Paul Vangelisti

Paul Vangelisti is an American poet, translator, and editor, and the Founding Chair of the Graduate Writing program at Otis College of Art and Design. His many works of poetry include Motive and Opportunity (Shearsman Books, 2020), Border Music (Talisman House, 2016), Days Shadows Pass (Green Integer, 2007), and Embarrassment of Survival: Selected Poems 1970-2000 (2001). As Cultural Affairs Director for the Los Angeles radio station KPFK, he produced “Los Angeles Theater of the Ear,” which featured poetry readings by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Amiri Baraka, Kenneth Patchen, and others. He is the editor of a number of collections, including Anthology of L.A. Poets (1972), with Charles Bukowski and Neeli Cherkovski, and L.A. Exile: A Guide to Los Angeles Writing 1932–1998 (Marsilio, 1999), with Evan Calbi. He has received numerous awards for his translations from Italian, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Italy’s Flaiano Prize, the Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN USA Prize for Translation.

Articles

Off-Off-Broadway West: On Guy Zimmerman’s “Outlaw Theatre”
Paul Vangelisti reviews Guy Zimmerman’s “Outlaw Theatre: Field Notes from the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop and Festival.”...
Jul 3
- Memoir
Copiously: On Dolores Dorantes’s “Copy” and Kyle Harvey’s “Cosmographies”
Paul Vangelisti appreciates the poetic voyages in Kyle Harvey’s “Cosmographies” and Dolores Dorantes’s “Copy,” translated by Robin Myers....
Sep 17, 2022
- Poetry
- Translation
“An Alternative Literary History”: A Conversation with Kyle Schlesinger
The publisher of Cuneiform Press discusses his new book, “A Poetics of the Press,” a documentary history of small-press publishing....
Mar 13, 2022
- Poetry
The City Speaks: Recent New York and Los Angeles Poetry
In Vincent Katz’s new collection, Broadway for Paul (Knopf, 2020), one’s aware of a voice in the grand tradition of New York poetry, from Walt Whitman to Frank O’Hara, engaging in “equable” conversation (Whitman’s term) with the ...
Jun 13, 2021
The City Speaks: Recent New York and Los Angeles Poetry
In Vincent Katz’s new collection, Broadway for Paul (Knopf, 2020), one’s aware of a voice in the grand tradition of New York poetry, from Walt Whitman to Frank O’Hara, engaging in “equable” conversation (Whitman’s term) with the ...
Paul VangelistiJun 13, 2021
Definitely Plural: Some Recent Artists’ Books
In recent years ekphrasis, the figurative use of descriptions of visual art, has gained popular interest among poets. I don’t wish to add to the discussion but will look instead to other practices involving poetry and visual art, questioning certain ...
Feb 4, 2021
Definitely Plural: Some Recent Artists’ Books
In recent years ekphrasis, the figurative use of descriptions of visual art, has gained popular interest among poets. I don’t wish to add to the discussion but will look instead to other practices involving poetry and visual art, questioning certain ...
Paul VangelistiFeb 4, 2021
Rilke in LA: On Neeli Cherkovski’s “Hang on to the Yangtze River”
A few weeks back, when I received copies of Neeli Cherkovski’s most recent books from Lithic Press, I realized that I’ve known Neeli and his poetry for almost 50 years. Remarkably little and everything has changed from the day ...
Oct 16, 2020
Rilke in LA: On Neeli Cherkovski’s “Hang on to the Yangtze River”
A few weeks back, when I received copies of Neeli Cherkovski’s most recent books from Lithic Press, I realized that I’ve known Neeli and his poetry for almost 50 years. Remarkably little and everything has changed from the day ...
Paul VangelistiOct 16, 2020