Halpern, Daniel 1945-

PERSONAL:

Born September 11, 1945, in Syracuse, NY; son of Irving Daniel (a scrap dealer) and Rosemary Halpern; married Jeanne Catherine Carter, December 31, 1992; children: one daughter. Education: Attended San Francisco State College; California State University, Northridge, B.A., 1969; Columbia University, M.F.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Ecco Press, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 E. 53rd St., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Editor, poet, and translator. HarperCollins, New York, NY, cofounder of the imprint Ecco, 1971, editor in chief, 1971—, editorial director, publisher, and senior vice president, 1999—. New School of Social Research, instructor in poetry and fiction workshops, 1971-76; Princeton University, instructor, 1975-76, 1987-88; Columbia University, instructor, 1976—, chair of graduate writing program, 1980-84. National Poetry Series, founder and director, 1978—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Jessie Rehder Poetry Award, 1971; Discovery Award, Young Men's Hebrew Association, 1971; fellow, National Endowment for the Arts, 1973, 1974, 1986; Great Lakes Colleges National Book Award, 1973, for Traveling on Credit; Robert Frost fellow, 1974; Guggenheim fellowship, 1988-89; PEN publisher citation, 1993.

WRITINGS:

Traveling on Credit, Viking (New York, NY), 1972.

(Translator, with Paula Paley) Mririda n'Ait Attik, Songs of Mririda, Courtesan of the High Atlas, Unicorn Press (Greensboro, NC), 1974.

Street Fire, Viking (New York, NY), 1975.

Life among Others (poetry), Penguin (New York, NY), 1978.

Seasonal Rights: Poems, Viking (New York, NY), 1982.

(With Julie Strand) The Good Food: Soups, Stews, and Pastas, Viking (New York, NY), 1985.

Tango: Poems, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Jeanne Wilmot) Halpern's Guide to the Essential Restaurants of Italy: From Milan to Rome with Notes on the Food and Wine, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1990.

Foreign Neon: Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.

Selected Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.

Something Shining: New Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

Contributor of poetry to periodicals, including American Poetry Review, Esquire, New Yorker, Poetry, New Republic, and Harper's.

EDITOR

(With Frank MacShane and Norman Thomas di Giovanni) Borges on Writing, Dutton (New York, NY), 1973.

The American Poetry Anthology, Avon (New York, NY), 1975.

The Antaeus Anthology, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, 1945-1985, Viking (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Annie Dillard and others) On Nature: Nature, Landscape, and Natural History, North Point Press (San Francisco), 1987.

Journals, Notebooks, and Diaries, Ecco (New York, NY), 1988, published as Our Private Lives: Journals, Notebooks, and Diaries, Vintage (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Joyce Carol Oates) Reading the Fights, Holt (New York, NY), 1988.

Writers on Artists, North Point Press (San Francisco, CA), 1988.

Plays in One Act, Ecco (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Joyce Carol Oates) The Sophisticated Cat: A Gathering of Stories, Poems, and Miscellaneous Writings about Cats, Dutton (New York, NY), 1992.

Not for Bread Alone: Writers on Food, Wine, and the Art of Eating, Ecco (New York, NY), 1993.

(And author of preface) Too Far from Home: The Selected Writings of Paul Bowles, introduction by Joyce Carol Oates, Ecco (New York, NY), 1993.

The Autobiographical Eye, Ecco (New York, NY), 1993.

Dante's Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets, introduction by James Merrill, afterword by Giuseppe Mazzotta, Ecco (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Jeanne Wilmot Carter) On Music, Ecco (New York, NY), 1994.

Holy Fire: Nine Visionary Poets and the Quest for Enlightenment, HarperPerennial (New York, NY), 1994.

Tomas Transtromer, For the Living and the Dead: New Poems and a Memoir, translated by Joanna Bankier, Ecco (New York, NY), 1995.

Who's Writing This? Notations on the Authorial I, with Self-Portraits, Ecco (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Dan Frank) The Nature Reader, Ecco (New York, NY), 1996.

The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 1999.

Editor, Antaeus, 1969-94.

SIDELIGHTS:

Daniel Halpern has made his mark as a poet, an editor, and a publishing executive. His poems usually concern aspects of daily life—household tasks, nature, friends, pets—and are written in simple language. A Publishers Weekly critic, writing about Selected Poems, called Halpern's work "delicately reportorial in style." On the other hand, one Publishers Weekly commentator thought Halpern's "careful records of his feelings and deeds" in Something Shining: New Poems "lack acoustic and formal interest."

As an editor, Halpern has put together anthologies of both poetry and prose. Dante's Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets "is an eclectic—in the best sense of the word—collaboration by some of the finest poets writing today," in the opinion of America contributor Andrew J. Krivak, who felt the volume provides evidence of Dante's lasting influence on writers of verse. Also significant in Halpern's body of work as an editor are the short-fiction collections The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, 1945-1985 and The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories. Of the latter, which includes works by famous writers such as Bobbie Ann Mason, Joyce Carol Oates, and Martin Amis as well as several lesser-known writers, a Publishers Weekly critic observed, "Halpern selected these stories with great intelligence and zero trendiness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

America, October 30, 1993, Andrew J. Krivak, review of Dante's Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets, p. 17.

Library Journal, October 15, 1999, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review of The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories, p. 109.

Nation, December 19, 1994, Ray Gonzalez, review of Holy Fire: Nine Visionary Poets and the Quest for Enlightenment, p. 766.

New Yorker, June 28, 1993, review of Dante's Inferno, p. 103.

New York Times Book Review, May 1, 1983, Richard Tillinghast, review of Seasonal Rights: Poems, p. 15; April 23, 1998, Michiko Kakutani, review of Reading the Fights; September 18, 1988, Bruce Bennett, review of Tango: Poems, p. 42; December 26, 1999, Melanie Rehak, review of Something Shining: New Poems.

Publishers Weekly, September 6, 1991, review of Foreign Noon: Poems, pp. 10, 87; August 31, 1992, review of The Sophisticated Cat: A Gathering of Stories, Poems, and Miscellaneous Writings about Cats, p. 63; January 18, 1993, review of Too Far from Home: The Selected Writings of Paul Bowles, p. 451; April 19, 1993, review of Dante's Inferno, p. 54; May 30, 1994, review of Selected Poems, p. 47; September 12, 1994, review of Who's Writing This? Notations on the Authorial I, with Self-Portraits, p. 77; October 31, 1994, review of Holy Fire, p. 55; October 25, 1999, reviews of The Art of the Story and Something Shining, pp. 51, 76.

Whole Earth Review, spring, 1988, Susan Crutchfield, review of On Nature: Nature, Landscape, and Natural History, p. 66.