Neil Baldwin is a poet, critic, cultural historian, biographer, arts executive, and emeritus professor (as of July 1, 2020) in the College of the Arts at Montclair State University.[1] He is the 2024-2026 External Mentor for the National Park Service Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park in West Orange, New Jersey; and at work on a novel.
Neil Baldwin - a fourth-generation New Yorker – was born on June 21, 1947. The eldest of four sons of David S. Baldwin, MD (1921-2013), and Halee (Morris) Baldwin (1923-2017), he grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, near Central Park, and went to neighborhood public schools. From 1961-1965, Baldwin attended the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, N.Y., where he wrote theatre, book and jazz reviews for the student newspaper, The Record; and was co-captain of the varsity cross-country, winter and spring track teams.
Baldwin began as a history major at the University of Rochester, N.Y., from 1965-1969, studying with Prof. Loren Baritz, author of City on a Hill, an early influence. He spent junior year abroad at the University of Manchester, England, writing his final term paper - “Order, Rhythm, and Cycle in James Joyce’sPortrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake” - under the aegis and tutelage of Prof. C.B.Cox, editor of Critical Quarterly.
After the Blizzard of 1977, the Baldwins departed Buffalo for Brooklyn Heights, where Neil Baldwin continued his multifaceted enterprises and Roberta joined the Bergen Record as Lifestyle Editor. He taught literature as an adjunct professor at Baruch College, CUNY Graduate Center, the New School, and Fordham University; founded Neil Baldwin Associates, a nonprofit consultancy; took administrative and development positions with Poets & Writers and Teachers & Writers Collaborative; published two more volumes of poetry with Salt-Works Press - Seasons and On the Trail of Messages; and brought out The Poetry Writing Handbook (Scholastic, 1981), a teaching manual derived from his creative writing pedagogy for grades 4-12. In 1984, Atheneum published (with a cover graced by a design of Harry Ford) Baldwin’s biography of William Carlos Williams, To All Gentleness, derived from his first-hand scholarly engagement with the doctor-poet (1883-1963) who was born, lived and died in Rutherford, N.J. The Preface was by William Eric Williams, M.D.
The New York Public Library, under the visionary leadership of philanthropist Brooke Russell Astor, President Vartan Gregorian, and Chairman of the Board Andrew Heiskell, was on the cusp of an urgently-needed five-year $350 million capital campaign when Baldwin was hired as a proposal writer for the Development Office. His first assignment was to research and generate the rationale for corporate underwriting of the conversion of Room 315, The Public Catalog Room, from index file cards to computerization. After a few months at an electric typewriter in a cubicle overlooking Bryant Park in the labyrinthine stacks, Baldwin was tapped by VP for Development and Public Affairs Gregory Long to take over the Office of Foundation Giving; and, soon thereafter, was named Manager of The Annual Fund for The Campaign for the Library, with a goal to raise $10 million per year in operating support. In 1986, the Baldwins, with their two children, Nicholas, age seven, and Allegra, age five, moved to Montclair, New Jersey; soon thereafter, Roberta launched her career as a real estate agent.
The National Book Foundation – creating an institution
When Vartan Gregorian departed the NYPL to take up the presidency of Brown University, the members of the Library management team went their separate ways. In the spring of 1989, after being interviewed by the executive committee of the board of the nascent National Book Foundation, sponsor of the prestigious National Book Awards, Baldwin was hired as the founding executive director, charged with rebuilding and rebranding the nearly-insolvent institution. Over the ensuing fourteen years at the helm, Baldwin, with a professional staff of five, governed by a generous and dedicated cadre of publishing executives, authors and philanthropic private citizens, raised more than $25 million and established a permanent endowment to ensure the future stewardship of the institution and its mission. The Poetry Award was reinstated; and the Young People’s Literature Award was created, adding to the Fiction and Nonfiction Awards. The Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award was created, honoring, among others, for lifetime achievement -- Eudora Welty, Gwendolyn Brooks, David McCullough, Philip Roth, Stephen King, -- and Oprah Winfrey received the 50th anniversary National Book Awards Gold Medal in 1999, at a black-tie ceremonial banquet hosted by Steve Martin. Literacy and educational outreach programs enlisting National Book Award Finalists and Winners - National Book Month in October; American Voices, bringing authors to Native American reservations; the Summer Writing Camp, for talented NYC public high school students; and the Settlement House Program, in alliance with United Neighborhood Houses – ensured that the love of books and reading was promulgated to diverse, national constituencies.
