments. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1997.

PS3569. LC: Poems. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1998.

Falling from Silence. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 2001.

Plays

King Saul (produced New York, 1967).

The Cardinal Sins (produced New York, 1969).

Novels

Rochelle; or, Virtue Rewarded. London, Chapman and Hall, 1966;New York, Delacorte Press, 1967.

The Exhibitionist (as Henry Sutton). New York, Geis, 1967; London, Geis, 1968.

Feel Free. New York, Delacorte Press, 1968; London, Hodderand Stoughton, 1969.

The Voyeur (as Henry Sutton). New York, Geis, and London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1969.

Vector (as Henry Sutton). New York, Geis, 1970; London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1971.

Anagrams. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1970; New York, Doubleday, 1971.

ABCD. New York, Doubleday, 1972; London, Hamish Hamilton, 1974.

The Liberated (as Henry Sutton). New York, Doubleday, 1973;London, W.H. Allen, 1974.

The Outer Mongolian. New York, Doubleday, 1973.

The Killing of the King. New York, Doubleday, and London, W.H. Allen, 1974.

King of Hearts. New York, Arbor House, 1976.

That Golden Woman (as Henry Lazarus). New York, Fawcett, 1976;London, Sphere, 1977.

The Sacrifice (as Henry Sutton). New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1978; London, Sphere, 1980.

Jo Stern. New York, Harper, 1978.

The Idol (as David Benjamin). New York, Putnam, 1978.

The Proposal (as Henry Sutton). New York, Charter, 1980.

Cold Comfort. New York, Methuen, 1980.

Ringer. New York, Dutton, 1982; London, Severn House, 1983.

Alice at 80. New York, Doubleday, 1984; London, Severn House, 1985.

The Agent, with Bill Adler. New York, Doubleday, 1986.

The Hussar. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1987.

Salazar Blinks. New York, Atheneum, 1988.

Lives of the Saints. New York, Atheneum, 1990.

Short Stories Are Not Real Life. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1991.

Turkish Delights. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1993.

The Cliff. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

Get Thee to a Nunnery: Two Divertimentos from Shakespeare. North Haven, Connecticut, Catbird Press, 1999.

Other

Understanding Social Life: An Introduction to Social Psychology, with Paul F. Secord and Carl W. Backman. New York, McGraw Hill, 1976.

Physicians Observed. New York, Doubleday, 1987.

Virgil. New Haven Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1991.

Editor, Land of Superior Mirages: New and Selected Poems, by Adrien Stoutenberg. Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

Translator, The Eclogues of Virgil. New York, Doubleday, 1971.

Translator, The Eclogues and the Georgics of Virgil. New York, Doubleday, 1972.

Translator, The Tristia of Ovid. Cleveland, Ohio, Bellflower Press, 1986.

Translator, Ovid's Poetry of Exile. Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Translator, Seneca: The Tragedies Vol. I. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Translator, The Fables of Avianus. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Translator, The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Translator, Seneca: The Tragedies Vol. II. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Translator, Sixty-one Psalms of David. Oxford University Press, 1996.

Translator, The Myth of Prudentius. Baltimore, Maryland, John Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Translator, The Oresteia of Aeschylus. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

Translator, Broken Columns: Two Roman Epic Fragments (Statius and Claudian). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

Translator, Epinician Odes and Dithyrambs of Bacchylides. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Translator, A Crown for the King by Ibn Gabirol. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Translator, Celebrating Ladies: The Thesmophoriazusae of Aristophanes. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Translator, The Persians of Aeschylus. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Translator, Three Amusements of Ausonius. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Translator, João Pinto Delgado's Poem of Queen Esther. Oxford University Press, 1999.

Translator, The Voyage of the Argo of Valerius Flaccus. Baltimore, Maryland, John Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Translator, The Book of the Twelve Prophets. Oxford University Press, 2000.

Translator, Sonets of Love and Death of Jean de Sponde. Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 2000.

Translator, The Latin Odes of Jean Dorat. Alexandria, Virginia, Orchises Press, 2000.

