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David St. John

b. 1949
Headshot of poet David St. John in a leather jacket, outdoors.
Roger Snider

David St. John has been honored, over the course of his career, with many of the most significant prizes for poets, including both the Rome Fellowship and the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the O.B. Hardison Prize for teaching and poetic achievement from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the George Drury Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from Beyond Baroque.

He is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Study for the World’s Body (1994), which was nominated for the National Book Award, and more recently the The Auroras (2012), The Window (2014), and The Last Troubadour: Selected and New Poems (2017). St. John is also the author of a volume of essays, interviews and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us (1995) and is coeditor of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (2009). David St. John has written libretti for the opera, THE FACE, and for the choral symphony, THE SHORE. He lives in Venice Beach, California.

Poems by David St. John
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Bibliography

POETRY

  • Hush, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1976.
  • The Shore, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1980.
  • No Heaven, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1985.
  • Terraces of Rain, illustrated by Antoine Predock, Recursos Press (Santa Fe, NM), 1991.
  • Study for the World's Body: New and Selected Poems, HarperPerennial (New York, NY), 1994.
  • In the Pines: Lost Poems, 1972-1997, White Pine Press (Buffalo, NY), 1999.
  • The Red Leaves of Night, Harper Flamingo (New York, NY), 1999.
  • Prism, photographs by Lance Patigian, Arctos Press (Sausalito, CA), 2002.
  • The Face: A Novella in Verse, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

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

OTHER

  • Where the Angels Come toward Us: Selected Essays, Reviews, and Interviews, White Pine Press (Buffalo, NY), 1995.
  • (Selector and author of afterword) Larry Levis, The Selected Levis, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2000.

Author of introduction to Watch Fire: Poems, by Christopher Merrill, White Pine Press (Buffalo, NY), 1994. Contributor to books, including Wright: A Profile, Grilled Flowers Press (Iowa City, IA), 1979. Poetry editor for Antioch Review, 1981-95.