Coming off a national book tour keenly desiring a collegial environment, Baldwin sent a copy of The American Revelation to Mary A. Papazian, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University, in his home town, on the chance there might be room for a seasoned scholar to enter the academic ranks. MSU President Susan Cole hired Baldwin as the Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of History. After teaching modern intellectual and American cultural history for the 2006-7 academic year, Baldwin was recruited by the Dean of the College of the Arts, Geoffrey Newman, who placed him in the Department of Theatre & Dance. Baldwin’s mandate, acknowledging his literary pedigree, was to develop and create an undergraduate Dramaturgy major. Following upon this theme, the Dance Division approached Baldwin about bearing witness to rehearsals, technique and choreography classes; the result was another curricular invention --Danceaturgy, the first such course on a college campus. After serving as dramaturg for Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, and a new version of Homburg adapted and directed by Jorge Cachiero – both shows featuring set design by Baldwin’s colleague, Erhard Rom -- he shifted to training graduate and undergraduate students in the craft of assisting on department production teams; while, on the danceaturgy side, he created and taught critical and observational writing seminars for MFA and BFA dance majors, who hosted innovative “talkbacks” after fall and spring concerts. As a core faculty member of the BA/MA Theatre Studies Program, Baldwin continued to teach Theatre History, Play Script Interpretation, Dramaturgy, and Arts Administration; while, beyond the College of the Arts, he launched “The Entrepreneurial Imagination” in the School of Business; “Great Books and Ideas” in the Honors Program; and, in 2010, founded the virtual Creative Research Center - a capacious, multipaged web site foregrounding imaginative projects by students and faculty across the entire University, and presenting an annual interdisciplinary Symposium.
The visceral epiphany of Martha Graham
In the winter of 2008, Denise Vale, senior artistic associate of the Martha Graham Dance Company, arrived at the Montclair State University campus to set Graham’s classic “Steps in the Street” (1936) on the students. Vale invited Baldwin to sit in on the sessions, and he realized that -- after a lifetime devoted to writing books about wide-ranging aspects of American culture, industry, and innovation -- he had fortuitously landed upon the unexplored terrain that would consume his scholarly and creative energies for the coming decade and more, until his retirement from Montclair State University as Professor Emeritus in July, 2020.
One of the most important artistic forces of the twentieth century, Martha Graham (1894-1991) was the legendary American dancer and choreographer who upended dance, propelling the art form into the modern age, and whose profound and pioneering influence is still being felt today. Time magazine called her “the Dancer of the Century.” Her technique, used by dance companies throughout the world, became the first long-lasting alternative to the idiom of classical ballet. Her pioneering movements—powerful, dynamic, jagged, edgy, forthright—combined with her distinctive system of training, were the epitome of American modernism, performance as art. Her work continued to astonish and inspire for more than sixty years as she choreographed more than 180 works. At the heart of Graham’s work: movement that could express inner feeling.
Baldwin describes a common thread in some of his work as follows:
"...my first two subjects were William Carlos Williams, the poet and physician and probably, you could say, the precursor of--of modern poetry in America today. And the second subject was Man Ray, who was the photographer and painter who was also a great American figure. And I viewed Man Ray as a quintessential modernist figure. And what I did was if--William Carlos Williams, I was talking about a genre and the history of a genre. And then I decided the most important thing after that would be to try to define a period as a whole, the modern period as a whole, so Man Ray to me was the metaphor for the modernist period in art."
"And then I thought, 'Well, I've dealt with two highly creative individuals, and I've explored their imaginations.' But I wanted to make the point that creativity and imagination are not the sole province of the artist, the--the humanist thinker. I wanted to show that invention, which was actually defined as an art in Edison's time--it was actually called the art of invention. I wanted to show that the inventive process, the creative process, they all stem from the--the--the deepest core of the imagination in--in a human being, and I wanted to connect all those creative processes in the context of an American vision."
"And if you look at the time frame for these three books--William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, Thomas Edison--they all begin sort of in the last vestiges of the industrial era and the romantic era in culture and they pass through the cataclysm of the wars and they end up sort of on the threshold of--of our day. And so I do think they all connect, even though on first blush it is--it's hard to see the connection, but I think there is a connection."[2]
Man Ray: American Artist (Baldwin used this book in writing the screenplay for the PBS American Masters documentary Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde.)
