Lawrence Joseph

Last updated

Lawrence Joseph
Born1948 (age 74–75)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
OccupationPoet, writer, essayist, critic, lawyer, professor of law
Education
Notable works
  • Shouting at No One (1983)
  • Curriculum Vitae (1988)
  • Before Our Eyes (1993)
  • Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973–1993 (2005)
  • Into It (2005)
  • So Where Are We? (2017)
  • A Certain Clarity (2020)
  • Lawyerland (1997)
  • The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose (2011)
Notable awards
  • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship
  • 2 National Endowment for the Arts fellowships
  • Hopwood Award in poetry
SpouseNancy Van Goethem

Lawrence Joseph (born 1948 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American poet, writer, essayist, critic, lawyer, and professor of law.

Contents

Early life and education

Lawrence Joseph was born in 1948 in Detroit, Michigan. [1] Joseph's grandparents, Lebanese Maronite and Syrian Melkite Eastern Catholics, were among the first Arab Americans to emigrate to Detroit around 1910, where both Joseph's parents were born. [1]

He attended the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, the University of Michigan (B.A, 1970), Magdalene College, Cambridge (B.A. 1972, M.A. 1976), and the University of Michigan Law School (J. D. 1975).

Career

Joseph, perhaps best known as a poet, won the 1983 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the Pitt Poetry Series for his first book, Shouting at No One. His second book of poems, Curriculum Vitae, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1988. His most recent books of poems, Before Our Eyes (1993); Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973–1993 (2005), Into It (2005); So Where Are We? (2017); and A Certain Clarity (2020) are published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Joseph is also the author of Lawyerland, a book of prose, published by FSG in 1997. Lawyerland was optioned for a film by John Malkovich, Lianne Helfon and Russell Smith's Mr. Mudd Productions. A symposium, "The Lawyerland Essays," appeared in the Columbia Law Review. His book The Game Changed : Essays and Other Prose, appeared in 2011 in the University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry series.

Joseph's poems, essays and criticism have appeared in magazines and newspapers both in the United States and internationally. His essay on Motown music and Rhythm and Blues, "The Music Is," which originally appeared in Tin House, was included in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003, chosen by Guest Editor Matt Groening. His work has been widely anthologized, and his poetry is included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.

Joseph is also the Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law in New York City. Joseph served as law clerk to Justice G. Mennen Williams of the Michigan Supreme Court. He then joined the faculty at the University of Detroit School of Law. In 1981, he moved to New York City, where he was associated with the firm of Shearman & Sterling. He joined the St. John's law faculty in 1987.

Writing as a lawyer, Joseph has published in areas of labor, employment, tort and compensation law, jurisprudence, law and literature, and legal theory. He has served as Consultant on Tort and Compensation Law for the Michigan State Senate's Commission on Courts, and as Consultant for the Governor of Michigan's Commission on Workers' Compensation, Occupational Disease and Employment and has received a grant from the Employment Standards Division of the United States Department of Labor. He is former Chairperson of the Association of American Law Schools section on Law and Interpretation.

Joseph has read from his work at numerous universities and law schools throughout the country and internationally, including Stanford University, Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Michigan, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, and Northwestern University. Among his awards are also a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. In 2006 he was named the third recipient of the New York County Lawyers Association's "Law and Literature Award" (prior recipients are Louis Auchincloss and Louis Begley). As an undergraduate at Michigan, he received a major Hopwood Award in poetry.

He has been a member of the board of directors of Poets House, Poetry Society of America, and The Writer's Voice, and served on the International PEN Events Committee. In 1989, he lectured on law and on poetry in Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt through the cultural affairs offices of the United States embassies in each country. In 1994, he taught in the Council of the Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.

His literary, professional, and personal papers have been acquired by the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Library and are housed at the Hatcher Graduate Library.

Joseph is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Bar Association. He is married to the painter Nancy Van Goethem and lives in New York City. [1]

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections
List of poems
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collected
A fable2016Joseph, Lawrence (January 25, 2016). "A fable". The New Yorker. 91 (45): 52–53.

Other works

———————

Notes
  1. ↑ Hofmann, Michael (March 7, 2020). "On Lawrence Joseph". London Review of Books. Vol. 42, no. 6. ISSN   0260-9592 . Retrieved December 8, 2021.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Bishop</span> American poet and short-story writer (1911–1979)

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yusef Komunyakaa</span> American poet

Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet who teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Komunyakaa received the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his contribution to poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Brodsky</span> Russian poet (1940–1996)

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, in 1940, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at Mount Holyoke College, and at universities including Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Muldoon</span> Irish poet

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Lowell</span> American poet (1917–1977)

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region. The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Fitzgerald</span> American poet, critic and translator (1910–1985)

Robert Stuart Fitzgerald was an American poet, literary critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students". He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. He also composed several books of his own poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randall Jarrell</span> American writer (1914–1965)

Randall Jarrelljə-REL was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate of the United States.

Frederick Seidel is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witter Bynner</span> American author (1881–1968)

Harold Witter Bynner, also known by the pen name Emanuel Morgan, was an American poet and translator. He was known for his long residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and association with other literary figures there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Wright (poet)</span> American writer; University of Virginia professor

Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac. From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. K. Williams</span> American poet, critic and translator (1936–2015)

Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Berryman</span> American poet and scholar (1914–1972)

John Allyn McAlpin Berryman was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in the "confessional" school of poetry. His best-known work is The Dream Songs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Zagajewski</span> Polish poet (1945–2021)

Adam Zagajewski was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Kleinzahler</span> American poet (born 1949)

August Kleinzahler is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Les Murray (poet)</span> Australian poet and critic (1938-2019)

Leslie Allan Murray was an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spanned over 40 years and he published nearly 30 volumes of poetry as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Phillips</span> American writer and poet (born 1959)

Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.

Christian Wiman is an American poet, translator and editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Rigsbee</span> American poet (born 1949)

David Rigsbee is an American poet, contributing editor and regular book reviewer for The Cortland Review, and literary critic. He served on the faculty at University of Mount Olive.

Maureen McLane is an American poet, critic, and professor. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rowan Ricardo Phillips</span> American poet (born 1974)

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is an American poet, writer, editor, and translator. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Stony Brook University, the poetry editor of The New Republic, and the editor of Princeton University Press' Princeton Series of Contemporary Poetry. He is President of the Board of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Domestico, Anthony (March 17, 2020). "'So Many Selves', A Poet of Unlikely Combinations". Commonweal Magazine. Retrieved December 8, 2021.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.