David R. Slavitt is a poet, translator, novelist, critic, and journalist. Slavitt was born in White Plains, New York, in 1935, and educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia University. He is the author of more than seventy works of fiction, poetry, and poetry and drama in translation.

“That peacocks fan their tails in the sight of poison was a good thing to know, even if it wasn’t true. The illusion of control over the world, the persistence of that kind of witchcraft was, he felt sure, very close to the heart of whatever it was that they [the poets] were all doing. Any child who has ever walked the pavement, avoiding the cracks and the lines in the cement out of solicitude for his mother’s backbone was a potential poet. Or a reader of poetry. It was a shame that so many lost it."

— David Slavitt, Anagrams