In Memory of an Angel [Paperback]

Named after Alban Berg's famed violin concerto,In Memory of an Angelis the first full-length collection in fifteen years from New York School maestro David Shapiro. Packed with erudition, pursuing themes of art history, architecture, literature, and Jewish identity, the poems ofIn Memory of an Angelachieve a rare combination of lyrical abstraction and postmodern self-referentiality, rendered with Shapiro's understated virtuosity. Yet there's a strong current of love poetry flowing through these avant-garde ruminations, as well as reminiscences of childhood and reflections on fatherhood. A surrealistic violation of the boundary between the real and the dream pervadesIn Memory of an Angel. Shapiro's poems take a bewildering variety of forms, many of his own invention, even as he is equally at home in the quotidian and anecdotal. Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Jasper Johns, Frank O'Hara—these are only some of the characters peopling Shapiro’s New York, a landscape both sophisticated and haunted by memory.

The author of 10 previous books of poems, as well as monographs on John Ashbery, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, and Mondrian,David Shapirois a member of the second generation of New York School poets. A child prodigy on the violin, he went on to become a literary and art critic and teaches at Patterson College and Cooper Union. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has received awards from the Merrill Foundation, the NEA, the NEH, and the Graham Foundation. He lives in Riverdale, the Bronx, NYC.

Praise forIn Memory of an Angel:

A Taoist, a Kabbalist, and a Dadaist walk into a bar. They discover that the bar is really David Shapiro’s new book of poems, where they can drink 'tears from sleeping birds' and relax 'in/ the soft hands/ of the gods.'In Memory of an Angelliterally drenches the reader in moments of wonder. Shapiro’s gift is unique. He possesses a childlike, not inlS_