William Carlos Williams was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
Man Ray was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.
Eli Siegel was a poet, critic, and educator. He founded Aesthetic Realism, a philosophical movement based in New York City. An idea central to Aesthetic Realism—that every person, place or thing in reality has something in common with all other things—was expressed in the title poem of his first volume, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems. His second volume was Hail, American Development.
The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, among others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. The basic tenets of objectivist poetics as defined by Louis Zukofsky were to treat the poem as an object, and to emphasize sincerity, intelligence, and the poet's ability to look clearly at the world. While the name of the group is similar to Ayn Rand's school of philosophy, the two movements are not affiliated.
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School, an informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, action painting, and contemporary avant-garde art movements.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
"The Red Wheelbarrow" is a poem by American modernist poet William Carlos Williams. Originally published without a title, it was designated "XXII" in Williams' 1923 book Spring and All, a hybrid collection which incorporated alternating selections of free verse and prose. Only sixteen words long, "The Red Wheelbarrow" is one of Williams' most frequently anthologized poems, and a prime example of early twentieth-century Imagism.
James Laughlin was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing.
Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
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.
Albert James Young was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books included novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work appeared in literary journals and magazines including Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, The New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, and in anthologies including the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.
James Vincent Tate was an American poet. His work earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.
Martha Collins is a poet, translator, and editor. She has published eleven books of poetry, including Casualty Reports, Because What Else Could I Do, Night Unto Night, Admit One: An American Scrapbook, Day Unto Day, White Papers, and Blue Front, as well as two chapbooks and four books of co-translations from the Vietnamese. She has also co-edited, with Kevin Prufer and Martin Rock, a volume of poems by Catherine Breese Davis, accompanied by essays and an interview about the poet’s life and work.
Daniela Gioseffi is an American poet, novelist and performer who won the American Book Award in 1990 for Women on War; International Writings from Antiquity to the Present. She has published 16 books of poetry and prose and won a PEN American Center's Short Fiction prize (1995), and The John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry (2007).
The Poet Laureate of New Jersey was an honor presented biennially by the Governor of New Jersey to a distinguished New Jersey poet. Created in 1999, this position existed for less than four years and was abolished by the legislature effective July 2, 2003. When the New Jersey State Legislature created the laureate position, the bill provided specifically for the creation of an award named in honor of twentieth-century poet and physician William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) who resided in Rutherford, New Jersey. However, the legislature recognized that the award's recipient would "be considered the poet laureate of the State of New Jersey for a period of two years." Before the position was abolished, only two poets, Gerald Stern and Amiri Baraka, had been appointed as the state's poet laureate.
Stuart Hodes was an American dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, dance administrator and author. He was Martha Graham's partner, danced on Broadway, in TV, film, in recitals, and with his own troupe. His choreography has appeared on the Boston Ballet, Dallas Ballet, Harkness Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and other troupes. He taught at the Martha Graham School, Neighborhood Playhouse, NYC High School of Performing Arts, headed dance at NYU School of the Arts and Borough of Manhattan Community College. He was Dance Associate for the NY State Council on the Arts, dance panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, president of the National Association of Schools of Dance, and a member of the First American Dance Study Team to China in 1980, returning in 1992 to teach the Guangzhou modern dance troupe.
Maureen Therese Seaton was an American lesbian poet, memoirist, and professor of creative writing. She authored fifteen solo books of poetry, co-authored an additional thirteen, and wrote one memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, which won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Seaton's writing has been described as "unusual, compressed, and surrealistic," and was frequently created in collaboration with fellow poets such as Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, David Trinidad, Kristine Snodgrass, cin salach, Niki Nolin, and Mia Leonin.
David Happell Hsin-fu Wand (1931–1977) was a poet, translator, collaborator with William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, and editor responsible for the popularization of Asian-American literature through his 1974 anthology Asian American Heritage: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry. After espousing virulently neo-fascistic and segregationist views in the 1950s under the tutelage of Pound, Wand moved to California in the 60s and became a supporter of the Black Power movement, seeing parallels between the Asian-American and African-American experience.
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