North, Charles 1941-

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NORTH, Charles 1941-

PERSONAL: Born June 9, 1941, in New York, NY; son of Monroe D. and Viola (Utstein) North; married Paula de Pillis (an artist) June 2, 1963; children: Jill, Michael. Education: Tufts University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1962, M.A. (with honors), 1964.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, Pace University, 1 Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Poet and writer. Freelance copy editor, 1965–66. Pace University, New York, NY, instructor, 1967–71, adjunct faculty, 1971–82, poet in residence, 1982–.

MEMBER: International PEN, Poets House, Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, Poetry Society of America, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Poets Foundation award, 1972; fellow of National Endowment for the Arts, 1980, 2001; Fund for Poetry awards, 1987, 1989, 1998, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Lineups (poetry), privately printed, 1972.

Elizabethan & Nova Scotian Music, Adventures in Poetry (New York, NY), 1974.

Six Buildings (poetry), Swollen Magpie (Putnam Valley, NY), 1977.

Leap Year (poetry), Kulchur (New York, NY), 1978.

(Editor, with James Schuyler) Broadway: A Poets and Painters Anthology, Swollen Magpie (Putnam Valley, NY), 1979.

(With Tony Towle) Gemini, Swollen Magpie (Putnam Valley, NY), 1981.

The Year of the Olive Oil (poetry), Hanging Loose (Brooklyn, NY) 1989.

(Editor, with James Schuyler) Broadway 2: A Poets and Painters Anthology, Hanging Loose (Brooklyn, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Kenneth Koch and others) The Green Lake Is Awake: Selected Poems by Joseph Ceravolo, Coffee House Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1994.

(With Elizabeth Robinson and Sianne Ngai) Re: Chapbook 2, Reference Press, 1996.

No Other Way: Selected Prose, Hanging Loose (Brooklyn, NY), 1998.

New and Selected Poems, Sun and Moon (Los Angeles, CA), 1999.

The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight, Adventures in Poetry (Brookline, MA), 2000, revised edition, 2001.

(With Trevor Winkfield) Tulips, Phylum (New Haven, CT), 2004.

Contributor of poems to numerous anthologies, including Post-Modern Poetry in America: 1950—the Present, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1994; From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry, 1960–1990, Sun and Moon (College Park, MD), 1994; Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), 1996; Best American Poetry, 1995 and 2002; and The New York Poets II, Carcanet (Manchester, England), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Since the publication of Charles North's first book, Lineups, the New York City-based poet has received critical attention. Leap Year is a collection of poems written between 1968 and 1978. Paul Violi, in the Poetry Project Newsletter, wrote of the book, "The delight is in the poems' unpredictability," and "humor remains a strong element in the poetry without lessening its overall effect…. Ultimately, the most refreshing thing about the works is how a wonderful sensibility shines through the experimentation, ingenuity, and abstract lyricism."

North's sixth book, The Year of the Olive Oil, received greater notice than any of his previous work. A reviewer in Sulfur regretted not knowing about North until discovering The Year of the Olive Oil. Gary Lenhart in the American Book Review observed that "there isn't a filler or toss-off in the book…. Though occasionally outrageous or even downright silly, these poems are always elegant and civilized." He also commented: "Not much poetry is written like this anymore—artful, refined, contemplative, playful, to be enjoyed rather than analyzed, but to be enjoyed at leisure, not in haste."

Lenhart, like other critics, was intrigued by North's baseball poems, in which he compares, for example, Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Yastrzemski to the Greek hero Prometheus, or his "Lineups," in which he assigns other poets' poems, spices, or other things to playing positions on a baseball field, as if baseball is a system by which all other things may be categorized and understood. Lenhart remarked that readers who are not baseball fans don't understand the "Lineups," but for those who are fans, there's nothing better. "Among that band of poets one runs into regularly at Shea or Yankee Stadium (or both), North's series of 'Lineups' have been legendary." In the Poetry Project Newsletter, Violi wrote that the "Lineups" are "funny, a NYC classic that sportswriter Larry Merchant once devoted two columns to in the New York Post, but when the world's leading diseases take the field you wonder who is on the opposing team."

John Ash, in the Washington Post Book World, noted that North is very definitely a New Yorker: "People continue to argue over the question of whether there is or ever has been a New York School of poetry, but if there is North most definitely belongs to it…. North's wit, exuberance, and unfailingly elegant syntax make him one of the most memorable of contemporary poets." He also wrote, "In short, The Year of the Olive Oil is a delight from beginning to end."

No Other Way: Selected Prose, is a collection of short essays and other prose pieces written over a period of twenty years. In one of the pieces, North writes, "It seems to be the rule, of late, that interesting poets shy away from the business of literary criticism." These thirty-two pieces, however, are critical and include reviews of other poets, and according to Gary Lenhart in the Poetry Project Newsletter, "amount to the best literary criticism yet written about the New York school." Lenhart noted that North "is always at his best when talking about the specific qualities that he admires in a particular poet or artist." And, he wrote: "Nowhere will readers find literary criticism practiced with more sensitive insight, greater imaginative sympathy, more refined taste or acuter wit than in these essays."

In The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "North seems to find the limit of imagination," writing a diverse collection of poetry that reflects the poet's "nonchalance aspiring to greatness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Ashbery, John, Selected Prose, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), 2004, pp. 267-268.

PERIODICALS

American Book Review, January, 1991, Gary Lenhart, review of The Year of the Olive Oil, p. 31; May-June, 2000, p. 27.

Poetry Project Newsletter, December, 1978, Paul Violi, review of Leap Year, p. 3; October-November, 1998, Gary Lenhart, review of No Other Way: Selected Prose, p. 25.

Publishers Weekly, May 30, 1994, review of The Green Lake Is Awake: Selected Poems by Joseph Ceravolo, p. 45; June 15, 1998, review of No Other Way, p. 51; April 26, 1999, review of New and Selected Poems, p. 77; May 14, 2001, review of The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight, p. 77.

Sulfur, spring, 1990, review of The Year of the Olive Oil, p. 230.

Washington Post Book World, December 31, 1989, John Ash, review of The Year of the Olive Oil, p. 6.