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Manuscript Collection: Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Critical Studies: Interview in The Writer's Voice edited by George Garrett and John Graham, New York, Morrow, 1973; "The Fun of the End of the World: David R. Slavitt's Poems" by Henry Taylor, in Virginia Quarterly Review (Charlottesville), winter 1990; "Years of Iron: Ovid's Poetry of Exile" by Bernard Knox, in The New Republic (Washington, D.C.); "An Amoeban Contest Where Nobody Loses: The Eclogues of Virgil Translated by David R. Slavitt" by George Garrett, in Compulsory Figures, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1992; "The Tristia of Ovid" by George Garrett, in My Silk Purse and Yours: The Publishing Scene and American Literary Art, St. Louis, University Of Missouri Press, 1992; in The Classical Journal, February 1993.

David Slavitt comments:

As I look back over a career that has now included some seventy-odd books, I am struck by its improbability. My model, of course, was Robert Penn Warren, who was one of my teachers at Yale and whose accomplishments as a poet, novelist, and essayist, while individually impressive, are together almost unmatched in American literature. His was a liberating example, and I was then lucky enough to find as friends such writers as George Garrett, Fred Chappell, Richard Dillard, and Kelly Cherry, all of whom are poets first of all but also men and women of letters who have taken delight in discovering what each of the genres can reveal about the human condition.

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In 1961, in the introduction to David Slavitt's first book of poems, John Hall Wheelock said that "one of the distinguishing characteristics of Mr. Slavitt's poetry is a severe restraint in the use of figurative language. It is the brilliance and clarity of his work, its brisk pace and taut resonance of line, its ironic and sardonic counterpoint, and, above all, its dramatic tensions, rather than any striking use of imagery or metaphor, that make it memorable." Slavitt's later books have borne out this description of his poetry, for he is a classicist, not one of the Eliot generation of neoclassicists who still depended so heavily on the "romantic image" but rather a genuine classicist, one who uses reason and wit to order his experience, to explain it, to describe it rather than (like a romantic) to embody it or transcend it.

The voice of Slavitt's poetry is that of a man talking, an intelligent and urbane man, a man of wit and of no little wisdom who speaks of life and more increasingly of death, often playfully, more often seriously. It is not surprising that his version of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, not strictly a translation of Virgil's poetic musings but rather an application of Slavitt's own striking voice and vision to those musings, is his finest book of poems. They are audacious, even arrogant, and brilliant throughout, a genuine translation of Virgil's approach to things into Slavitt's own well-honed modern classical idiom and a commentary on his approach as well.

As aware as any classical poet ever was of poetry as a self-conscious confidence trick, Slavitt is also aware of its necessity and its real value. In this version of the eighth eclogue, he says,

		Madness—
schizoid, of course—but it works, and you and I
can read, hear, give ourselves up to the poem,
and all our hurts too are healed, at least for a time.
We're all like dogs. A bone, a sop, distracts,
or the howl of another dog. We take it up,
one or two at a time, and then whole packs,
pouring out a grief we never felt
or sharing a real grief with all the others,
which becomes a public occasion, a communion,
a kind of celebration, a kind of prayer.

Slavitt's translation of Ovid's Tristia extends his long-distance communion with the classical mind into darker ground, bringing new (and quite modern) life to those seldom read, bitter, often self-pitying poems. And his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses allows him to bring to life again the bright wonders of these poems. In later collections such as Equinox, Eight Longer Poems, and Crossroads, Slavitt continues his conversations with himself, his family and friends, and his readers in a dazzling variety of voices and forms. His works demonstrate how unique he is as a contemporary American poet of wit and intellect and how much he seems, volume by volume, to share with Auden the same range of erudition and interest and the same disregard for literary fashions or conventions. But the darkness that pervades the Ovid poems shapes these new poems, too, although not without consolation or resolution. In "Equinox," a poem to his sister after the murder of their mother, he concludes,

				We don't
believe in souls up there spinning around
forever like Laika but emptiness, cold
and darkness are good enough. I'd call that heaven.

Or as Slavitt puts it in "Scream," the closing poem of Crossroads, "Defiance, at that pitch, is a kind of prayer." Writing in a romantic time, Slavitt has gone his own clear-eyed way, and it has proven to be a way well worth going.

—R.H.W. Dillard