The oldest of seven children from a working-class background,
Paul Mariani was born in New York City in 1940 and grew up
there and on Long Island. He earned his bachelor's degree from
Manhattan College, a Master's from Colgate University, and a PhD.
from the City University of New York. He is the author of seven
poetry collections, most recently, Epitaphs for the Journey: New,
Selected & Revised Poems (Cascade Books, 2012) and Deaths &
Transfigurations (Paraclete Press, 2005).
He has published numerous books of prose, including five acclaimed
biographies of poets: The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace
Stevens (2015); Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life (2008); The Broken
Tower: A Life of Hart Crane (1999); Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert
Lowell (1994), all named New York Times Notable Books of the year;
Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman (1990); and William Carlos
Williams: A New World Naked (1981), which won the New Jersey
Writers Award, was short-listed for an American Book Award, and was
also named a New York Times Notable Book of the year.
His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the
Humanities. He has also been shortlisted for the Tait Award for
biography. He was Distinguished University Professor at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught from 1968
until 2000, when he was named University Professor of English at
Boston College. In 2009 he received the John Ciardi Award for
Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. Mariani and his wife, Eileen, have
three grown sons and live in western Massachusetts. He is currently
working on a memoir of growing up on the mean streets of Manhattan
in the 1940s. The Broken Tower, his biography of Hart Crane, was
turned into a film, directed by and starring James Franco. He has
also contributed to two films-one on John Berryman, and another on
Wallace Stevens. He has lectured widely and read his poems here and
abroad.
"The most laudable aspect of Paul Mariani's critical biography of William Carlos Williams is that it largely succeeds in placing him, in his biographer's words, as ''the single most important American poet of the twentieth century, ' and though Williams is dead almost 20 years now, there has been no poet in that time to deny him his primacy."-- New York Times Book Review "Paul Mariani's perceptive, ranging, detailed biography of William Carlos Williams is not only a labor of oldtime love but a uniquely objective testament to the heroic dimensions of this man's life, which was so singularly American and whose work was so remarkable an influence upon the poetry of our time."-- Robert Creeley "Energetic, fast-paced. . . . It is a pleasure to have so much of [Williams's] exceptional life run by one's eyes, reach one's mind and heart again."-- New Republic "Effectively delineates Williams's many loves--personal and literary--and provides a superb gloss on the range of his truly innovative poetry and prose. . . . The reader is grateful for the massive feat of research and synthesis that brings to such vivid life this mercurially cranky personality."-- Saturday Review
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