Alan Shapiro

Alan Shapiro
Born: 1952
Years Active: 1975-present
Genre: Liberal humanist

Biography:
Alan Shapiro was born in 1952 in Boston, Massachusetts into a Jewish family. During his childhood he frequently read the Torah, and went to Hebrew school. He has said that he hated his conservative Jewish teachings. Every evening at his dinner table Shapiro has said that he couldn’t go through it without hearing a story about Adolph Hitler, which could be because many of his neighbors were Holocaust survivors. He went to college at Brandeis University and traveled abroad for a year in Ireland on a Sacher Writing Scholarship. He received his Bachelor of the Arts in 1974 and then decided to further his education at Stanford University where he served as a Jones lecturer in creative writing from 1976-1979. It was in Shapiro’s freshman year of college that he decided to be a poet. His whole family used to tease him about how you had to be careful what you said around him because it was going to end up in a book one day.
Shapiro has a brother and a sister whom he’s written about. In 1995, his sister, Beth, died of breast cancer. Three years later his brother, David, died of brain cancer. Just a month before his brother’s death his sixteen year marriage fell apart and his parents’ health began to fail. Some might say that he used poetry to get through these events but Shapiro doesn’t believe that writing about these incidents makes getting through his hardships any easier. He wrote to just hold himself together. When his marriage failed he was the one that had to move out of the house and into a basement apartment in Chapel Hill. When he moved into this apartment he had an eighty year old landlord who had Alzheimer’s disease and every few days would knock on Shapiro’s door to introduce herself. During this time period all Shapiro tried to do was play basketball which he had done throughout his life, and spend time with his children.
Many of Shapiro’s books are written about his own life and he has received many awards for these books. Although he has received many rewards for his books, because they are about his life and the people in his life, many of those people have gotten offended by what he’s said. Shapiro’s ex-wife has even threatened to sue him because of how he portrayed her in one of his books. The book Song and Dance is a book of poems written about his brother David. He chose this title because his brother was an actor on Broadway. Another one of his books Vigil, is a book of essays written about his sister Beth. Vigil has won the award for New England Bookseller’s Discovery Designation. Other awards Shapiro has won include two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship for the Guggenheim Foundation, the O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., the Sarah Teasdale Award from Wellesley College, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1991 he also received the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award. Alan Shapiro is still currently writing and teaching.

Works Consulted:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200205u/int2002-05-30
http://books.google.com/books?id=gu_nTkN6igC&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=poet+biography+for+alan+shapiro&source=web&ots=nkOG1O1o_f&sig=jhQ_ctfeU3yUUKm6XUX1bOZLK4c&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA251,M1
Alan Shapiro

Works Page:
o After the Digging
o The Courtesy
o Happy Hour
o Covenant
o Mixed Company
o The Dead Alive and Busy
o Song and Dance
o Tantalus in Love
o Old War
o Selected Poems
o In Praise of the Impure: Poetry and the Ethical Imagination
o The Last Happy Occasion
o The Oresteia

Moods:
Multivocal “…And when the doctor got there?

Everything outside was in a rage of wind and sleet,
we were children, brothers, safe in the back seat,
for once not fighting, just listening, watching the storm…” (Sleet)

Inquisitive “…Where is it? Is it there? And what? And why?...” (Anybody?)

Grief Stricken “…no brother beside me in the back seat…” (Sleet)

Truthful “…Oh some of course suspected,
we had our enemies,
ex-wives, ex-
friends, and even the ex-
exes that had to pass
for friends…” (Handler)
Self-Centered “…In all ways careful to acquit himself
so that tomorrow when she says
she doesn’t deserve him, he’s too good,
he can believe her. Tomorrow
will be his happy hour. There won’t be
anything she wouldn’t do for him.” (Happy Hour)
Group Movement:
The movement that Alan Shapiro is a part of is Confessional poetry. Confessional poetry is when the poet tells information about their life. An example would be if the poet tells you about their sexuality and illnesses. This type of poet is typically applied to poets that came about in the 1950s and 1960s. This type of poetry is often intimate although sometimes it can be unflattering. Some other poets from this movement would be John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Sexton. Confessionalist poets typically use their writing as an escape; they think it tends to provide another perspective to what is going on in their lives. This type of poetry became dominant in the twentieth century.
I believe that Shapiro is a part of this movement because he fits perfectly into the credentials. Most of the writing that he does is autobiographical. When he was going through his hardships during the year his brother died, his wife divorced him, and his parents were deteriorating he wrote a lot to get through it. He believed that through writing it redeemed his loss with his siblings and ex-wife.
Influenced By:
One person that has influenced Shapiro is Robert Pinsky. Shapiro’s poem “To the Body” has very similar language as some of the odes that Pinsky has been writing. During an interview in May of 2002 this similarity was brought up to him and Shapiro was asked whether he consciously or unconsciously made the similarity. Shapiro replied stating “You’ve found me out. It was very much a conscious influence. Robert has had a huge influence on my work, as has David Ferry, C.K. Williams, and Frank Bidart.” (www.theatlantic.com/doc/200205u/int2002-05-30).
Another person that has influenced Shapiro is David Ferry. The generation that Ferry and Pinsky were from was the generation that had the most impact on Shapiro. Ferry has received many awards for his work and has been elected to be apart of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences back in 1988 and is also a part of the Academy of American Poets. I know that David Ferry has had an influence on Shapiro because during an interview he stated this, “Robert has had a huge influence on my work, as has David Ferry, C.K. Williams, and Frank Bidart. Among that generation of poets, those are the ones who have influenced me,” (www.theatlantic.com/doc/200205u/int2002-05-30).
Similar Artists:
One similar artist to Shapiro would be the same person whom he admires most, Robert Pinsky. Shapiro’s poem, “To the Body” is very similar to the language in some of Pinsky’s odes, especially “Ode to Meaning”. They have similar language because of the strings of epithets, and they both worked through different characterizations of the apostrophized subject. “In your poem “To the Body,” I notice a similarity to the language in some of the odes Robert Pinsky has been writing recently, especially the “Ode to Meaning”-those strings of epithets, working through different characterizations of the apostrophized object…You’ve found me out. It was very much a conscious influence,” (www.theatlantic.com/doc/200205u/int2002-05-30).
I believe another artist that is similar to Shapiro would be Robert Frost. They both depicted things in the world as they were. Frost is highly known for his realistic depictions, he often used themes from his lifetime and the rural life in New England. Frost was honored often during his lifetime and has even received four Pulitzer Prizes. Although Shapiro hasn’t received a Pulitzer Prize, at least not to date, he has received many other awards. Frost was also known for his use to examine social and philosophical themes. “…The older boy is saying that no matter
how many stars you counted there were
always more stars beyond them
and beyond the stars black space
going on forever in all directions…” (Astronomy Lesson)
Followers:
Since Alan Shapiro is still alive and writing poetry to this date he doesn’t have any known followers. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if within this next group of poets that he has several followers that want to imitate his way of writing.